SPECIAL TELEGRAMS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 242, 8 July 1876, Page 10

SPECIAL TELEGRAMS.

(prom our own correspondent.) Auckland, Saturday. The Southern Cross, in a leader on Vogel’s allusion to the land revenue proposals, is of opinion (judging from the brief . statement, which may be explained) that the Premier takes far too narrow a view of the position in which the colonists of New Zealand stand in relation to the land of the colony. It says : “ We have long contended that in justice the land is the property of the colony, not of any particular section. The public lands belong to the people. In no other colony of the British dominions are the lands divided into sections, and placed at the disposal of special localities, causing most unjust and unequal treatment to other districts.” The Crossmaintains that the inhabitants of the North are co-heirs to lands of the South, and vice versa. Canterbury and Westland, the one with the other, were poverty-stricken through separation, and required aid from the Colonial Exchequer, instead of obtaining it from the parent province. It condemns the doctrine of localisation, which is made to arrange that certain masses shall not participate in the benefit which ought to spring to the commonwealth as a whole. It says that Sir Julius Vogel’s declaration as to Auckland’s poor land fund being Auckland’s own fault, is marked by grave injustice. If Auckland’s land had been sold for next to nothing, the reasons were explained by the fact that settlement in Auckland had been retarded and driven back by the native Avar, of Avhich Auckland had to bear the burden, and Avhich Avas not caused by her own settlers. In fact, considering the obstacles the North had to contend against, it was mere absurdity to say that Auckland could have exacted the same price for land as Canterbury; and such a statement showed that Sir Julius Vogel had not mastered either the facts or principle, otherwise this unnecessary taunt would not have been expressed. After referring to Vogel’s allusion to the income tax in a letter to Macandrew, and railway interest, the article concludes by saying, if the terms of the matured proposal are correctly foreshadowed in the telegrams, it was not likely to be hailed with acclamation in the North. A sub-leader in the Cross caused very general comment to-day. Beferring to the attacks

by men of the Wood and Bees stamp, it says they seem, in their untruthful accusations of better men, to forget the law of reprisals and also much of their own history. It deprecates the practice of meddling with the private affairs of public men and their proceedings in office on public property, and then adds : “Many years ago Mr. Reader Gilson Wood Avas one of the commissioners of the Waste Lands Board of the Auckland province. There is no Waste Lands Board in the Auckland province now. Does Mr. Beader Wood, Avho talks glibly about land transactions, remember what led to the abolition of that board ? Mr. Joseph May, who was his fellowcommissioner, knows ; the late Mr. William Buclcland, whom he unjustly assailed regai*ding a certain land transaction, knew, and gave him his mind on the subject ; and sundry other members of the House know, and Mr. B. Wood’s memory is much more treacherous than his fondness for political quotations Avould imply. If he, too, does not remember, if he is such a lover of ferreting out historic records, let Mr. Wood put a question to the Government, asking why there is no Waste Lands Board in Auckland, and what were some remarkable events in the history of that body while he was a member of it ? and perhaps some useful information will be obtained respeotingthe qualifications of political whirligigs who are “ everything by turns and nothing long” when office are emolument are the goals of their political existence. Many people Avho have delicacy of feeling dislike the system of giving blow for bloAv, and these suffer by their silence. The true method ©f dealing with men who use such weapons as the telegrams shoiv Mr. Beader Wood employed, and which it delights his selfish vanity to use, is to make the blows recoil with vigor on their own heads, where they will be felt all the more strongly when delivered by the unerring hand of truth.”