THE NELSON EXAMINER. Saturday, August 28, 1858.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVII, Issue 69, 28 August 1858, Page 2

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Saturday, August 28, 1858.

Joufnais became mare necessary &< me a became more equal »ud individualism more to be feared. U would be to underrate their importance to tuppose that they serve onlj to lecure liberty: they maintain civilization. Db TocatiEViLLß, Of Democracy in America, vol. r.,p. 230.

Taken as a whole, the proceedings in the General Assembly, of which we gave a summary in our last, and give a further interesting account from our correspondent in our present number, are of a nature to give general satisfaction and well-grounded hope for the future. If the Government have not effected all that we could wish, we believe they have done as much as was possible at present, and have given pledges as to their future course, which will go far to supply what has of necessity now been left imperfect. In this they have been ably supported by the great majority of the members, who appear to have given them a cordial assistance in their endeavours to retrieve the character of the Assembly, which the proceedings of former sessions had left more or less questionable. And they have done this, not indiscriminately, but exercising the right to modify, alter, and even reject, measures which were either unnecessary, or premature, or mistaken in principle. The session now closed will undoubtedly raise the Assembly and the General Government in public estimation. It shows that New Zealand contains already a sufficient number of well-in-

formed men to understand, of able men to manage, and of public-spirited men to attend to her affairs and interests ; and we believe we shall have no reason to find fault with the result of their labours. They have begun to set bounds to that flood of provincial legislation which threatened to overwhelm us, which year after year covered the land with an ever accumulating debris of useless or conflicting ordinances, rendering the task of forming any well-digested plan for the government of the country as s§ whole more and more difficult, and, from the multitude of conflicting interests thus called into existence, well nigh impracticable. Thus, on the subject of land, while they condemn us to suffer the consequences of our own acts for the next two years, they promise us a well-considered and general waste land law for the whole country at the end of that time ; and in the mean while prevent our local councils from making " confusion worse confounded" by bringing on all sorts of anniial motions for altering the provisions actually in force, whether. to gain a little temporary popularity, to serve the purposes of a clique, or to redeem pledges which never ought to have been given. j

This apple of discord, then, is picked up, and laid upon the shelf out of reach ; and we think the general feeling will be one of thankfulness at getting rid of it. Objectionable as we think some of the present regulations to be, we should prefer almost anything not positively unjust, to the state of doubt and uncertainty which gave us assurance of nothing but change, and made it impossible to give any information to those at a distance who wished to throw in their lot with us, but that which the Emigration Commissioners have put upon record, to our shame ; to the effect, that what ever our then regulations might be, they would most probably be altered before anyone in Eoglaud could act upon them, or profit by the information. The general legislation, by overriding all local ordinances, will gradually narrow our law-making capabilities, until they are confined within the limits which they should never have been allowed to pass, namely, the

expending our proportion of the revenue in the way most agreeable to ourselves and most in accordance with our own views, and the levying of local rates and taxes to supply the deficiency. The effectof thiswill eventually be to produce greater economy in our expenditure ; especially when we are deprived of the power of making the outlying districts contribute to our expenses, without our returning to them any equivalent or corresponding advantage. It will also, in all probability, make us a little more anxious to develop our own great natural resources than we have hitherto been, and more impatient of those who would persuade us that the analogy between the body politic and the body natural ought to hold good in all respects ; that, because we are a young and growing community, we ought to be afraid of growing too fast, of shooting up too rapidly into manhood; and that we should above everything avoid all over-excitement, or whatever might stimulate our growth or accelerate our progress.

The effect of the New Provinces Act will, j indeed, jn many respects, resemble the curious process described by students in Natural Philosophy as going on among the lower classes of zoophytes ; where each little bladderlike monad has a number of little similar ,creatures adhering all round it like burrs ; all which, as soon as they are big enough, detach themselves and begin a separate existence of their own. Thus we shall have the Wairau, the Amuri, and the West Coast drop" off and set up on their own account, giving in each case that real self-government and power of ordering all their own local affairs, of which they have hitherto had the semblance only, and not the reality. The particulars, alao, ii**,whicb their constitution will differ from that the provinces already in existence appear to be decided improvements, and will lead to their adoption by ourselves, if they are found to work as well in practice as they promise in theory. The Superintendent, in each case, is to be elected by the Council ; most probably, though not of necessity, from its own number ; and there is nothing to prevent his taking his seat at the Council board, and becoming the practical exponent and defender of his own acts. In fact, keeping up the present names, the reality will bear very little resemblance to what now exists, being much more like an English corporation, with its Mayor and Town Clerk ; and meeiing, as we should hope, once a month for the despatch of business : instead of our present absurd caricature of the form and proceedings of Parliament ; our royal messages and proclamations, with " God save the Queen " at the end of them, when we all know that •' God save the mark " would be much more appropriate. One thing is quite clear: they will continue to do their work without its costing them 1,500 a session; and if they can do this, we shall be compelled to follow the example ; unless, timely wise, we at once set about the task of self-reformation and retrenchment.

The New Tariff. — The statement under the foregoing head, which appeared in our last issue, was copied from the Hawke's Bay Herald, an authority upon which we placed more than ordinary reliance, because we have observed that it is conducted with a more scrupulous regard to accuracy than is characteristic of some of our contemporaries. We are now informed, that the articles enumerated in the statement referred to are only a portion of those specified in the New Tariff, and that among omitted articles are Ale, Beer, Cider, Perry, and Wine, upon which theexisting rate of duties remain unaltered. For fuller particulars on this important subject, we shall have to wait until the act itself is printed.