The Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, ARKIL 1, 1869.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 75, 1 April 1869, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, ARKIL 1, 1869.

The following resolution was to be moved in the Wellington Provincial Council byMr. Eobert Pharazyn: — "That, in the opinion of this Council, the existing system of Provincial Governments is no longer suitable to the requirements of the province. That this Council therefore respectfully suggests that the General Government shall, during next session of Parliament, bring in a bill for the purpose of effecting the following changes : to enable the General Government to take over the management of waste lauds, surveys, polic?, harbours, and lunatic asylums j to constitute road board districts coincident with the boundaries of the Provincial electoral districts ; to enable the chairmen of such boards to meet so as to form a central board, whose duty shall be to expend the revenue derived from all sources in the construction and maintenance of main roads, and to allocate to each district such sums as they shall see fit for local purposes." The idea of a petition from Wellington for local self-government being laid on the table of the House, and referred thence to the Petitions Committee, is ludicrous in the extreme, and we can picture to ourselves the grim chuckle with which Mr. Cracroft Wilson, C.8., the venerable chairman of that Committee will hand it over to his clerk, with instructions to draw up the stereotyped form of report used on such occasions, to the effect that — " This being one of the numerous petitions presented to the House within the last three years praying for local self-government, the Committee do not deem it within their province to offer any suggestions to the House on the subject." Poor Wellington ! after all its enormous advantages over other provinces has it come to this ? Would not the fact of its having been under the superintendeney of so able a man as Dr. Featherston ever since constitutional government was granted to New Zealand, if that can be called constitutional government by which was created so despotic a rule as that of the learned Doctor, — would not this, backed up as it was by the removal of the seat of government to the most disagreeable town, and the establishment of the head quarters of the Panama Company in one of the best harbors, in New Zealand, — would not all these advantages suffice to float a province so marvellously favored as Wellington ? What a blow would the carrying of this resolution prove to so determined a Provincialist as Dr. Featherston ! What a feather in the cap of that energetic centralist, Air. Stafford. The idea of such a petition coming from Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, never, we suppose, entered the head of the most sanguine of the anti-provincialists, and we certainly think that the Fox and Featherston party will be fully entitled to all the pity we can bestow upon them when we think of the enormous amount of "chaff" they will have to put up with when fiuch a document is presented to the House.