CONTEMPORARY COMMENTS ON CURRENT TOPICS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4177, 10 August 1874, Page 3

CONTEMPORARY COMMENTS ON CURRENT TOPICS.

THE STATE FORESTS BILL. (Fromthe Otago Daily Times). , : The tone of the, debate on the Now Zealand Forests Bill is exceedingly disappointing.. Wo wore quite prepared for some hesitation, some opposition, some alarm about interference with those sacred Bulla of Apis, “ the Provinces,” but we did hot expect that so many men would .got ,up„ono. after, .another, to say so much meaningless trash as the majority of those who have spoken—those'; indmbers who want to have the consideration of-the subject postponed —hate indulged in. 'Those men well deserved the spirited castigation given them by" Mr. Stafford,‘and wo hope Mr. Vogel will not, fail to give expression to the disdain he must feel for their shilly-shally childish conduct.' The open enemies of the Bill may be met in fair fight, but these professed friends who are trying to smother it under the load of their unintelligent'praise can only bo managed by sharp tactics and an unsparing use of the “whip." Of all the 1 speakers, the only one more culpable than these dullards is Mr. Fitzherbert, who seems to have , alternately raved and maundered iu a -fashion which provokes the question, “ What ia he driving at?”_ Wo know him to bo no fool, yet his speech is full of such things as only an ignorant gaby would be found uttering. Such a cloud of folly, misstatement, and perversion of truth, can only have been blown forth to hide something or other on which the honorable gentleman did not care to be explicit.

It becomes interesting to inquire, “What are these Provincialists so much afraid of ?” First, then, they seem to fear that if the Legislature should go so far in a new direction as to take three per cent, of the land of the Colony out of the control of the Provincial Governments, that will be but the first step towards greater changes, and the ultimate abolition of the existing Provincial system. No one, however ardent his Provincialism, ventures to believe that the Provincial system can endure for ever. It is a larval condition of things, which can but be transitory. Our State forests must in the end be placed under the control of the Central Government, and it will be but to engender waste and mismanagement for the sake of a sentiment, if we consent that their initiation shall be attempted by the separate Governments of the existing Provinces. Whether the House consents to go on with the Bill this session or not, we sincerely trust it will not permit the ultra-Provincial doctrine to mould the ultimate shape of the enactment.

(From the Otago Guardian.) We observe that there is a very strong opposition organised, or in the course of organisation, against the Bill. The “ Provincial party” is opposed to the Bill, because it would take out of the control of the Provincial Governments the residue of the State forests, and utilise them for public purposes. What matter, however, to these politicians, whether inferior timber is imported from Oregon for sleepers while v our own forests are capable of supplying the most urgent demands of the Public Works Department, were they under the control of a Minister of the Crown, responsible to Parliament for their management ? They care for nothing, save and except their own little vestry politics and the Crown forests are often the only available means whereby these may be carried out. Otago (and especially the Southland district) is subjected to the most fanciful and absurd system of forest administration it is possible to conceive. We refer to the recently promulated regulations of the Waste Lands Boards of this Province, and we venture to say that in the whole range of history nothing approaching them can be found, where the ostensible object is to enable the State forests to be utilised for the purposes of commerce. But it has become a matter of the most urgent necessity for the Colonial Government to interfere, and take the control of the forests into its own hands. Public works have been initiated, and when timber is urgently required it is found to have been destroyed in nearly all accessible places, either by the fire-stick, for the purpose of enabling cockatoo settlers to grow a few bushels of potatoes or acres of grass, or by bushmen who, on payment of an annual fee of £5 or £lO, have been authorised to destroy thousands of acres of bush for the sake of a few trees. Anyone who has seen the Northern forests will bear us out in what we say ; and indeed, were we to state that hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of valuable timber has been felled and loft to rot throughout the Colony, in the reckless search for railway sleepers, we should not be exaggerating. The seldomer we hear of the Provinces, and the oftener we hear of the Colony in the House, remarked Mr. Stafford, the better. We agree with the lion, member for Timaru. The work of forest conservation, contemplated by the Bill, is one which the Provinces cannot undertake. With the exception of Otago, the money is wanting, as Canterbury has little or .no available forest land. It is the interest of Wellington and the other timbered Provinces to realise upon the forests as fast as possible. Money is needed for present wants, and what do the Provincial administrators care for the future ? “ Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” That is the true Provincial spirit. It has heretofore ruled supreme, destroying the germ of national life, wasting the public estate, and demoralising the community by exhibitions of wasteful extravagant and petty robbery. And now, when a great measure of Colonial — we had almost said national—reform is introduced, from all sides we hear objections. We trust the Premier 'will take the Provincial bull by' the horns, and in the interests of the Colony as a whole, pass the Bill into law this session. What does it matter whether the session he long or short, in comparison with the enactment of such a comprehensive measure of public policy? ' We trust that members mil not hesitate to give their undivided attention to until the work has been finished ; and we also hope that the Premier mil not give way one inch. If he gives way to the Superintendentdal party this session as he did last session—and of which concession he was very unpleasantly reminded by Mr. Fitzherbert during Friday night’s debate—he will be paving the way for his own political downfall, by acknowledging that he only holds office to register their decrees in Parliament. The -Colony is wearied of Superintendentalism, and if Mr. Vogel acts vigorously on this occasion, he may rid himself of the incubus.

(From tlie Canterbury Press, August 8.) We hope the figures Mr., Vogel alluded to will be published. We have'no doubt they will bear " out ‘ the assertion that ' ah immense proportion of the Colonial revenue is wasted year after year in the North Island in the endeavor to keep Provincialism on its legs. ’ There, at all events, Provincial Government has long been the sorriest .of farces. Any well-considered plan which will sweep the whole thing away, and bring the Island under one administration, will be a real .blessing; Still, Mr. Vogel’s outburst of indignation strikes us as misplaced, His annoyance at the miscarriage of a scheme winch he had so much' at Peart was natural enough; but the occasion ■ scarcely warranted such a display of excitement and such a passionate phillipic. For the appropriation of three ■ per cent, of the laud, throughout the Colony was certainly a strong measure. In ' Canterbury, for instance, it involved the handing over to the Colonial Government no less ■ than 260,000 V, acres—a very, considerable loss of property to the Province. ' Such a proposal was .one which it was only reasonable to suppose that the Provincial party'would be loth to accept., We-wonder what Mr. Vogel himself would have thought of it five years -ago? What would he have said If the Stafford Government had introduced a Bill authorising them.to take upwards of two million acres of laud for the cultivation of forests ? Does thd j English dictionary contain expressions , which he could, have considered .strong enough to characterise so audacious an attempt to domineer over and plunder the ' Provinces ? Surely when Mr. Vogel recollects his performances as champion of the Provincialists ho ' might ’ make more allowance for his quondam followers, whose political opinions have-not undergone the transformation which has befallen his own. Besides; Mr. Vogel acknowledges the proprietary rights of the Provinces, Ho admits that the Colony ought not to take the land, but that the Provinces should bo induced to part with it. In his speech on the second reading of the.Foresta Bill he -wont fully into this part of the subject. The great difficulty, he'said, in dealing with the forest question was “that wo- cannot have State forests without land—laud being a thing as to rights over which the provincial authorities are very tenacious.” It would be necessary, he continued, to hold out some inducement to the Provinces to allow some portions of their landed estate to be used for State forests ; and he proposed to offer a quid pro quo by releasing them from payment of the sinking fund upon their shares of the railway loans. Thus the whole affair resolves itself into a bargain ; and to a bargain there must be two parties. Mr. Vogel considers the surrender of the land in return for the remission of the sinking fund “ a very profitable exchange ; for the Provinces.” But when put to them in that light, the Provinces are entitled to ■ their own opinion ; and their opinion may be different. They may think the inducement insufficient and the bargain a bad one. The objection may perhaps come with a bad grace from Provinces which have no land at all but what is being purchased for them at the expense of the Colony. But Canterbury and Otago are in a different position ; and it is quite possible that they may not recognise the advantage of the exchange Mr. Vogel proposes, and may prefer to keep their land and to con-; tinuo to pay their sinking fund. ■