New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1874.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4187, 21 August 1874, Page 2

New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1874.

The Government have no reason to be dissatisfied with the results of the deliberations of Parliament during the last forty-eight hours. The Upper House accepted the State Forests Bill, not only with pleasure, but with an expression of regret that it had not come to them as it was originally proposed to the Lower House. They were quite prepared to accept the scheme of the Premier in all its completeness, and had nothing to regret in connection with that important step in the management of the affairs of the Colony excepting that they were only called: upon to express their approval of an introductory rather than a complete scheme for dealing with the forest estate of New Zealand. The Lower House has given, in its turn, as emphatic a verdict on behalf of the Government, on the resolutions put beforo it in favor of tho abolition of Provincialism in the North Island, as could possibly have been desired. After a protracted debate, which may be said to have begun in storm and endedjn calm—liko March weather in the old country, which the proverb says "Comes in liko a lion and goes out like a lamb"—the House of Representatives last night voted by forty-one to sixteen that the abolition of Provincial institutions in the North Island was desirable ; that Wellington should bo formally recognised, once more and for all, as the capital of the Colony of New Zealand; and that the compact of 1856 (which affects the land funds of the two islands) should be preserved intact.

Bub the figures just quoted do not represent to tho full oxtont the confidence which tho Lower House is disposed to place in the Ministry on a proposal so important to the future of the Colony as that which is contained in the resolutions assented to last night. There were five pairs, and therefore five havo to be added to the number of members who favor the

propotals of the Government. "Without claiming one of the two members who are absent, and regarding the. Speaker as neutral, and giving credit to the Opposition for all of the eight, members who were not present at the division, there is still left so overwhelming a majority for the Government that there is no possibility of mistaking its meaning. It is not necessary to analyse the division to discover of whom, and of what element, the minority was composed. One-half of it was formed of Superintendents and Provincial Secretaries; though it mustbe said, for the credit of others of those officials, that they were found voting for resolu- I tions which have for their object the consolidation of the Government, and the merging of the Northern Provinces into one Colony—the Colony of New Zealand. Then there were members of the Executive Councils of Provinces, and ex-Superin-tendants, and others who had held high Provincial positions, or were more or less directly connected with Provincial institutions at one time or other. And it was at the head of such a regiment of " die-hards" as this that the hon. member for Selwyn (Mr. Reeves) marched through Parliament yesterday, without having heard an encouraging " charge" from the bugle of the hon. member for the Hutt—who, somehow or other, found it more pleasurable to be "firstatafeaat than last at a fray." Mr. Fitzherbert was absent from his place during the last two days of the debate, and though " shepherded " in the most faithful manner by his " friends in Council," only found his way to his accustomed corner in time to form the sixteenth of the discomfitted band of Provincialists some of whom were very valiant over the State Forests Bill, and were not particularly choice afterwards in the language they applied to the Premier, the Government, and all who thought that the Colony had arrived at a pass at which some change in its Constitution was absolutely required. They would not be convinced that "the hour and the man" had come ; they challenged the Government to stake the hazard of their existence on the correctness of their interpretation of the feeling of the House. They have been met literally, on their own ground, and they have been most ignominously beaten. Reviewing the debate that has gone on for three or four nights past, it is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion than that the majority have only interpreted correctly, and given expression to, the feeling of the country. The brief and not particularly accurate information telegraphed to some of the remote districts, in the earlier hours of the debate, appears to have created an excitement—at Auckland, for instance—which there was really nothing in the resolutions of the Government to justify. Later information has partially corrected that misdirection of public opinion, and we have not the slightest doubt that when the speech of the Premier, and the speeches of his colleagues and supporters, reach those districts in a more complete form, a revulsion of feeling will take place. The alarm of Auckland was excited because it was supposed that the Premier proposed to extinguish what was left to that Province of its once semi-regal state, by depriving it of its Superintendent and its little Parliament, whose chief business and amusement was to pass " bogus" estimates. It was inculcated upon Canterbury and Dunedin that their Land Fund was about to be seized and appropriated. But the Premier stated, as plainly as words could express it, that his intention was to conserve the Land Fund of the Middle Island, and to localise the revenues of the various districts of the Colony —not according to artificial Provincial distinctions, but to more material boundaries, and to work out local requirements as far as possible with local means ; to employ the surplus revenue of particular districts for the special advantage of those localities'; and, generally, to confer upon the Northern Island, and, as far as circumstances admitted, on the Middle Island a 3 well, the advantages of one General Government. When the plans of the Premier are thoroughly understood in the country, the verdict, we have no doubt, will be of the same character as that which was given in the House last night. The whole tenor of the debate was to show that, however useful Provincial institutions had been, the time come when an authority more responsible, more powerful, and more prompt in action, was required. It could not escape notice that the Maori members at once saw the advantage, in an Imperial as well as in a sense to them patriotic, of the substitution of one General Government for Provincial Governments. They had felt in a very special manner the injurious management, and the local and selfish views, of Provincial Superintendents and Councils; and they were not slow in asserting that they were never able to obtain justice from those petty powers, and could only hope for it when they came before the General Government.

The majority of last night has fully justified the Government in what it has done, and encouraged it in what it has proposed to do. Brit it would be unwise to listen to Councils thatgo beyond prudence. Meetings have been held in the North, the South, and the West, at which the Government has been urged to go beyond its present prudent plan, and propose at once the abolition of Provincial institutions in both Islands. It would not, however, be wise or proper that any plan of that kind should be operated upon. There is no need at present, and there may never be, for interference with the affairs of tho larger Provinces of the South Island ; though many of those who voted with th« Government last night distinctly announced that they would greatly have preferred if the resolutions had been applicable to the whole Island. Tho Government, however, have not gone so far as to embrace such a scheme in their proposals. They have applied themselves to the removal of an immediately tormenting annoyance and embarassment to the progress of the Colony. It is wise to let the experiment be tried in tho North Island alone. A Bill will, no doubt, bo brought into Parliament next session to consolidate the Northern Island, and if it be passed, as in all probability it will bo, there will be time enough to test the soundness of the views of tho supporters of the Ministerial resolutions. If tho experiment is successful, there is a strong probability that the South Island* will prefer to be more closely allied to the General Government than it is now, and to place some faith in the old Scriptural proverb which favors unity between two houses as giving material strength.