SIR G. GREY’S LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2273, 15 July 1881, Page 3

SIR G. GREY’S LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL.

[feoh tub own coeebspondent of tee “ PEESS.”J WELLINGTON, July 14. Sir G. Grey’s Local Self-Government Bill is just (11 p.m.) circulated. It contains thirty clauses, and provides that the Governor may proclaim local districts to contain (blank) counties, each district to have a “ president " and council, the numerical strength of the latter to be fixed by the Governor. The president is to be elected by persons qualified to vote for the election of councillors, the Governor to appoint electoral districts and officers. The qualification of a candidate is to be the same as for the General Assembly. Every person twenty-one years old and resident in the district is to be qualified to vote at an election, while there is the usual disqualification of felons, &c. The President and Council may make bylaws for the district, but not on any of the following subjects : —(1) Imposition or regulation of Customs ; (2) imposition of dues or charges on shipping; (3) erection and maintenance of lighthouses and beacons on the coast; (4) Post Office and telegraph; (5) weights and measures ; (6) coin, bills, notes, or other paper currency; (7) establishing, altering, or repealing laws relating to bankruptcy or insolvency; (8) regulating the course of inheritance of real or personal property, or affecting the law relating to wills ; (9) regulating the law relating to marriages or matrimonial causes, or registration of births, deaths, and marriages; (10) primary education ; (11) imposing disabilities or restrictions on persons of the Native race to which persona of European birth or descent would not also be subject ; (12) establishing or providing for the maintenance, management, and movement of any force than volunteers raised for the purpose of internal or external defence against an enemy ; (13) affecting lands of the Crown, except for making regulations tor mining purposes, or affecting lands to which the title of aboriginal owners was never extinguished ; (14) establishment or abolition of any Court of Judicature of civil or criminal jurisdiction, except that Presidents and Councils are .empowered to create, constitute, and abolish within districts tribunals of judicature inferior to the Supreme Court, with £S may deemed expedient such civil jurisdiction limited, or extended as may by the by-laws be defined by the President and Council, not exceeding pounds, and also tribunals of summary and extended criminal jurisdictions respectively defined as aforesaid, and having respectively cognizance of all offences punishable summarily, and also any offence indictable except capital offences. Presidents and Councils may make by-laws relating to the appointments and calories of fit and proper judicial officers, being barristers or solicitors of the Supremo Court of not less than —— years professional standing, to preside over the said tribunals; also to make and alter by-iawa relating to the appointment and remuneration of other qualified persons to he officers of tribunals, and to practice and procedure therein, and right of appeal from decisionsthereof and otherwise as may from time ts time be necessary and proper for giving effect to and carrying into execution the provisions of the Act, The Councils are to elect their chairmen and frame standing orders. The president may transmit to the Council drafts of by-laws for their consideration, and may give or withhold assent to by-laws passed by the Council, or amend them, as he deems advisable, to transmit copies of the approved by-laws to the Governor. The president and Council may alter or abolish the form of local self-government; laws in force on the establishment of districts to remain in force until repealed or altered. The last two clauses are as follows “After all the revenue arising from taxes, duties, rates and imposts levied in virtue of any Act of the General Assembly, and from the disposal of waste lands of the Crown, shall have been appropriated to specific purposes by Act of the Assembly, the surplus of such revenue not so appropriated shall be divided among the several districts established by this Act, in like proportion as the population of each of the said district bears to the populationof the whole,of Nen Zealand.’’“‘The Governor shall crant to each of the districts the waste lands of the Crown as endowments with power to lease the same for any period not exceeding years, such endowment to be of such area and value as may yield sufficient funds to provide for each district all the requisites for the trade and commerce thereof, and for securing its welfare, comfort, health and advancement in the knowledge of the people, such endowments to be from time to time applied as far as possible in lieu of, srd * to avoid the imposition of rales and tan.-.’’