To the Editor of the 'Nelson Examiner.'

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVI, Issue XVI, 3 June 1857, Page 3

To the Editor of the 'Nelson Examiner.'

Sir — There appears to be on the part of many of our leading men in this settlement, an unfortunate tendency to avoid simplicity, and to study complexity, in all their efforts for the common weal.

The lloads question appears to many of us to be an example of this. It would seem sufficiently clear that a tax on the vehicles, &c, that wore out the roads, would be the evident, simple, inexpensive plan to obtain the means to repair those roads again.

A short time ago this question was elaborately argued out by yourself. One of the objections advanced against this plan was most extraordinary. The public would be indirectly taxed too heavily by the carters, fyc, who had paid the direct tax themselves ! llow is it, sir, that you " who are a very clever man, who can see through mountains as if they were plate glass," have failed to see that the unerring laws and powerful influences of competition are our protection ?

I need not do more than just allude to that extraordinary Waste Lands Bill as another instance of the same unhappy tendency.

Then again there is the Education question. Have our public men failed to observe that indirect influences are always far more powerful than direct laws? The public pen is far more powerful than the powerful sword. The penalty of violating even salutary laws is not so much dreaded as the imaginary penalty of violating even pernicious customs.

If you establish schools everywhere, will universal education be the inevitable result? Suppose the people will not be educated. Compel parents by law to send their children to the schools established by law. This has been proposed. But even this will not ensure the punctual, and above all the regular attendance of the scholars. Irregular attendance is all but useless. If you were even to place a policeman every morning and every afternoon by every house to ensure punctual and regular attendance, even then a contemptuous word, now aud then, against the teacher, from the parents, in the presence of the children, would render all that teacher's efforts utterly null and void.

But suppose the uneducated were disfranchised, and reduced to the degraded condition they ought to occupy, viz., that of being ruled over by others, instead of being the dangerous rulers themselves ? Associate ignorance inclissolnbly with degradation. Will not ignorance continually diminish ? I think it will.

But how can this be done? I reply, most easily. Let the candidate for the franchise be "inquisitorially" required to show his mental instead of his pecuniary qualifications.

Above all, let the number of public-houses, which are public schools of the worst kind, be diminished as much as possible.

Provincial inability to alter the franchise cannot alter the correctness of these views.

Is it correct legislation for the Government to provide mental culture, bodily food, or apparel (or the people? Yes, I think the Government ought to provide all these for paupers, and for paupers only, and not even for paupers if'lhe community would voluntarily perform the duty.

Such sir, are my views. I think they are right. If wrong, may they perish iv speedy and utter oblivion !

One word more about direct taxation. The course of events has not proved my letter on that subject to have been worthy of the merry ridicule with which it was officially treated two years ago. Once more I beg to repeat my conviction that Direct Taxation, so long as the present scale and extent of official remuneration exist, will, whenever proposed, be the downfall of any ministry in this province. I am, &c, C S. Nelson, May 27, 18J/.