The Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1868.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 195, 19 August 1868, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1868.

The result of the public meeting convened last week by the committee of the Nelson Financial Reform League can hardly be regarded with feelings of unmixed satisfaction. Greatly as the brief career o* that association must be held to have disappointed the anticipations of its supporters, it cannot be denied that the movement which it represented was a healthy one, or that it was unwarranted by the present political circumstances of the colony. The apprehension so generally awakened in the public mind regarding the financial stability of New Zealand, naturally enough, desired to find some opportunity of utterance, and it was equally evident that the fast increasing ouus of taxation nnder which the colonists are suffering imposed upon every thoughtful mind in the community the necessity of probing the evil, of ascertaining its extent, and of applying to it, if possible, an effectual remedy. If, then, those brilliant hopes, which were ushered into existence at the time of the inauguration of the League, and to which feeling allusion was made by more than one of the speakers on Wednesday night, were doomed to be prematurely crushed, it is impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that the result, however deplorable, was directly attributable, not to any want of adequate recognition on the part of the public of the necessity of discovering some panacea for the evils under which the colony suffers — for such must be obvious to the most obtuse intellect — but rather to accidental and extraneous influences, artfully and designedly brought to bear upon the fortunes of the League, and to which the committee proved themselves either powerless or unwilling to offer any obstacle. Nor shall we grudge the committee its reaaonablo meed of credit for the persistency with which it still attempted to hold its own in spite of the heavy discouragement it afterwards sustained at the hands of those who, however desirous of supporting the movement at the outset, were not slow to perceive the probable ultimate result of the illjudged concessions which had been made by the committee and who, not unnaturally, regarding with suspicion aud distrust the auspices under which its existence progressed, did not hesitate to characterise it as a mockery and a sham. It requires no very vivid powers of imagination to picture to our minds the intense gratification and amusement with which the telegram announcing the untimely decease of the Nelson Financial Reform League — the once hopeful parent of so many kindred associations throughout the colony which threatened at one time to impose so much additional care and anxiety upon the administrators of the Government — must have been perused by the crafty Mephistopheles at Wellington, whose ill-fated half-crown, like the apple of Discord thrown into the assembly of the Gods, followed with illomened haste by the admission into its most secret counsels ofthe canny knight, Don Pomposo, his trusty confederate, wrought such mischief and division in the ranks of the League, aud furnished that * enfant terrible,' Mr Clements — unkindest cut of all — witb

power to turu round and taunt his former associates in the Committee with illdisguised insinuations of political treachery, or, at best, of rash and dangerous confidence in the integrity and friendly professions of those whom they had every reason to regard as their deadliest foes. Little can we marvel at the signal failure wbich attended the ingenious efforts made by the several members of the committee to distract the attention of the meeting from the real object at issue — the perpetuation or condemnation of the League under its original auspices — by instituting threadbare disquisitions into the comparative merits of Centralism and Provincialism, or by reading interesting statistics illustrative of the rapid increase of taxation as compared with that of the population, furnished, be it observed, inconsistently enough, by ou9 whose advocacy of economical governmental expenditure surely dates from a very recent period. The cause was, under existing conditions, evidently a hopeless one, and both speakers and audience seemed at all events to understand each other in this regard. But let us not be forgetful, whilst commenting on the failure of our earliest efforts in this direction, that the evils which the League was intended to redress, are daily increasing in iutensity, and that nothing save a similar organisation, directed with zeal and heartiness to slrong and united action, and under more consistent and popular conditious, is likely to remove the heavy imposts and grievous financial uneasiness which are now paralysing the best energies of the colony. Such an organisation, would still engage our most cordial sympathy and we should welcome its speedy inauguration with well founded hope and confidence in its future.