The Lyttelton Times. TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 1876.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XLV, Issue 4717, 28 March 1876, Page 2

The Lyttelton Times. TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 1876.

New Zealand is highly favoured at present. She has entertained not unawares, two—if not angels —at least supernaturally gifted artists in mid-air performances. Thousands of onr countrymen have been turning up their eyes at them, and shuddering with the consciousness that the wings have not yet sprouted from their shoulders. - The one performer stretched big rope last week at Dunedin, the other at Wanganui; and of the two we confess to thinking the latter had the most perilous task. The “ hero of Niagara” had nothing like the number of chances of breaking his neck that tne hero of the Four Million Loan had. The Wanganui tight-rope had evidently some strands untwisted, or a marvellous want of chalk, or the performer had forgotten his balancingpole. Graceful and daring enough on the landing places, between them his performance was anything but graceful or protracted. He did not remain to cook his u.-ual pancake, or balance on his usual chair, or turn his accustomed somersault. To relinquish metaphor, Sir Julius Vogel was remarkably explicit about the loans he had negotiated, hia public works policy, and the astute method by which he is about to woo over the provinces with their superintendents to general government purposes. There is something astoundingly cool in his including iu the same speech a picture of the happy state of the provinces when the superintendents are gone, and an invitation to these very superintendents to assist at their own obsequies. He is positively brilliant in all these safe details. But there is a breathless haste and beating of the air when he touches on finance or on the future local governments. Then he looks eagerly out for the cushions which,, according to Gulliver, Treasurer Flimnap, of Lilliput, found to break his fall when he tottered from the tight-rope on which he had to perform before the king. The Local Government Bill of his colleagues, as he himself acknowledges, had a great fall from the same “bad “eminence,” and we are afraid that “ not all the king’s horses nor all the “ king’s men will set np a Local Govern- “ ment Bill again.”.

Though the New Zealand Flicmap

smiles at the legislative attempt of his colleagues, his own is not one whit more satisfactory. He appears to abandon his favourite trick of inviting the smaller fry to sacrifice themselves for the public good. In the previous Bill the Road Boards were invited to merge their existence in the shires. It is now pro-

posed to leave the Road Boards a shadow of authority in the superintendence of branch roads, and helpmeets are to he created for them from the bones to he picked from their sides. The main roads are 1 to be taken out of the hands of the Road Boards, and upon this meagre foundation County Boards are to be erected. The two pounds contribution for one pound of taxation, which the last Bill at first proposed to lavish out of nothing upon the Road Boards, and ultimately upon shires, the proposed Bill )s to divide between the Road Boards and the County Boards. This is in admirable accordance with the story of the lawyer who was called in to arbitrate between two claimants to an oyster. Neither would give it up to the other, so he opened it, gave each a shell, and himself swallowed the contents. The only difference is, that the contents have been already disposed of in our case by this king of Jeremy Diddlers. Whence is the two pounds contribution to come from ? —unless, perhaps, from the Canterbury Treasury, which our stingy Executive are stuffing with thousands for the hungry enemy, while they waste weeks over the question of spending twopence-farthing instead of twopence; Oh, for an hour of stout Sir Julius or the bold Rob Roy Macandrew amongst us! —this is a problem which our political Blondin does not attempt to solve. He talks largely, like his colleagues, of the consolidated revenue and the land fund; but the consolidated revenue has, we fear, been long ago anticipated by borrowing and General Government purposes; and the land funds of Auckland, Wellington, and of the smaller fry—where are they ? Of course he has given the County Boards what it does not cost the Government to give—the license fees, tolls if they like to impose them, special rates for specified works if they like to levy them, and loans if they can raise them on thenown responsibility and property. Thenfinancial outfit in short is as scanty as the linen of Sir John Palstaff’a troop; but then they have over and above the handsome allowance of being permitted to beg, borrow, or steal, “ There is but a shirt and a half in all my company, and the half-shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald’s coat without sleeves ; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at St. Alban’s, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daintree. But that is all one; they will find linen enough on every hedge.” No wonder Sir Julius makes such a clucking over the new brood he has hatched; “we propose to give the County Boards very large powers.” He has given them the run of their constituents’ pockets, and of the London money market; provided that he and the General Government are not made responsible. But wbat could unfledged chickens —turned adrift in the world—do, with even this magnificent patrimony? Sir Julius pities their nakedness and helpless infancy, and proposes like Fagin to take them under tuition, that they may know how to use their right to beg, borrow or steal. “If the counties are willing to forego expensive staffs, the General Government will assist them as much as possible.” We shall have throughout the Country two or three dozen “ Artful dodgers,” under the names of Counties, and under

the special wing of the central establishment for legal begging, borrowing and stealing, instead of nine as before, bitter enemies to the central institution.

But although Sir Julius when talking of the constitution of these County Boards, and elaborately explaining the method of election, the method of conducting their business, the mode of their control by their constituents, the character and position of their chairman, his payment and exclusion from Parliament, and a hundred other particulars of their working, makes them appear to be bodies of great importance and influence; when he comes to consider the extent of

their duties, he has little or nothing to say. County Boards are to have all the greatness and paraphernalia of Provincial Councils enhanced by smaller numbers, but when we enquire into their duties, we find it is only half of what the Road Boards had formerly to do. “ They will be confined to the construc-

tion and maintenance of arterial works

“ within their own districts; ” and we suppose the Road Boards will be confined to the construction and maintenance of sub-arterial works within their own districts.' Police, gaols, hospitals, charitable institutions, and education, are all to pass into the department of the Minister of Justice; Crownlands, surveys, goldfields and sheep inspection under the Secretary for Crown Lands ; and all the departments having charge of papers, records, &c., will be handed over to the Colonial Secretary’s department. Here are all duties of the Px-ovincial Governments disposed of to the General Government, and the local government we are to have now is Road Board under a sounding English name, which Sir Julius, like his great prototype Mr Disraeli, thinks has a talismanic power to charm the English mind; and so it has, but it is the uneducated English mind at home, as found in the rural districts, and not the English mind of the colonies ; and Sir Julius will find his mistake, we should hope, before his Bill is drafted. This is the boasted “decentralisation of administration ” which himself and colleagues have flaunted before the eyes of the electors. But he is evidently under the impression that what the country was wanting was quantity, not quality of local government; and bo we are to have a complicated l etwork of Road Boards, a still more complicated network of County Boards overlapping in one direction the limits of the Road Boards, and in another the old limits of the provinces; and out in the cold are to stand municipalities, of the finances and powers of which the Premier has nothing to say. Amongst this fry will move the aggrandised Genexal Government, “ a Triton .of the Minnows.” It has gathered to itself' all the real local

power, and left the- shadow to be' scrambled for by these insignificant Boards. The fate of this weak impoverished crowd, if they ever stand in the way of Sir Julius Vogel’s financial schemes, is not difficult to predict; They might draw a lesson from the fate of the provinces, and the fate intended for the Road Boards in the last Local Government Bill. They will find no better litany or dirge to embody their complaints than the following, even though they search in Dr Watts’ hymns. In it, Sir Julius and his- policy are marked out with prophetic touch. “ How doth the little crocodile Improve bis shining tail, And poifr the waters of the Nile On every golden scale. How cheerfully ho seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in With gently smiling jaws.”