New Zealand Times. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1874.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4251, 4 November 1874, Page 2

New Zealand Times. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1874 .

We think several of our contemporaries have attached far more importance to the political pamphlet, from tho pen of Mr. W. L. Rees, barrister-at-law, than it deserves. Mr. Rees is no doubt a man of great energy and very considerable ability, and were ha gifted with a well-balanced mind he might become a very useful public man. But he is sadly deficient in judgment, and his sincerity of purpose is more than doubted. He has managed to attain local notoriety in Auckland, much in the same way as ho rose to the surface in Westland during tho seething period of its political intoxication ; and if we mistake not, he took a prominent part in the agitation for the separation of Westland from the Province of Canterbury, thereby doing incalculable injury to that part of the country, and saddling the colony with the cost of its county and provincial establishments. This was an error in judgment, no doubt. The demagogues and publicans who are the campfollowers of gold miners when a ‘ ‘ rush” takes place, got the ear of the mining population of Westland, and persuaded them that “local self-government” was their sheet-anchor ; that Canterbury was living upon the goldfields’ revenue, and that separation was essential to continued prosperity. Indeed, so infatuated were those men that they actually undertook to pay a proportion of the Canterbury public debt, and magnanimously relinquished all claim upon the land fund of the great Eastern division of that province. To complete their work of political crassitude, they submitted to an arbitration on a basis which necessarily over-weighted their district. We need hardly say that the arbitrator for the parent province was a clever financier, while the gentleman who represented Westland was not distinguished in that special line at all events. Mr. Rees, as a leading political agitator in Westland, had his share of responsibility for those transactions. If be had been as wise in forecasting the immediate future of Westland, as he would have the public believe he now is in forecasting tho future of New Zealand, he is, clearly blameablo for not raising his voice, and using his pen, in opposition to the blind infatuation of the political mountebanks who are unquestionably responsible for tho stagnation on the West Coast. On the other hand, if he did not then perceive what was visible to observing men all over the colony, we may fairly conclude that his prophetic vision is none of the clearest now. , In short, Mr. Rees must live in an element of perpetual excitement. Ho loathes a calm. He cannot possibly steady down to sober work. His imagination is vivid, his tongue ready, and his style florid but attractive, and well calculated to carry men away in times of political excitement. As • a complement to this sketch of his character, we should add that he is reckless and undiscriminating in his charges against political opponents, seeking rather for the more forcible and striking than the most truthful illustration. Excitement apart, we do not think that Mr. Rees is always in earnest, or that ho seriously believes the objects of his invective are half so black as he paints them. As a result, however, Mr. Rees has made many enemies and but few friends; and talents, as we have already said, well fitted to place him in a leading position, are marred in their usefulness by a vicious habit of exaggeration, and a total disregard for tho feelings and opinions of others. The long-continued stagnation in Auckland, and tho proposal to abolish its Provincial Government, have stimulated political activity there. In Hawke’s Bay and Wellington, where every man is profitably engaged at industrial pursuits, and in the Southern provinces where tho getting of money tops all other motives to action, there is a lull in politics. Auckland, on the .contrary, is tho focus of. political agitation, and as might be expected, Mr. Rees has thrown himself into tho turmoil, heart and soul. Having been disappointed in not being able to reply to Mr. Yogbl, (a disappointment in which, we confess, wo largely share, because tho country would then

have been spared the infliction of “The “ Coming Crisis,”) he has_ reduced his thoughts to writing, and, improving on the New Zealand Serald’s finance, lands the colony in anarchy and bankruptcy. Even Mr. Wir. Bhckland could not draw a more doleful picture of the land he loves so well than Mr. Rees has done. There is, moreover, a substratum of truth in the pamphlet which may not be gainsaid ; but the conclusions to which the writer has come are not warranted by the premisses. It is his cardinal error to attribute all that has happened in the colony since 18G9 to Mi\ Vogel. No doubt that gentleman has been the leading mind ; but any one who really knows the history of New Zealand politics during chat period will agree with us in saying, that it was the Superintendents of provinces and their following in the General Assembly that moulded the policy of the country. Complaint is made that the promise of creating a railway estate, in 1870, when the public works scheme was announced, has not been kept. But who opposed it, and prevented that plan being carried out 1 Why, the provincial party ; —that power which has, for its own selfish ends, tacked on to the great colonising policy of the Government of 1870 a variety of local works, at the same time refusing to make the Crown lands directly responsible for the cost of construction. It is the same party that has entailed upon the country those inequalities of taxation of which Mr. Rees and others complain ; —which has rendered, a uniform system. of education, police, and local government impossible ; and which would end in splitting up New Zealand into a number of petty states or colonies, without any interest in common, and without political or social unity, if Sir George Grey and his allies get their own way. The proposal of the Government may not go far enough ; but at all events it is much better to abolish Provincial Government in the North Island, and reduce the conflicting systems of local government to something like order, than to perpetuate provincialism there, with its manifold and admitted evils. It is for the colony, through its representatives, to say whether the provincial system shall be swept away altogether. Should that determination be arrived at, tho future of the colony would indeed he free from tho apprehension which one cannot help feeling as to the possible outcome of ultraprovincial log-rolling and selfishness. The General Assembly would become, what it has never yet boon, a Colonial Parliament, truly representing every interest in the colony. Responsibility would be direct to the people ; whereas, under the existing system of divided authority and government by delegation, responsibility rests nowhere. For the ’sake of the colony as a whole, and of every political division of it separately, it would be well if the necessary constitutional changes were even now effected.