The New Zealand Times. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1917. ELECTORAL CHANGES

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9784, 6 October 1917, Page 6

The New Zealand Times. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1917. ELECTORAL CHANGES

The main point of the story told by the report of the Representation. Commissioners is not a revelation. The tact that the North Island is steadily going ahead of the South Island has. long been evident. The North started with two handicaps, the prevalence ot forest and the Native difficulty. The South, in addition to a large area of land fit for immediate ploughing, and the entire absence of any Native trouble, had the advantage of the first discoveries of gold. The (south island, therefore, had, from a superior land revenue and a more numerous population, the opportunity of pushing forward public works, which in the North had to be kept in most places steadily in view. But under the conditions of settlement established in the beginning, it soon became evident that the resources of the North island must gradually increase the settlement of the country at a rate superior to the Southern progress. This tendency increased with the years, as the Native difficulty disappeared, and the settlers dealt successfully with the forest problem. The Island trade, moreover, proved » very useful factor in the Northern development, and gold discovery was a powerful aid to development, though not to the same extent as in the South. Naturally, when the’ policy of Public ’Works and Immigration came into play, the South got the larger cut, as offering more rapid return. In both islands tfie expansion afforded great scope to the colonising qualities of the race, and the history of that expansion is good

to read- The expansion was for some time blurred by political jealousies, of which, however, the chief feature was a certain picturesqueness added to the struggle oi' political life. Realising that. now fully, we can read the story of the> expansion with unmixed pleasure as a fine story of self-reliance. At the same time wo can accept with complacency undisturbed by bitterness on one side or exultation on the other the verdict of the judging Commission which has just placed the North first and the South second. The figures—--674,101 for the Northern population, and 467,086 for the Southern—are decisive from one point of view. Tho adjustment of the representation of the people is imperative. Tho change is accepted by the people, just as they accept sunshine and rain, as the inevitable effect of natural causes,- A curious suggestion was made in the House on Thursday to diminish the Northern political lead by diminishing tho proportion of the Wellington representation. The district round the United States capital, having been politically sterilised, the district round the New Zealand capital ought also, it was argued, to be sterilised. But Washington is not also New iork, whereas Wellington is both the commercial and the political capital. it there must be a sterilised political capital, ’ that capital must be apart from the busy hum of men. Why not put tho Now Zealand Canberra, or Washington—we ask for the sake ot argument merely—somewhere on the banks of the picturesque ■ and lonely Waitaki ?

The. most important duty, however, is not the duty of adjusting the representation to the popular changes, 'thoifgh that duty must, of course, have precedence. The most important duty of the nation and ,its representatives is to stop the drift of the population into the town areas, as measured by the report of the Commissioners. Of the population of the Dominion, the urban population is 574,677, against the rural population of 567,409. Thus in a country depen. dent almost wholly on the primary products, more than half the - population lives in the non-producing town areas. "What is more, these ■ figures are not a tale of the past', 'measuring ' a bad thing which is over and done with. They are, on the contrary, the record of an increasing drift. To a certain extent they are a ‘‘writing on the wall.” They do not declare that ruin is immediate, about to fall devastatingly in twenty-four hours, as was the case with the “writing.” They are part of a system of markings which record,the heights of a rising flood. It is a ' flood which every three years rises appreciably higher. The rise is slow, but it is steady and relentless in its; regularity. As each period ends the record tells how the tide of people inwards, from the lands of plenty to the unproductive streets and lamp-posts and picture shows, has risen. How long can that recording system be allowed to endure with its tale of rising tides? We talk of our great volume of trade ; we delight in the sudden leap of our exiports and imports by millions. We talk of the limitless .progress that is before our productive industries; we base on that limitless progress the safety of our, finance for .both peace and war. We see in our millions added to millions in a vista of happy population. But iwhat does this writing on the wall tell us? Ought we to be surprised that its best meaning may be that if we go on as W are we may very quickly reach the limit of our producing. The-great need of our country, we all agree, is settlement, . settlement, and more settlement. This is our talk. Tho great blaok fact is that the site's of the settlement, the “more settlement, ’■ are on the sidewalks of the cities. -- < Tho gains and the losses are obvious enough. Otago Central, Selwyn, Mo-i tueka are extinct, and three new centres spring to light in the North. The three losses are suggestive. Utago Central is tho region in which over a ; million was spent on a railway which does not pay for grease, though that region was expected to back up 1 the railway with a most satisfactory justification in the shape of increased population. Selwyn is a district marked, quoted, and signed by Nature for close settlement, yet the people go elsewhere. Motueka should be as populous as a similar area of Japan, and already it gives signs of decrepitude and old age, so decided that the Commissioners were forced to give it a clean wipe with the sponge. Of the new seats, the new Auckland seat is a disastrous sign, showing that the back , country in the neighbourhood cannot find room for its proper quota of producing population. The new Rotorua, on the other hand, is eloquent with the progress of the East Coast, which will continue to give the progressive signs of rising population and increasing representation in Parliament. Here is the stronghold which is destined to-, out-top all New Zealand, and here is the direction in which the progress of the future will be seen. Left to natural conditions, the East Coast from tho Peninsula to Poverty Bay will move ahead of anything in the •' Dominion. The central new seat is a good justification of the North Island Main Trunk Line, once so bitterly opposed by political forces. Its rise is, however, the corollary to the phenomenal growth of tho . Palmerston agricultural shows. The automatic system is the parent of the three new districts and the grave of the three old ones. There is no fault to be found with it but one. It violates local option, breaks legal compacts, and regards statutes as scraps of paper. ■When the establishment of proportion-, a! representation brings necessary amendment, this crying injustice should be remedied.