New Zealand Times. THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 1874.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4186, 20 August 1874, Page 2

New Zealand Times. THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 1874.

Provincial Government in the North Island and its: friends have very good cause for complaint at the treatment that institution has received in Parliament during the first two days of the debate this week, not at the hands of those who think it should be abolished, but from its professed friends. Never has there been an aptor illustration of the old proverb which tells of a measure being literally damned with faint praise. On the first day, member after member rose to his feet only to pour out a stream of the most unmitigated twaddle and prosy platitudes on behalf of Provincialism. How any institution could survive such treatment it is almost impossible for the mind of mortal man to conceive. A more damaging blow could scarcely be struck at it than the reproduction of these acres of meaningless sentences in print. If what has been alleged bo true respecting tho wirepulling of Mr. Fitzherbert behind the scenes, for tho Opposition, the accuracy of tho Premier'sforestillustrationof thebluegumhas received further testimony in its favor. Either proximity to this blue gum had extracted all virtue and power from the intellects of hon members, or their utterances were the product of dwarfed and stunted abilities. What they said was reduced to the dullost possiblo level of mediocrity. This is what, we submit, the friends of Provincialism have a right to to complain of—just that which a suitor

or defendant has when his solicitor conducts his case with such want of power and ability as to prejudice the jury against it. Surely one might be led to exclaim on reading the speeches members made professedly in favor of Provincialism, but really against it, there is more to be said for it than seems to have entered into the imaginations of these gentlemen ! ,They spoke, not as men do when they are thoroughly convinced of the merits of the cause they advocate, but, as if they were talking against time before a foregone conclusion should be arrived at. What they said was but as the cracking of rotten sticks. It had not even the dnerit of being sham thunder. Such advocacy could lead to only the one conclusion, that the cause must be bad for which so little worth hearing could be advanced. It was not only with impotent pleading that the believers in existing institutions had a just cause for complaint. The arguments employed, if we may dignify them by this term, were shockingly illogical. The Premier, it was urged, knowing that the power of the Colony to borrow was almost exhausted, and that the time was rapidly approaching when there would be no funds in the Colonial treasury, wished to obtain the landed estate, and the funds to be derived from the sale of it. This sounds strangely inconsistent when coming from the lips of Provincialists who have ever been clamorous, not only to obtain more money borrowed by the General Government, but also for leave for the Provinces to go into the market and borrow to the actual extent of their credit. It was also spoken in utter disregard of facts. The Colonial Treasury is far from being in a state of depletion, or from promising to be so. Never before were the finances of the country in so prosperous a condition, and the Premier, when making his budget speech, had to explain that he had actually had to consider how to dispose of the surplus revenue. We are quite aware that there is a limit to the power of borrowing, but there is no sign that in the opinion of financiers in London this Colony has approached that limit. New Zealand stock is held firmly enough in the money market, and her credit stands as high as that of any Australian Colony. There is no excuse, save that of ignorance, wilful or natural, for saying that the abolition of Provincialism in the North Island is proposed with a view to the acquisition of the land estate. Nor was there for giving color to the assumption that the Government policy of public works and immigration had. reduced Mr. Vogel to the necessity of thus trying to put money in the public purse. The members who said this had cordially supported this policy, and had, many times, borne testimony to its great success. The idea that Parliament, not being elected to deal with the question before it, cpuld not constitutionally do so, exemplified the stress hon. members were reduced to for arguments. Parliaments have many times shown themselves equal to emergencies, and have dealt with subjects of great moment that, at the time elections took place, could not have been predicted or calculated upon. Mr. Macandrew was the first member to speak with anything like force against the resolutions. But, even by his best friends, his speech was admitted to be a failure. He started with the assumption that the idea of the Government was to take over the Middle Island land revenue. This idea was evidently so strongly implanted in his mind that it could not possibly be eradicated without bringing down the whole mental fabric of the hon. gentleman. It was the bogie with which Mr. Macandrew hoped to frighten those hon. members(much as nurse girls do children), who in their simplicity intended to vote with the Government. But his bogie was scarcely of more effect than hi 3 curiously inconsistent statement respecting the extravagance and waste with which public works were carried out by the Colonial Government. Hon. members could scarcely forget thttt to the very Government which Mr. Macandrew likened to the Upas tree he had hitherto given a firm and unwavering support. And, if he had found it desirable to so suddenly strike his political flag and enter the ranks of the Opposition, was it politic of him, or likely to have weight, to charge the Government with having hastily and without due thought proposed a reform that cannot be put into a definite shape till it has been under consideration for several months 1 We trow not. For, putting the apparent inconsistency on one side, what is there in this'argument respecting hasty legislation 1 Have hon. members been so far behind all the rest of the world as not to know that there is scarcely an intelligent man in the Colony who has not considered the fact that a day would come when Provincialism would be put an end to, just as a man having a steam engine made in the year 1874 would not think of using one containing all the cumbrous and complicated machinery George Stephenson invented. The question is only one of time after all. But to hear hon. members speak we might imagine that there was some mystic value attaching,to the lengthy incubation of an idea. Some of them, it would almost seem, would like to see even a good egg sat upon, and toyed and trifled with till it should become addled. The Premier and his colleagues have shown that when an emergency arises they are prepared to deal with it, and that they have all the courage of their opinions. If hon. members can show that the conclusion arrived at is a wrong one, let them do so, and avoid delivering speeches that are as infirm in argument as a leper is deficient in bony structure. If it be true that idle words will have to be accounted for, some speech-makers have been running up a long bill this week.