THE New Zealand Herald. SPECTEMUR AGENDO. MONDAY, MARCH 27, 1876.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIII, Issue 4483, 27 March 1876, Page 2

THE New Zealand Herald. SPECTEMUR AGENDO. MONDAY, MARCH 27, 1876.

We give to-day a full report of all the important portions of the Premier's Wanganui speech. It would have been useless to repeat what was said about the ocean cable, the inscription of loans, and similar matters. The proposals for future local government in the colony, are by far the most important and we have given them in full for the information of our readers. The Premier's object in taking the positive tone his speech discloses throughout, is to be found probably in his belief that by letting the people seethe General Government accepts the position, regards abolition, as] an accomplished fact, and ie itself, ready to take over the affairs of the colony " a. great moral effect will be produced." No greater mistake could have been made, and the Premier could not have fallen into so grave an error had he been surrounded by independent men, instead of by the Government service in Wellington. He has forgotten entirely—but the people of the colony will not forget it—that abolition was not carried on its own merits as a Constitutional question. It was carried partly on account of promised "permanent endowments" to local bodies, and partly because accompanied by a bill to establish "local Governments" by which freedom and self-government were to be rendered as secure xvnder the new conditions as they were under the old. We venture to say that no party and no province will be satisfied-with the new Constitution the Premier has sketched out on behalf of himself and his Ministry. The Upper House is not to be touched. The Lower House is also to remain with its anomalies of representation and five years' tenure of power, unreformed. The provinces are to be abolished and obliterated. The colony is to be divided into counties—from which all boroughs are however to be excluded. These counties are to have their boundaries fixed, in the first instance, by the Governor and to be formed by him into not more than seven divisions for which divisions the name is not yet fixed. Each division is to return a member to the County Council, to sit for three years. The ratejjayers are to elect a chairman who may be paid from the rates. After the first year the County Council may alter the divisions, but they must not exceed nine in any one county. These Councils are to manage and construct all arterial works in the county—are to borrow money on the security of their rates —and are not to be in any sense political bodies. To carry out the latter idea the Chairmen are not to be allowed —paid or unpaid—to sit in Parliament. The electors for the county are to be only those who pay rates to Road Boards. No provision appears to be made for the outlying parts of the Colony in which Road Boards are not yet formed, but works in which will, we presume, have to be provided for by the County Councils. The Koad Boards remain as they are at present, and will be expected to take charge of by-roads- and smaller local works. They too are to depend on the rates they levy, onthesubsidiespromisecltheiii by the Abolition Act, and on the share allotted to them from the land revenue raised in the county. The latter revenue is to be divided partly according to ax-ea, and partly according to population. The broad facts are as follows :—The Road Boards to be as they are. The County Council to distribute all the rates and subsidies as the Provincial Councils have done hitherto. The members of County Councils to be elected for three years instead of the Provincial Council four, and the Chairman not to be able to exercise any political influence on behalf of his county, because he is debarred from sitting in the Assembly. The electors are to be only the ratepayers, instead of the whole people. The Councils are to do nothing but attend to roads and bridges, and are not to interfere in any way with politics or political questions. They must necessarily have their staffs of engineers, clerks, and other officials. They ai - e to receive also the tolls on roads. They may levy them, according to this scheme, at the entrance of a borough without the latter in any way sharing the benefit, and they are to have also the " licences" ■within the county. Their main dependence must be the subsidy from the colonial revenue and land fund. The treatment of the provinces in the matter of capitation in the past ma 3' well make it a matter of grave doubt how long these subsidies will last before they too are swallowed in the maelstrom of colonial finance. It is vaguely hinted that hospitals and similar institutions are to be handed over to managing committees with subsidies from the Government. As to gaols, police, education, harbours, &c., provision is made for them jauntily enough. They are to be under the direct control of the Ministers for Defence, Justice, Public Works, and the Colonial Secretary respectively. These gentlemen will be good enough to charge themselves with their oversight, and Trill undertake the responsibility of bringing in estimates for them during the next Assembly. It requires only a moment's consideration to see that the scheme is quite incomplete without the appointment of a resident agent, Governor' 3 delegate, or some such official, representing the General Government at the centres of population in the colony. The Thames people, or the Waikato County Council, for example, will scarcely be satisfied to refer everything to a Minister, however benign, patriotic, and self-sacrificing, in Wellington. In the nature of things, the " delegate" of the Abolition Act will

not be long in forthcoming, though judiciously kept in the background for the present. "We may rely upon him as sure to cap the edifice of perfect self-govern-ment which Sir Julius will be pleased to bestow upon the colony. We are bound to express very great disappointment with the whole scheme as now laid before us. "Was it to cover the colony with a network of County Councils, without solid power or revenue, that the Provincial Councils were abolished 1 "Were they only to be replaced by a system that throws all revenue, all patronage, and all control, into the hands of a bureaucracy in Wellington ? As now propounded the scheme miist be characterised as a failure, presenting the people of the colony with the shadow, while the substance is kept for those who pull the wires, or control our anomalous Parliament, in Wellington. Throughout it, there seenis an incapacity to grasp whole issues. As a result, we have a scheme in which the sensibilities of police and of the civil servants are studied with marked and peculiar care, while the sensibilities of the people and their love of liberty and self government in the true sense of the terms are slighted, and receive a shock for which few were prepared.