NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 42, 20 February 1869, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT.

(From the Wanganui Chronicle.) A political philosopher who should visit New Zealand in search of the grotesquej would hud much to carry away in his note book. The complicated method of administration spreading itself over the couutry, would furnish him with, a novel subject for examination. Nine little governments revolving round one big one, present the same fanciful resemblaace to the solar system that Victor Hugo traces between a star aud the impression of a webbed foot upon the mud. Differing equally from the North American States and the cantons of Switzerland, the provinces of New Zealand possess a political development peculiar to themselves. Although the area and the population of the colony are small, each of these provinces is so thoroughly independent of the other that all of them might be considered distinct colonies. The people residing in one province know little of the people residiug in another. They have no common centre for the transaction of business aud the communication of intelligence. For three months in the year, the city of Wellington becomes a centye of political atteution ; but no sooner has the prorogation of Parliament taken place, than the city of Wellington relapses into insignificance. In every province we find the same political machinery at work. The most astonishing feature about this machinery is its expensiveuess. The pompous paraphernalia justified by the vast necessities of an empire shine in modified glory within the petty limits of our provinces. Dickens could hardly exaggerate the humorous aspect of such a spectacle. The grandeurs of royalty are presented in the person of a superintendent; Parliament appears in the shape of a council with speaker and sergeant-at-arms ; while one Cabinet succeeds another after passing through the throes of a crisis in the approved fashion. Officialdom assumes dimensions that bear no proportion to the population. Our philosopher would imagine that such a system had grown up as the result of a long period of prosperity, an 1 that the people of New Zealand were so wealthy as to be quite indifferent to their public expenditure. Casting his eyes over the long array of figures in the Estimates, he would observe the framework of a system huge enough and costly enough to meet the necessities of a large and thickly-peopled territory.