LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XX, 12 September 1861, Page 4

LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT.

[From the Nelson Examiner, September 11.]

For some time to come New Zealand must suffer in some measure the disadvantages which are common to every new country, and which are inevitable in one colonized as this has been, of necessity, at various points by distinct bodies of settlers. Isolated from each other in the beginning, and each settlement extolled and believed in by its inhabitants as an improvement upon that which preceded it, or was its nearest neighbour; with mountain barriers interposing formidable obstacles to inland communication, and with products too similar to afford an opening for trading by sea ; it is not to be wondered at that petty jealousies were rife, that the little government required was very often not to be had, and that a general desire sprang up for local authorities and local institutions.

When our intelligence from the seat of Government came, for the most part, by way of Sydney, and when our latest dates from Auckland and London were within a week of each other; when Judges could not be found to administer the complex code of laws

which we brought from England as part of our birthright, and no public force could be relied upon to put down social disturbance or resist attack from without, local selfgovernment was proclaimed as the one great remedy for all our disorders, and the universal medicine which was to cure all " the ills which flesh is heir to," without exception. It was at last obtained in the fullest and widest sense of the word ; the only drawback, in the eyes of its more enthusiastic advocates, being in the fact that a power of supervision and control still existed elsewhere; as they asserted, to trammel its action, and to throw obstacles in the way of Provincial growth and prosperity. "We have now had some experience of these institutions. Since Sir George Grey left us, about eight years ago, they have been in full activity ; and it cannot be said that our Governments, either Provincial or General, have left us without the means of forming some judgment as to their respective merits or their respective misdoings. Each has had its bitter opponents, as each has had its warm friends ; who, as men will do when they take sides either in peace or war, can see nothing but right and truth on their own part, whilst the folly of those who oppose them is only to be equalled by their dishonesty ; their acts, bad as they are, being only not worse than the motives which produce them. Our own impression on these questions is very much like that of the Spectator respecting the village signboard, where the portrait of Sir Eoger de Coverly had been changed into the Saracen's Head ; he thought much might be said on both sides the question. Much praise and much blame have been bestowed upon both ; and their merits and defects have been perhaps unduly exaggerated on both sides. The popular tendency has been to run down the General Government, and to look upon all its acts as so many encroachments on provincial rights and liberties : a smaller number, among whom we place ourselves, have looked upon party government in small communities as Bingularly open to abuse, and liable to be influenced by party prejudice ; and also as compelled by party exigencies to do, not what is best, but what will best please its supporters, and therefore we have always advocated the necessity of a strong controlling power elsewhere. But we are not sorry to see that this also has its limitations. As some acts of the Provincial rulers have clearly shown that headstrong men in power, when popular, safely disregard all constitutional checks and arbitrarily dispose of the public money, and others can mis-appropriate it to their own purposes, and m both cases it became necessary to provide remedies for such abuses ; so the tendency in our General Government to exercise powers which did not belong to it, and govern where it did not possess the first essential requisite for governing, namely, the power to compel obedience and enforce its decrees, has also met with a rebuff. The appointment of Sir George Grey, coupled with the speeches in Parliament, may be looked upon as the resumption by the Imperial Government of those functions which it allowed us to exercise until we confessed our weakness and claimed its protection. He comes really as a Dictator, though not nominally so, and the general feeling is favourable, so far as we can learn, to his taking upon him the whole responsibility of the native question, provided he confines himself to that. He will be able to settle it for the present pretty much as he chooses, secure in any case of a strong party to back him ; if he only does not compromise us, and turn the tables, by keeping the authority in his own hands, and saddling us with the cost. As we before protested against assuming the first, because it would entail the second ; our objection now would lie against being called upon to bear any undue share of the burden which his policy may call for. It is for this reason we have gone into the differences which exist among ourselves; which divide us into two parties, Centralists and Provincialists ; and which, in the present unsettled state of the relations existing between them, might lead either party to give up, for some present advantage over their antagonists, what both might find occasion to regret hereafter. We are all still too much under the dominion of local prejudices, and each settlement works for its own objects, without much regard to the others, except in so far as their aid is required, or opposition dreaded. This throws many obstacles in the way of our joint action ; and an Auckland and "Wellington Ministry, in spite of Mr. Crosbie "Ward, may think it right to get their chestnuts out of the fire by burning our fingers instead of their own. The Provincialist element is still too strong and if we only dimly make out that a little personal political bribery is still extant in the shape of new appointments, in the case of communities it is plainly in full vigour and activity. The increase of population, and still more the ready inter-commu-nication by means of steam is doing away rapidly with the worst features of Provincialism ; and in a few years it may be looked upon as one of the things of the past, or as constituting no greater ground of rivalry or opposition than country distinctions at home. But that time has not yet come, and there are still many whose interest lies in maintaining our present distinctions and perpetuating our local isolation, by keeping us in the state of so many little German principalities, with separate rulers, separate laws and separate finances ; which will shortly require fresh taxation, or fresh debt ; or, finally, when our present customs revenue is taken, as it probably will be, for other purposes, leave us without any surplus ior works of public utility or general improvement. With a General Government the chief members of which are distinguished for their extreme provincial tendencies and a Governor not supposed to be particularly anxious to promote independent Ministerial action, but disposed to govern as well as to reign, we cannot afford altogether to overlook these considerations.