Mount Ida Chronicle AND St. Bathans Weekly News. NASEBY, THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 1888. LOCAL GOVERNMENT: ENGLISH AND COLONIAL.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XVIII, Issue 958, 5 April 1888, Page 2

Mount Ida Chronicle AND St. Bathans Weekly News. NASEBY, THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 1888. LOCAL GOVERNMENT: ENGLISH AND COLONIAL.

It is very curioaa to find that one of the principal measures in hand in the British Parliament at the present time 18 a bill for the establishment of local government in England by the appointment and liberal endowment of countj councils. An extraordinary fuss appears, too, to have been raised orer the proposal, as though it were a brilliantly original conception on the part of a political genius, something that had nerer be«i heard of in the way of statesmanship before. Even Mr Gladstone, who denounces and detests the present Government more bitterly than he ever denounced and detested Lord Beaconsfield's, has been completely captivated by the new measure, and has declared it to be a grand and liberal policy. Yet the bill is, in effect, only a proposal to carry out in England the principles of that form of local government which has long existed in this Colony, and which, though it has worked fairly well and acquired considerable hold upon the regard of the people, no one here ever thought of regarding as a high effort of statesmanship. The reason of the long lagging behind of the Mother Country in this ' matter, and of the excitement and jubilation which haa been elicited by the determination of the Government to initiate representative county government, is probably to be found in the extreme antiquity of the existing county organisations, and the veneration in which they have consequently, until lately, been generally held. Probably, if we Bought for the origin of county government by "quarter sessions," as dow established in England, we should have to go back within sight of the Norman Conquest; and it is well known ] how reverently, even in these irrevereat I days, everything that " cane orer with I

the Conqueror " iB looked upon in the Mother Country. It is a sign of the I times that one more venerable relic has got to go ; and it is an eren more signicant sign of the times that it has fallen to a Conservative Government to uproot an institution which is more intimately connected by history and practice, more utterly saturated with the very Toriest kind of Toryism, than anj other thing in Britain. The fact is, that a measure of large liberal import dealing with county government was gradually becoming a necessity of the first importance to England, while at the same time a large liberal measure of some kind, no matter what, was becoming a necessity of equal importance to the political repertoire of the Conservative Government. They have their hold on the classes, but their grasp of the masses is admittedly insecure. It was necessary ; to strengthen it by showing in some unmistakeable manner that Conservatism need no longer be confounded with stagnation, but is consistent with any reform, however radical in its nature, that is once really and earnestly called for by the instructed mind of the people. For the demonstration of this, they boldly took in hand the difficult question of county reform ; and though many who follow their lead must be sorry and sore to Tote for the overthrow of cherished privileges and the substitution of the elective for the nominee system in the appointment of local authorities, the unwilling support the Government may wring from their friends is more than compensated for by the admiration of the advanced Liberals and the enthusiastic commendation of their arch-foe, Mr Gladstone,

The scope of the measure is briefly as follows. Hitherto the local county administration in England has been, curij ously enough to our ideas, made in a sort of way secondary to the administration of justice. Tbat is to say, the chairman and members of the courts ef quarter sessions, who have criminal jurisdiction within somewhat wide limiU, have had, in addition to their judicial duties, the performing of most of the functions of local government of a civil kind. These members of quarter sessions consist entirely of nominees of the Crown, mostly created on the recommendation of a functionary—himself also a nominee—called the lord lieutenant of the county, and who is nsnallj a " nob " of the first rank, wears an extremely fine uniform, and does Dothing else for his title that any one has ever been able to discover. It results from this eminently Tory but somewhat one-sided arrangement that the ratepayers themselves have no voice whatever in the matter—haTe nothing, in fact, to do except to pay up and look pleasant. It is as though Messrs Hjorring, Bumett and other esteemed J.P.'s of our owu | neighborhood, for instance, were to hare j it entrusted to them to while away the tedium of a barren court-day by casually ordering a bridge to be built somewhere ever the Taieri, and requesting Mr Wilson to see that the quaiter's rates were | struck high enough te obviate any j difficulty as regards iunds. We could ' \ name a few gentlemen in this town, keen critics of local affairs and of the conduct of local councillors, who would have a good deal to say about a little arrangeI ment of that kind if it were suddenly j proposed to establish it here; and the I illustration may serve to show in a rough kind of way what the state of affairs at Home is that the Salisbury Government has at last taken in hand to reform. But what led us into all this description is this. As England is going to establish county government, a chance is given for those who are perpetually declaring that the system here is a failure—but who have neter been able to BUggest how it can be improved, except on the good old lines of getting more money out of the Government —to get a few practical lessons from the course of events at Home. A study of Mr Goschen's bill, and of the debates on it in both Houses of the English Parliament, can hardly fail to be of practical benefit in throwing light on certain •' corkers" which have hitherto blocked the way to perfection here. If Parliament stumbles where we have stumbled, we may contentedly resign ourselves to the belief that we have on the whole tracked oat as good a system as we are likely to get. Oa the other hand, if the collected wisdom of England calmly brushes aside the obstacles that have Btumped us, we have only to remember that public acts are not copyright and that we have still a little room left in our Statute-book. Perhaps, as an instalment of future benefits, our county reformers (like Dr Hodgkinson, for instance, and other people who make life more bardenßome than it need be by the production of pamphlets and other forms of torture), will let us alone till they study and pronounce on the English measure. We shall then at least have something to be grateful for, which ever way their studies turn out.