The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1884.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXI, Issue 7225, 26 April 1884, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1884.

It seems, from the speech which Major Atkinson delivered in Dunedin, that he has been miscondensed about the depression. He never said there was no depression, because he had made the discovery that the depression is the happiest thing that could have befallen the G-overnment at the present time. The depression is in fact the elixir of life for a Miuister who really understands his business. The Colonial finances are in a mess; the depression, for which the Government is in no way responsible, is accountable. The Ministerial stock of borrowed ideas has run dry; the depression is the only thing that anybody cares to hear about. The country is dissatisfied with the Government and its policy, fiscal and constitutional; the depression supplies a ready means to a man of real courage of evading all duty of all kinds. The courage with which the Premier rose to the occasion in Dunedin is worthy of an epic. "You may turn out the Government," he said in effect, "you may alter the Constitution, you may stop borrowing, but you won't get rid of the depression. The only thing for vou i 8 to quit politics and attend to business. Deny yourselves, double your incomes all round, put your money into Colonial industries—if

you have no money, no matter—curb your appetites, and Bo up and doing With a heart for any fate ; Still achieving, still pursuing, Loam to labour and to wait, Then you will find that you have no time to think about politics. During a depression, such as this, you really ought not to think about politics. Your own private concerns ought to be of very much more interest to you, as they are of very much greater importance. Your Government will then pursue the even tenor of its green old age undisturbed, and will know how to treat your doubled incomes when your rare qualities have raised them to that figure. Your Q-overnment, moreover, happens to be the best possible. Eest content with that assurance, and go on bearing your depression, which really exists, like men." As we said before, Major Atkinson has found the elixir of political life. Depression which once, according to the Premier's own teaching, por-' tended change to the monarchs of the Q-overnment benches, now means a firmer tenure of office. ,The elixir of life means commercial restlessness to the people, and political rest to the elect who sit on Ministerial thrones. Really the audacity of the Premier, which was always respectable, is fast becoming sublime. Audacity is also the strong feature of his defence against the charges made (and proved over and over again) against his Government. We have a great deal that is excellent about the way in which the public money has been spent, and we have some truisms about the superior cheapness and convenience of railway carriage. The Premier of this great country has actually made a journey all the way to Dunedin to tell the people of that commercial centre that if the goods and passengers of the last year had been earned by coach and waggon instead of by rail, the cost would have been far greater ! This is what the country gets when it is entitled to know the condition of the finances of the Colony, and to be prepared for the method by which it is proposed to restore them to what the Treasurer may be pleased to call a sound condition. Audacious as all this is, it is as irrelevant to the question of the charges against the Government as was Sir William Pox's lecture on Egypt. Not equally irrelevant, but more unfortunate, is the elaborate explanation of the statement of Sir Julius Vogel that he had spent certain sums in getting Provincial support. That explanation is, under cover of a denial, in reality an admission that the words were used. The sense of those words nobody ever doubted, as the Premier pretended disingenuously to think, when speaking at Dunedin. The fact is that the saying of Sir Julius was once heartily endorsed by Major Atkinson. He made it one of the chief points in his Bill of indictment against the Provinces when he was proposing Abolition. Now that it suits him no longer, being a saying with a double edge, the Major coolly tries to get rid of it by appearing to deny it altogether, which he attempts with a fine assumption of indignant virtue against Mr Montgomery's recklessness in saying such things. The real defence of the Premier, however, rests on four points. 1. The whole of the borrowed money has been spent evenly between the two islands, the North having got only about £300,000 more than its share. 2. The Government has not bought political support, because the money spent in the various districts has been spent on works of utility. 3. The Government has never been out of accord with Sir John Hall. 4. The Government has been economical, because the Constabulary, which numbered 1000 in 1881, now numbers only 476. As to the first, we remember a Blue Book return (to March 31, 1882) which informed us, on the highest departmental authority, that the Province of Canterbury and the Province of Otago had got less than their share of the expenditure by a million and nearly three quarters between them. The figures, "carefully compiled," quoted by the Premier, are compiled on a population basis, and those of the Blue Book were compiled on a revenue basis. But that does not make the only discrepancy. The Premier's new figures set down the expenditure to date in the North at £6,900,000. According to the Blue Book, the expenditure two years ago, and liabilities, stood at £7,017,500. But why does the Premier alter the basis of computation as to fairness of distribution adopted in the Blue Books ? Change is convenient for him, but hardly the right thing for us. The second point in the defence is, on the face of it, an evasion of the charge it is meant to reply to. As to the third, we have not forgotten ♦ the story of the telegram in cypher from Sir John Hall, which caused the resignation of Mr Bryce in 1882. Nor have we forgotten that Sir John Hall in the same year joined with Mr> Montgomery in denouncing the unseemly haste with which the Public Works estimates, arranged after negotiation with supporters, were forced through without opportunity to any honorableminded member to make himself master of their contents. The fourth instance proves nothing except that the Government were most extravagant in the matter of the Constabulary in 1881, when there was no more real danger of war than thero is now. It does not prove that the Constabulary are wanted now, any more than it proves that the Government has ever been economical. Irrelevancy, incorrectness, evasion, are the characteristics of the Premier's defence. No amount of audacity can counterbalance their fatal effect. There is still a further stretch of audacity, which we confess we never thought possible, even in Major Atkinson. The Major actually posed at Dunedin as the champion of Decentralisation. The Arch-Abolitionist j has the conscience to say that no man I

in New Zealand has done for the cause of local government more than he. Having ruthlessly destroyed the Constitution we once possessed, and with it much of the interest in public affairs, which was based on knowledge, neighbourhood, and familiarity., he affects a horror for anybody who wants to touch so sacred a thing as the Constitution, even though their object may be to increase the interest in public affairs with the extension of local power and local knowledge. The only difference between him and the old Provincialists is, as to the size of the States, he tells us, into which the country may be divided. That is a pretty way of saying that he thinks there ought to be but one State, whereas they think there ought to be many, bound together by ties of a more or less Federal character. The Premier has two j ideas of local government. They are, j that the power of local rating ought to be increased ad infinitum, so that as much of the local business of the country as possible may come under the control of the property holders ; and that the local bodies should be attached, for purposes of convenience, by certain powerful strings, to the central office in the Empire City. The strings are "The Crown and Native Lands Eating," and "The Eoads and Bridges" Acts. They have, it is we believe now understood, brought the Colonial finances into a mess, while protests against the " system " established in the country are becoming emphatic on every side. The Premier has established something that he calls a system of local government. Pacts are proving that the system is unsound, while public feeling is showing that it is as eminently unsatisfactory. But it is useless to pursue this part of the subject. The pretence that Major. Atkinson is the Deeentralist par excellence of New Zealand is too amusing to be seriously dealt with. The whole of the Dunedin speech -is audacity, and nothing more. The principal thing to be learnt from it is that the Government has made up its mind to fight hard, and to use every fighting device, whether legitimate or otherwise.