The Lyttelton Times.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IV, Issue 183, 8 July 1854, Page 6

The Lyttelton Times.

July 8, 1854. • No man can please everybody. This is a venerable truism, of which we have just received a fresh illustration. We gave our opinion lately at some length upon Colonel Wynyard's address, and have seen no reason since to alter it. Our friends at Wellington have viewed this document in a very different light. The Independent attacks it most violently, accusing. His Excellency of wishing to subvert the authority of the Provincial Governments, and sneers at the address itself as "incoherent, timid, and inconsistent, characterized by vacillation and inconclusive deductions, little creditable to the enlightened views of His Excellency's advisers, sadly disappointing the expectations of those ' New Zealand Statesmen ' to whom he so pointedly appeals ; and strongly redolent of obsolete policy." We suspect that the Independent has been so

long fighting the battle of the people against an absolute and unscrupulous Government, that it has unconsciously acquired the habit of looking on the central Government as a natural enemy, and of hating it as inconsiderately and instinctively as our forefathers hatedj the French. The whole tone and temper of our contemporary's remarks force this conclusion upon us. We will give an instance of a paragraph in the address which is unwarrantably wrested into a shape capable of a " reductio ad absurdum." There is no excuse for omitting a portion of a sentence quoted, especially when it is that om in which the point of the argument lies, in order to prove that His Excellency is illogical. The Independent comments as follows upon the passage alluded to: His Excellency further developes these Provincial views of Governor Grey, by describing the colony almost in the very words of* Sir George himself, as " composed of a number of detached settlements, each from another more than 100 miles apart, with no facilities for water communication, —planted by- various founders, on different systems, and each independent of the other—with little intercourse between them, either social or commercial —with no common sympathy, and, heretofore, without the slighest bond of union." Therefore— -and. it is a strange conclusion, "it will rest with the General Assembly of these Islands whether New Zealand shall be* come one great Nation, or a collection of insignificant, divided, and powerless petty States," i.- c. because the peculiar condition of New Zealand requires local self-government, therefore we will give it central government; because the interests of New Zealand require one ; thing, therefore we will ordain the opposite. In the address, which is now before us, ;we find that the sentence runs " * * * and heretofore without the slightest bond of ; union ; seeing, too, that each of its several provinces has been invested with large powers of local legislation, it will rest with the General Assembly, &c." The omission of the words we have printed in italics is very disengenuous and very foolish. The want of logic certainly appears to lie with the Independent. Mr. Fox, upon the hustings, joins the Independent in the cry that His Excellency's address is a declaration of war against the Provincial Governments, and speaks of his contempt for some of the expressions in it. We cannot, we confess, understand this i language. It must be dictated by a pro- * vincial feeling too jealous to be clear-sighted. If we had seen danger to local institutions, ,we should have been the first to point it out. His Excellency appears to us to have ; been very discreet in his exposition of the " relations between the General and Provin- ? cial Governments. He holds that the General Assembly should be an interposing power to prevent clashing legislation. If 1 *»ye understand his opponents aright, they , would like to see the provinces committed <to the stream together, left each to take its own course irrespective of the other, ani car- , i'ied away by every contrary eddy to fall foul -of its unheeding neighbour. We shall find . out, when too late, the danger of ultra- '' provincialism. We cannot now enter again upon this subI ject in detail; but we may remark that the •f spirit which dictated His Excellency's sug- \ gestion upon the mode of disposing of the " Waste lands of the Crown is not that of an : enemy to the_ local legislatures. The fol-

lowing illustration given by the Independent will scarcely bear inspection : — We are afraid that his Excellency would make a bad farmer. If he had to superintend the management of an estate he would set to work thus. " Long acres" is fit for wheat; a home-close for potatoes ; " meadow bank " for clover, and " uplands" for oats; I like however uniformity of agriculture, therefore I will take off a crop of turnips from all ray fields, for I am determined to have only one uniform yield of produce.1 The genius of the inhabitants, as well as of the soil, of a country must be consulted or they will never produce their utmost. Akaroa will afford us an illustration of the subject far more to the point. When the French settled there they brought a quantity of sorrel with them, and it has spread all over the country to the great annoyance of English farmers. To all remonstrances, however, the Frenchman only answers with a shrug of his shoulders " ah, mais e'est bon pour la.soupe, cela*' Now, we do not wish to deny that the sorrel is an excellent thing for the Frenchman's soup, btit we think at the same time that as a farmer he was a great fool to let it grow by the side of and to the detriment of the rest of his cultivation. The General Government should not allow a system of legislation to be adopted in any one Province, detrimental to the general interests. One more quotation from the Independent and we have done. " Are the different States of America circumscribed by the legislature at Washington to pass uniform laws ? Why then should the states of New Zealand ?" Why, indeed! Is the king of Dahomey prevented from cutting off the heads of his subjects for fun ? Why then should the Queen of England? We think the latter of these deductions to be quite as logical as the first. Really the vague way in which the American Constitution is quoted by those who ought to understand it better, is astonishing. In many points our circumstances are very analogous to those of the United States, parvis componeremagna, but the point alluded to here is the very one in which there is no analogy. The States were in .existence independent of each other before the Constitution was formed, and all the power which the General Congress1 holds was ceded by the States to make a union practicable. The great difficulty the American Constitution has since had to contend with i& the weakness of the General Government. Surely in such a small community as New Zealand, where even already the difficulty of finding men to hold office in the different Provinces is severely felt, and where the question is what powers shall be localized, and not what powers shall be centralized ; the General Government may well be expected to hold itself responsible for the general interests. We would ask for local power to transact purely local matters, with a full understanding that the General Government will keep an eye to the interests of the country as a whole.