LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXI, Issue 196, 12 August 1895, Page 2

LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

As bearing upon the talked-of new local government scheme, whioh ia to create a number of large local bodies that will perform the work now done by so many small ones, a Southland contemporary quotes the following extract from a speech delivered by Lord Salisbury aa not without interest :— " There is in mo* dern society a natural tendency toi wards the enormous and big a passion for huge fchioga. You know that for a long time we went on making our guns bigger and b : gger, until they got to 100 tons, and so big that cne of them bent before the other could be put up. So, too, we make enormous battleships ; and now, I believe, the general opinion is that we have gone too far, and so I think it will be found that a vast machinery, vast bayond all history and exporter- ce, for the ministering of oui domettic affairs 13 a mistake. These thing* have to be done by people who £0 it for nothing, by people who give their own time, very much to their honor and credit ; and I hops it will be so in Parliament and every wheie else, that we may depend on gratuitous labor. But if you depend oa gratuitous labor, you must not overwork the laborer; men cannot give their whole time to their country, and the only result of your overloading jour servants, who serve you for nobbing with so much public spirit, is that gradually their grasp of the afifiir3 comurttod to their hand-} must dinrniah, and the whole machine will fall into the hands of the unseen paid officials of the Council. Thai is tha great danger you have to fear."