THE PREMIER’S SPEECH.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 237, 25 March 1876, Page 15

THE PREMIER’S SPEECH.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND MAIL. g IB I cannot say how much I admire the admirable speech of Sir Julius Vogel, its statesmanlike comprehensiveness of grasp, and its practical command of details. But I am particularly struck with that passage which deals with the case of the provincial offices to be brought within the sweep of abolition. Here Sir Julius is face to face with the demon of provincialism, and he is avowedly appalled at its aspect. This is plainly the only difficulty which deters him, or hampers the fine elasticity of his administrative power. When I read this passage many reflections arose to my mind ; one of them was this. Some thirteen years ’ ago, talking to a young lad of nineteen newly arrived in the colony, and then in my employment, but now very prominent as a leader ot t le southern provincialists, I used some words"2 “ effect: It is not so much the money that is uselessly wasted by provincialism that I deplore, 1 1 is 1 1 e blight that it is bringing upon industry by perverting good human energy and manUness out of producUve channels into the stagnant and pestUent swamps of loaferdom and snobbery. .^ a t; I, is the rrai curse of the system. I saw the thing then just as Clearly »>»w. o! 8.5 that amount of liberality or generous wisdom such as fair wishes to apply to the case would be effectual for its cure! His ?dea is perhaps the very best that emild be devised —to give them some money, capital in hand? and a grant of good land, with the condition attached that to entitle each to his allotment he must reside upon it. But alas, I just think I see such fellows as I believe, a very large proportion , of these people to have now become bracing their sapped energies up to faco the heroic work and self-denial of colonising the land. I just think I see them doing that*. They are long

past that most of them. Cains the system of feeding the starving with State corn, but he did not create that luiba Remi"-it was there long before he was born Yet his name carries on it in the page of history the obloqix™ vhich follows the deeds of that proud swarm of Roman loaferdom. . The suppression of the English monastic system did not create English pauperism or English poorlaws, but with shallow thinkers the obloquy justly attaching to that very monastic almsciving which was the real cause of the pauperism lias been shifted upon a measure which removed the cause. Both pauperism and the poor laws existed long before abolition of monasteries. Such is the cruel irony of history. 1 trust my notion may be wrong or exaggerated, but I have a deep and haunting conviction that those who have courageously faced the task of putting this great organic measure into operation, and enabling the great life of this young nation to expand freely, and would fain deal firmly but mercifully with the blood-suckers and Tite Barnacles which were clustered on her body politic. I say I fear they will need the still higher courage of facing both the.present hate of awakened lotos-eaters and the unmerited reproach of the poison which these will most likely become in the industrial svstem. Provincialism reared up on an army of placehunters, that terrible curse, a population of soliciteurs," as the French call them. In my mind, no better answer could be given to the audacious effrontery of the persons who stigmatise Sir J. Vogel as the champion of centralism and bureaucracy than is to be found in this speech. Has ever this colony possessed anything approaching the completeness of the system of local government there unfolded ? Coulc anything be more complete than the decentralisation there sketched out ? And this, mark, with an army of place-seekers ready trained to his hand such as no politician aiming at a system of personal government ever before found fitted to his purpose. But the evil of officeocracy has a root far deeper than provincialism. We British people who came out to the colonies have much to learn—very bitter les sonst 00. We are in this colony especially, and above all in this city, wofully burdened with respectability : we are sick to death with gentility. Our children must be "respectable," that is, they must not touch rust of iron, or oil of wheels ; they must not be stained with the imputation of any industrial pursuit; they must not rub shoulders with any base mechanicals." No, they must be "in the Government, or "in the bank." Here is the social virus, the deadly poison to which provincialism gave full scope, and which it pampered. " Not," says Horace Greely, " while the world still waits for a more systematic enforcement of the principle that every child should in youth be trained to skill and efficiency in some department of useful, productive industry, can we hope to banish able-bodied pauperism, with its train of hideous vices and sufferings, from the civilised world. So long as children shall be allowed to grow up in idleness, must our country be overrun with beggars, thieves, and miserable wrecks of manhood." This is the true root of the hideous phantom which very justly appals Sir Julius Vogel. And tiU suffering burns this deadly spirit of flunkeyism out of our fathers, and above all out of our mothers of families, neither provincialism nor centralism, nor any other " iam" can possibly cure us.—l am, &c, J. H. S.