TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph FRIDAY, JULY 29, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3147, 29 July 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph FRIDAY, JULY 29, 1881.

Not the least misfortune that has attended tbe centralisation of government at Wellington has been that for the redress of all grievances the people must go to the House of Representatives. And the sort of attention they obtain for their petitions was well illustrated by Mr Ormond in his admirable speech when he moved his amendment to the Government proposals. Mr Ormond said that the Colonial Treasurer had gone on to speak of what he had advanced with regard to the old provincial institutions, or of any local-government institutions in the proper sense, a means of redressing; grievances. And, Sir, said Mr Ormond, the honorable gentleman answered that, as I thought, very 'flippantly indeed. He s>»id this House was the place where all such grievances are to be redressed. The day after the honorable gentleman had spoken I went to a Committee of this House, of which lam a member—the Waste Lands Committee—a Oommittee which receives, perhaps, as large a number of petitions as any Committee of this House—and I will tell the House and my honorable friend what took place, and he will see, I think, that the body to which he would refer all grievances is a body which is quite unable to deal with them. We had on that particular day—l think the last we eat —a very large number of petitions indeed, many of them referring to matters that took place years and years 0 . We had on that a S Chairman, the honorable £ em ber for Wairarapa (Mr Bunny) — a very energetic and ousiness-like gentleman—and this 'rfas the course of procedure! A petition is taken up. " Whose is this P" asks the Chairman. " James Brown's," or anybody else's, as the case may be, replies the Clerk. The Chairman immediately says, " Mr Clerk, haven't we bad a great many of these James Browns ?" " Oh, yes," replies the Clerk. What was the conclusion come to with regard to them ? Sir, the stereotyped report about them is, " The Oommittee has no recommendation to make." One after the other, as those honorable gentlemen who are on the Committee know, these petitions came up, aud that is the way they were dealt with. And that is tbe redress of grievances which the Colonial Treasurer says this House affords. It is not the fault of the Committee; the Committee is perfectly helpless to deal with this question. The petitions were sent, in many cases, by men just able to state their grievances, and unable, without the means, to come here to support their petitions; and what chance has tho Committee of arriving at a proper conclusion under sucb circumstances? None at all. This place is not the place where such grievances can be redressed. As I came out of that Committee, I met another set of Committemen coming from another Committee. I asked them where they had been. They told me they had been engaged in the case of Mr Brogden, a rich powerful man, able from ability and means to get his case heard, because he had the means and the knowledge of how to proceed to bring his case before the bodies in this House for investigating Buch grievances. Of course he and men like him can get redress, but the James Browns cannot get redress; and it is no fault of this Parliament it cannot be done, because this House is absolutely unable to ascertain or know the circumstances it is asked to decide on. Well, I venture to think my honourable friend's opinion on this subject will not give satisfaction; and I venture to think, further, that the people do now look back with the greatest regret to the time when they had that local, that real local governing body, which, if it could not give them redress — I do not say it was always in a position to give them redress — but it was there, it belonged to the people, it was there a governing body which represented the people, and they could go to those authorities and, through them, get redress. That is a great privilege, and it is one that is gone, and one of the things that will influence the people in seeiogy'we get a system of local government which will give back such a privilege.