The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, MARCH 5, 1877.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 5005, 5 March 1877, Page 2

The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, MARCH 5, 1877.

The Selwyn County Council has practically annihilated itself. It has done so by no misadventure or out of any sudden pique, but deliberately, after careful consideration, and in strict pursuance of the power vested in it by law for that purpose. The 11th section provides that the Council may, at any time, within three months after its first meeting, determine by resolution that such part of the Act as is included in the third schedule shall not come into force in the County. The third schedule comprises 123 sections put of all the 213 sections of the Act, and the sections which that schedule comprises relate to the essential operation of the Act. We will notice presently the only functions which remain vested in the Council. This conclusion was arrived at after an exhaustive discussion and after an adjournment for 'a month, which enabled calm reflection to be applied to the question at issue, and also enabled the electors of the Council to express, if they desired it, an opinion respecting it. No such opinion has been expressed, and in such a case, silence may be fairly inferred to give consent. The only dissentient member of the Council was Mr John Hall. We are not surprised at his dissent. That gentleman has such an irrepressible activity of mind, and such an insatiable appetite for work, that he feels the withdrawal of any object from the exercise thereon of those moral functions almost as a personal wrong. He longs for new Boards to be sat upon as Alexander longed for new worlds to be conquered. If he could legally do so, he would serve on every Board in Canterbury, and he would be equally at home in the construction of a sheep-dip at Waiau and in the conservation of the Waitaki within limits defined in by-laws. He has as much aptitude for Boards as an Irish shillelagh in a fair has for heads, and it is wonderful what an amount of work he will do, and do well. He will do any number of reports and resolutions at a breakfast, wash his hands, and say, “ Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.” Under these circumstances, we personally sympathise with him at the suicidal resolution of the Selwyn County Council, and hope that he may find consolation on other Boards to whom life has still some charms. But we cannot, at the same time, allow our sense of the hardship of his case to mislead our judgment on a large public question. We are of opinion, after hearing both sides, that the Council has exercised a wise discretion in refusing to work under the Counties Act, and we trust that the decision of so influential a body may lead other similar bodies, who have not already arrived at it, to the same conclusion, and ultimately bring about the repeal, or at least a radical change, of tho present County system. The only function, except to elect a chairman in case of vacancy, and to reconsider, if thought necessary, their last resolution, remaining in the Council is to determine by annual resolution tho proportion in which tho moneys legally payable to the County shall bo divided among tho road districts and outlying districts comprised therein. Tho Council has no power in road districts to direct on what works tho money shall be expended, and under whoso superintendence the works shall be carried on. It lias that power in the case of outlying districts, (hat is to say in localities not included in road and municipal districts, hut as there aro, wo believe, no such districts in the County of Selwyn, that power is nugatory. The money payable to tho County is paid into the Public Account, and will bo distributable therefrom to tho different road districts, in accordance with tho proportions specified in any annual resolution paused by the County Council. In case no such resolution is passed, a commissioner appointed by the Governor shall define, such proportions. The money payable to tho County—in tho absence of revenue raised if tho Act were wholly in operation—consists of annual subsidies from tho Land Fund and Consolidated Revenue, equal jointly to tbe annual sum raised collectively by rates levied by Road Boards within tlio County, and by tho proportion of tho balance, if any, of surplus Land Fund payable to such County. Such proportion is calculated partly according to tho area of tbo I County and partly acoerding to the

amount of subsidy otherwise payable to it. The practical result in the cose of Oonntics, in which, like in Selwyn, the Act is not wholly in operation, will bo that the funds of the 'Rood Boards therein will bo increased by tho proportions, defined as aforesaid, of subsidies payable out of tho Land Fund and Consolidated Revenue to such Oountics respectively. Tho definition of tho proportions should bo, wo presume, based on some general principle such as tho area, or the population, of tho several road districts, or tho amount of rates raised by, or, what would be an equivalent basis, the amount of subsidies payable to, each district. It is clear, as we think, that it is not contemplated that tho County Council should distribute the available amount at its own discretion without any fixed general rule equally applicable to all the districts. Thus, the County Council could not, according to the spirit of the Act, appropriate sums to tho different districts at its own arbitrary will, or because in one or other district there were public works demanding exceptional expenditure. All the districts must share and share alike, on some fixed proportionate basis of calculation. Such a basis might just as well have been fixed by law as left to the County Councils. The Acts bearing on the subject are very complicated, and occasionally discordant, but the above is, we think, a fair statement of the financial consequences of the resolution of a County Council not to work under the Counties Act. It is important to know these financial consequences, for practically in Canterbury, owing to the determination, similar to that of the Selwyn County Council, arrived at by other County Councils, the Counties Act will be, except with respect to those consequences, almost a dead letter. It is competent for a County Council at any time to rescind that determination, and, in the event of such rescinsion, the whole Act would come into force within the County making it, and in that case the rescinsion is irrevocable. But we do not anticipate that in Oanteroury any such rescinsion will take place pending the re-coneideration of the Counties Act and the Financial Arrangements Act by the Legislature. There is one political effect of the practical inoperativeness of the Counties Act which we must briefly notice. That effect is the transfer of the functions of the late Provincial Government and Provincial Council to the Central Government and Central Legislature in the Colony. With two exceptions, namely, the Education Board and Lyttelton Harbour Board, all the administrative and legislative functions of our elective Superintendent and of our elective Provincial Council have been transferred to central authorities. Those exceptions are of no importance in the consideration of this result, inasmuch as the boons involved in them would no doubt have been given by our Provincial Legislature, had it been allowed to meet; and, moreover, education was locally managed by ourselves under Provincial Institutions. This is the political result which we have gained by Provincial Abolition. We have lost Local Self-government in many important matters, and we have substituted for it absolute Centralism. We do not imagine for a moment that County Government would have been, as constituted' by the Act of last session, an efficient substitute for Provincial Institutions ; but even the small contribution provided by it towards that substitution is lost, in consequence of the Act being unworkable except with the gravest injury to the interests of existing efficient Road Boards, and, otherwise, generally to the interests of the whole community. We have lost the substance, and we have not even gained the shadow.