TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3248, 29 November 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1881.

Ms Hall, in tbe course of his address to his constituent'!, said that the question of local government as an election cry had been a complete failure. To a certain extent be was right. The question has not attracted the attention of the people tc the extent that it should have dene. They have beea much more occupied with political matters that do not concern them hair as nearly as fjovernruent Men possessing no property whatever will be found to take the deepest interest in the relative advantages of land and property taxes; and other? having no intention to go upon kud will concern thence'?c-£ about the settlement of tha !?nd by the pco r !e. Bat the great question *.h?.t concerns everyone ol ! us, tha £OvcniKstiut of the p.onle by the people, has fallen flat upon the electors, and the Ministry of the thy is extremely happy that it has don. ?o. It does not seem to hay.. been snui.ientiy realised that the term " local governs.iifeignifies government by the people, ;:ad the adminisnw ilon ct local sff-.ilrs by local nien. And yet the importance cf dealing witn this question in a comprehensive manner, in a manner that bball satisfy the varying requirements of th. s-i.veral parts of the colony, is brought to every one's notice flay t>V Oftv, Thg residents in town; under municipal adimnietration do not. perhaps, realise the nece?sity for a change in the existing system to such a degree as country settlers. But her. in Napier we have had so-ne experience of the want of real local government, and of the fact that in those matters that seriously affect the progress and prosperity of the town the people have had no voice in controlling. We have only to refer to the harbor \vorka and to the Meanee reserve to illustrate our meaning. The mischief is done now, so it, perhaps, is of no use to cry over spilt milk, but does any one suppose for a moment that if the members of the Meanee Reserve Board had been elected by the people that ninety acres of land, within i'owr miles of the borough, would have been permitted to remain a wilderness ? Irf it hi the least likely that if the people had been in the enjoyment of local government they would have voluntarily closed the reserve to the purposes to which it was devoted ? Tbe land was dedicated to the people for purposes of recreation, aud if the people had had any voice in the manag.ment of the public estate this town and the settlements around it would have had » public park, instead of the public nuisance that the reserve for many years. The reserve has now been dealt with in a way that may satisfy the Board and the central authorities who appointed the Board, but we have no hesitation in saying that, had the people been consulted, the land would now be in a very different position to what we see it. Another illustration of the value real local government would have been to us in this town is furnished in the slate of our harbor. The Board that determined the character of the improvement works was one the members of which were wholly ucraina..d by the General Government. It was a nominated Board that rejected Mr M'Gregor's plans, that borrowed the loan of £75,000, and adopted the insignificant scheme which has resulted in the absence of a harbor and the exhaustion of the Board's securities. In 1878 the Harbors Act was passed, which gave us a Board of twelve members, three of whom are nominated by the Government. Although the Act brought about a change for the better, and to the extent of allowing the people to elect three-fourths of the members of the Board recognised tbe principle of local government, no advantage whatever was derived, because by that time all the mischief that could be done had been accomplished. If the want of true local government had been felt in no other particular but in that of the harbor, the people of this town would have had grave cause to seriously reflect upon a question that the Premier twits the country upon having been a failure as an election cry. It has been the want of local government that shut the gates of a public reserve in the faces of the people, nnd compelled them to provide themselves out of their own pockets with a recreation ground, and that put a stop to any comprehensive scheme for harbor improvement.