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Lyttelton Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1569, 22 December 1865, Page 2

Me. Travers wishes to know how Mr. Moorhouse and Mr. Lance can have the audacity to borrow, without acknowledgment, his ideas of how the Land Revenue should be apportioned between the province at large and the special district in which the revenue is raised. He complains that those gentlemen, when they spoke after him to public audiences as candidates for the Superintendency, borrowed his idea 3 and even copied his words. He was of opinion that a certain portion of the Land Fund should be applicable to the greater public works, and that the remainder should be divided among the districts for their local works; and the other candidates, speaking after him, said the same. There may be something original in Mr. Travers' proposals; but if so, we have failed to discover it. The members of the General Assembly in the late session were continually talking about the plan; it has been on record as adopted by the Provincial Council for Canterbury for more than year; and it has actuaifc been to all intents and purposes carried out in practice throughout the province during that time. Then what claim of ownership has Mr. Travers in the idea P But he goes further, and accuses his opponents of plagiarism of another original notion —namely, that the Provincial Governments of the colony are the true colonizing bodies. Why, this is a truism as old as the Constitution. And it would be as difficult to put the sentiment into a new form of words as to reconstruct a proverb. Suppose Mr. Lauce and Mr. Moorhouse did use the very same language as Mr. Travers, what then ? Mr. Travers cannot monopolise all the patent facts of the world because he Bpeaks first at a certain election. If he had been the first candidate to go to church, he might as well forbid his" opponents on any succeeding Sunday to say that they believe in the Holy Catholic Church and the forgiveness of sins.