PROVINCIAL COUNCIL

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 13, Issue 683, 20 May 1869, Page 3

PROVINCIAL COUNCIL

FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1869. The Speaker took the chair at 3 p.m. Present —All the members except Messrs. Locke, Weston, and Whitmore. The minutes of the last meeting were read and confirmed. REPORTS. Mr Ferard moved— That the Provincial Engineer's Report on Roads, the Report of the Provincial Surveyor, and the Harbor Master's Report be printed. Agreed to. BOILING-DOWN COMPANY. Mr S-utton moved— That the Government will lay upon the table of this house a Return of all the fees paid by the Hawke's Bay Boiling Down Company under the Slaughter-house Act, and copy of any license issued by the Inspector of Slaughter-houses to that company. —-He stated that this company had for some time carried on the business of wholesale butchers, and it was commonly reported, without a license. It was not long since that a butcher, a poor man, was fined £5, and he believed, sent to prison in default, for killing an animal away fiora the slaughte-houser, and it was only right that the Boiling-down Company should be under the same regulations. Agreed to. WAITAIIA CREEK. Mr Dolbel asked his Honor the Superintendent — Whether anything has been done toward the erection of a bridge over the Waitaha Creek, in the district of Mohaka. His Honoji said that the Provincial Engineer had examined the creek, and reported that the amount appropriated for the bridge was insufficient. MOHAKA BLOCKHOUSE. Mr Dolbel asked his Honor the S nperimendent—"Whether he could give the Council any information in reference to the removal of the blockhouse from the European settlement at Mohaka; and, if so, if he has nsed his influence as Superin. tenJent to prevent the said removal. His Honor said that this matter was of course in the hands of the General Government, and he could not see how, as Supeiintendent, he could interfere For his own part, he considered the removal of the blockhouse inadvisable, as it was a great procection lo the district, and and as he further believed that it was almost entirely the work of the settlers. EDUCATION RATE REPEAL. Mr Sutton moved— For leave to introduce a Bill to repeal the Education Rates Act, 1868. Leave granted; bill brought in, read a first time, and second reading ordered for Tuesday, May 18. EDUCATIONAL GRANT AT CLIVE. Mr Rhodes moved— That half-an-acre of land, near the Ngaruroro Bridge, should ba granted by the Government for Educational purposes. —He did not think the Council would have any hesitation in this matter. The Government possessed about four acres near the Ngaruioro bridge above the level of any floods, and if a portion were reserved for a school it would be a great boon to the inhabitants of the district. If be was allowed to amend his motion he would ask for one acre —one half to be set aside for school purposes, and the other half to be vested in trustees for the benefit of the school. Mr Sutton seconded the motion, onlv regretting that the amount asked was so small. He approved of setting aside large reserves for educational purposes. He could see no better way to raise money for its support, and if the motion had suggested that the whole four acres should be set apart, he would have supported it, Mr Kennedy approved of the object of the motion, but thought halfan acre insufficient. Mr TxiNNER understood, from what had previously fallen from the member for Cli v e on this subject, that the chief object of the petitioners was to have the school in a more central position, which wa? a great thing. There was no request for a grant-in-aid ; the inhabitants undertook to build the school themselves, which showed a good spirit on their part. He had heard it asked if the present school-site would revert to the Government if this grant was

allowed; but of course this could not occur, the present site being already an educational reserve. He had been glad to hear the remarks of the member for Napier on the subject, and quite agreed with him. He thought t'vo acres might be very well tret aside for thfc purpose; the whole would not be required for the school-houses, and the remainder might be leased. He much regretted that the Government had not been more liberal in setting apart educational reserves —the public might not now have been called upon for that rate which seemed so objectionable. Mr Carl von objected to the comse which had been pursued with the educational resen es of the Province, which he said were now virtually in private hands. They were mostly leased out at 21 years at some such sum as <£! per acre. No one knew what might happen in 21 years, and it; was very possible that in that time people might be paying about £3 per annum for property worth .£3,000. Mr Fetiard nw ed as an amendment that the following words be added to the motion : —" Conditionally on sufficient funds to erect a school being guaranteed from private sources." Mr Rhodes would, with the consent of the Council, amend his resolution lo "two acres." He had been sorry that he had committed such a blunder as to talk about half an-acre at first • but on second thoughts he considered it the safest plan to allow the Council to give as much more as they chose. He approved of the addition suggested by the member for the town. Mr Tanner could not understand the object of the amendment of the member for Napier. It was not likely the inhabitants would first build the school, on the understanding that they would afterwards be guaranteed the land. A hitch might occur, which would deprive them of it. He could not see, either, that the Council had anything to do with the removal of the school. That was a question that might safely be left to the majority of the inhabitants. The question being put whether the proposed words should be added, it was decided in the negative. Mr Ormond then proposed a slight amendment, in favor of which Mr Rhodes withdrew his motion. Mr Buchanan asked for what purpose this land had been reserved by the Government. Mr Rpiodes : For a hamlet. Mr Buchanan thought that on that account it would be a very fitting addition to the educational reserves of the province. He would support reserving the whole four acres for this purpose. Mr Tanner quite agreed with the suggestion. The property might be vested in trustees, and become a very valuable aid to the funds Mr Rhodes said that good as the intentions of the last speakers were, if they were carried out he feared they would defeat their own ends. The Government had found that leasehold townships in the country would never take, and their object in re°erving these four acres had been to form a small township by selling freehold sections at a low rate, which tradesmen and others would purchase strictly for the purpose of residence. If, however, the whole was granted to the school, they would most likely not be able to do more than lease the four acres as a paddock, at the rate of about £2 per annum; for anything short of selling the land would be fatal to a township. Mr Carlyon said the land ought to be granted by deed, to prevent it being leased for twenty-one years, which was as good as a freehold, at any ra + e to a man in his position in life. [Laughter.] Mr Rhodes said that such was the intention of the Government. The motion was then assen'ed to on the voices. Mr Carlyon called for a division, which resulted in that gentleman being the only dissentient. WAIPAWA TELEGRAPH. Lieut.-Col. Lambert moved— That his Honor the Superintendent will be pleased to lay before the Council all correspondence between the General Government and himself relative to the erection of a Telegraph Office at Waipawa,

There being no seconder, the motion lapsed. LAND GRANT TO MR W. R. RUSSELL. Mr Carlyon had peculiar reasons for requesting that his motion nhould stand over till the business of the day was disposed of. Leave granted. UNAUTHORISED EXPENDITURE. Mr Ferard asked the Speaker if the Provincial Auditor had complied with the Audit Act, by laying before him a separate statement of the unauthorised expenditure. The Speaker said that the papers received from the Auditor had been laid on the table je^ter'ay. Mr Ferard was led to ask this question because last session the unauthorised expenditure came hefore the Council too late to consider the items. The Speaker said that as far as he could judge from the papers before him there had been no unauthorised expenditure. Mr Ferard had observed in several places in the expendituie the words " not specially provided for,'' and supposed this to refer to unauthorised expenditure. SHEEP AND SCAB CONSOLIDATION. Before going into committee on this Bill, Mr Wood stated that he wished to resign the office of Chairman of Committees, and must request the Council to elect a new one. Mr Tanner proposed the member for Hampden, Mr A'Deane, which was agreed to. Mr A'Deane was quite willing to act as Chairman of Committees so far as this bill was concerned; but hoped the member for Havelock would not throw up his office altogether. The house then went into committee on the bill, and afterwards adjourned to half-past 7. GRANT OF LAND TO MR W. R. RUSSELL. fPor the three following speeches wo are indebted to our contemporary, our reporter having been absent.] Mr Carl yon moved— That this Council will express their opiuion in the form of a resolution, as to the policy of the late Act passed by the General Assembly, granting 800 acres of land to Wm. Russell Russell, Esq. —ln doing so, he said: Sir, I have now to call the attention of this Council to a recent enactment which has created the greatest astonishment in the mind of every person with whom I have conversed on the subject. My whole educational life has been more or less spent in acquiring historical information of the systems of Government practised in the ancient and modern world ; but the last ten years of my life have been especially devoted to investigating the lise and watching the growth and progress of the laws and institutions of this Colony in particular. I proceed to state, once for all, that a more exceptional exactment than the one to which I am about to call your attention has never to my knowledge been passed by any deliberative assembly in the world. I of course do not use the term exceptional in its best sense; on the contrary, I mean that this act is ?o profligate in principle, and so pregnant with evil in the way of precedent to every Province, alike, that it requires more than ordinary vehemence of language to denounce it in the terms it deserves. It would be necessary to give a brief history of the Naval and Military Waste Lands Acts, under which Mr W. R. Russell claimed to usurp 800 acres of the lands of this Province. Under the pretence of inducing military officers to leave the Queen's service in the army for settlement in New Zealand, certain bribes vere put forth by a ministry who thereby hoped to captr.ate the interests ol a large section of voters. Practically, however, it was soon discovered that New Zealand had not gained, nor was likely to gain, a single immigrant through the inducements of this Act. The terms •were—that every officer seeking a grant of land under the Act should reside at least four years in New Zealand —not consecutively, but sim ply four years out of live years. Mr Russell did not comply with this arrangement, but so far from forfeiting any advantage thereby, he managed, by devices which I am about to expose, to acquire a grant of 800 acres in the place of 400 acres. It might well be that if any officer had been compelled to remain in England be-

vond the limited period for the cure of wounds received in the Colonial service, or even generally on the score of bad health, every consideration would have been allowed to his case. But that is not the present case; Mr Russell's engagements were purely connubial This gentleman never entered New Zealand with any other intention than to claim a matter of 400 acres of land for no military service whatsoever. He exchanged into a regiment on service in New Zealand, not for the purpose of fighting the battles of the colonists, but of obtaining a grant of land. What therefore were the exceptionallymeritoriou? serviceswhich should induce the colonial legislature to look with peculiar favor on the claims of this gentleman 1 He commenced his career in New Zealand with outraging the law of the Colony, by an illegal occupation of land. Seeking ing for commiseration for himself, he bad no sci uples in selecting his 400 acres on the h\nd of a brother officer. Ostensibly he selected this land at 10/ per acre, but be used his priviledsre so as to secure to himself virtuaiiy the worth of £1 an acre after seven years, with interest in the meantime. It follows that, of all the exceptional provisions created by the Act now in discussion, no greater tyranny or despotism could be maintained than the enacting clauses which deprived a subject of the realm of his natural right to urge his own position in the Supreme Court—yet such a provision was actually passed! Now by what agency, by whose ininvestigation and by what influence'? At nearly the end of the session, when most members had left the General Assembly, Mr M'Lean moved that a grant of land of 300 acres should be given to W. R Ressell. There are positions in society which are difficult to fulfil with satisfaction to ail parties concerned; you may be asked to be the ' best man" at a wedding, or godfather at a christening, or, still worse, to please some old dowager, from whom you might expect something better, by swallowing belter, by swallowing a glass of home-made elderberry wine. AU these jobs are perhaps very distasteful, but difficult, nevertheless, to get out of. We can only say of the Superintendent that he has been misled by blandishments of some sort to become a party to p. oceedings which, under further consideration, he would not have assented to. Mr M'Lean, be it observed, only originally moved for a grant of 300 acres. He found a perishing patient in actual want of land, and could nob charitably resist such a modest and moderate claim. He was, however, above the usual class of good Samaritans. He did not leave his patient at the house of a publican, and apparently he had neither oil nor pence in his havresack at that moment. He, however, carefully laid the sick man on the floor of the Legislative Council, and sought for a physician. He had not far to go. A gentleman had been watching the case throughout, fully expecting to be called in sooner or later. This was no quack; but a soldier (Oh que faime les milltaires.J Aye, and a more, a courtier; aye, an orator; and, more than that, a statesman, one who, of all others, had undertaken to give an exact defiinition of the aptitudes of the whole Maori race, without any distinction of sex, or regard to the delicacy of the subject. The godfather having disappeared from the scene, the real father in every sense took the conduct of this case. Now, sir, if there be any attributes or qualifications more especially appeitaining to a public man, whether he be called to the General Assembly by nomination of the Governor or by electoral vote, I hold it to be the highest function of public men to approach their legislative duties without any prejudice in favor of their own sons. It this be the rule generally understood by impartial minds, it has been grossly violated in the present instance, where we find that 800 acres of land have been confiscated to the service of W. R. Russell, by virtually the casting vote of his own father, as against the votes of every other member of the Legislative Council representing this province (namely, Messrs Stokes, Johnston, H. R. Russell, and Colonel Whitmore).

The preamble of the Act left it to be understood that the Provincial Council would certainly assent, if it had not already assented, to this grant. Sir, 1 lately read of a Maori prince, who had £IOOO in the bank, being recently detected entering a charitable refectory in the Province of Wellington for the purpose of getting a bite or sup at the public expense. I no longer think that the vice of insatiable avarice is confined to Maori families. I have purposely left the motion which is now before you in a rather vague and. indefinite form, in the hope of being guided by the tone of the Council as to framing a more positive resolution, hereafter. The whole enactment is an infringement of the understanding that the waste lands of the provinces should be at the sole disposal of the several Councils thereof. When, however, I consider that the gentlemen in whose hands the destinies of the colony are now wavering, deem themselves so superior to ordinary ministers that they can afford to scorn and despise the general opinion of their fellow-set tiers, to ignore reclamations of whole provinces, to set at nought for a time the etiquette of governments,—holding forth themselves to the world as possessing the quintessence of all knowledge from the days of Julius Caasar to the reign of Queen Victoria, and equally ready to undertake the construction of a bridge over Cook's Straits, or to drive a tandem over the "Ruahine mountains, —when 1 consider all this, I at once perceive the futility of any expectation that fcuch gentlemen will pay any attention to the wishes of this Council. But the time may yet arrive when the majority of one can no longer be upheld, and the repeal ot this most flagitious and contemptible act may be effected. Mr Tanner said that he agreed with the opinions enunciated by the pre\ious speaker. The gentleman who received land as a gift from the province had nothing to complain of if he lost it on account of not having strictly complied with the conditions required by law, The meaning of grants to military officers was that, in the event of any difficulty with the natives, the Colony might have the benefit of their advice, and assistance. The most objectionable point in this matter was the interference of the General Government with the land of the province without any reference to be Council, who were the custodians of the Provincial estate. The application should have been referred to the Council He could not agree with the remarks of the member for Te Ante, as regards the services rendered by Mr Russell. That gentleman had acted as a cor poral in the militia, and drilled a company, notwithstanding his having previously held a commission in the Imperial Army. He had also given all the infermation in his power whenever asked. [Cries of no, no.] Mr Ferard could only call this act a most shameless one. The act of, 58 clearly meant that Provincial Councils should be consulted about the waste lands of their Province. The Council was very ready to vote confidence in the Superintendent and Executive. Captain Russell's grant was not discusssed in the Council yet in the Assembly not a breath was heard to the contrary from either of their members. He should like to know if any enquiry was made by the Crown Lands Commissioner. Surely if Mr Russell had complied with the legal conditions he would have got his land, and there would have been no more trouble about it. The bill being a private one, the preamble ought to have been strictly proved. He would conclude by moving the adjournment of the debate, and that the Speaker issue his warrant for the attendance of the Crown Lands Commissioner, in order to give evidence relative to the grant in question. The motion was agreed to, SHEEP AND SCAB CONSOLIDATION. On the motion that the consideration of this bill in committee be resumed, the attention of the Speaker was drawn to the fact that there was no quorum, and he accordingly adjourned the Council to next sitting day,