CITY BOARD LOGIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume V, Issue 1433, 20 June 1868, Page 7

CITY BOARD LOGIC.

To tho Editor of the Herald. Sib.—The respected member for the City East in the Proviucial Council, who has long been a prominent member of the City Board, will have it that if tho city be forced to pay the debt to the province, in that cose the city will have pad tho debt twice over, first in the paymont to the Provincial Treasurer, and af erwards in tho payment of the provincial debt. \\] O " me to apply the' test of analysis to Mr. Macruady'a assertion. la then, I would agk, the city of Auckland identical ivith the province, or is it not ? Uj ingenious friend will be good enough to choose his alternative. If is is—that is, if the city is virtually o-extensivo with the province—in that case tho payment from tho city to the province is a payment from self to self, or from one pouch into another; pnd there is no double payment in the case. On the other hand, if the city be not identical with the province—which is a fact—then the payment from the province is not a payment from the city. Or let me exempt the honorable member from being impaled on tbe horns of a dilemma, and let me put tho matter in this way. 'Ihe contents of a bag of gold, we may suppcee, are due from the city to the province ; and this, with other moneys, is afterwards to be Jian Je:l over to the Colonial Treasurer. Let U3 suppose the City Board's bag 10 be sealed and delivered in Princes street; and Ictus suppose it to lie there inriolate and intact--a supposition not very likely to be realised—uutil this bag and bags aTe sent away to Wellington. Surely the ingenious member will not say that in this case the bag it question is twice paid by tbo city. Certainly not. But it does not, I maintain, make an iota of difference as to the question of double payment whether the bag lies unopened in tho Provincial Treasury until it is paid away to the publio creditor, or whether the Provincial Treasurer opens the bag, takes out the money, uses it for a time, and afterwards replaces it. The sapience of the City Board will discover, if duly applied to the task, that it 13 just six of one and half a dozen of the other. Nothing hinders but that a person should laugh while speaking the truth. This talk about double payment ie, it seems, capable of mystifying, siDCe so shrewd an advocate employe it. Tho simple fact is, that for the city to throw any needless obstruction in the way of repayment would be an act of repudiation. So far in it should be carried out, it would be defrauding the country for tho advantage of the city ; and so it would lend some additional force to the very mistaken movement for detaching the districts ot the Province from the city of Auckland, and making them appendages of Wellington.—Yours, 4c,