THE COUNTIES’ JUBILEE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19935, 1 November 1926, Page 8

THE COUNTIES’ JUBILEE.

Fifty years ago to-day the Abolition of Provinces Act came into force. The measure had been stubbornly opposed in Parliament, and in Otago, where the feeling against it was stronger than in any other portion of New Zealand, there was an organised but inevitably futile attempt to resist the determination of the Legislature. The machinery for . bringing the county system into operation was, in fact, operated sufficiently effectively to ensure that the first elections of members of County Councils were held within a few weeks of the date at which the Abolition of Provinces Act became law. An important change was thus brought about in the system of local government?. The Provincial Legislatures were bodies with large powers and extensive responsibilities, in many respects corresponding in some measure within their own territories with those that are now exercised throughout the whole Dominion by the General Assembly. Necessarily, the abolition of provincial institutions and the creation in their place of local bodies vested with jurisdiction over restricted areas and entrusted with inferior powers constituted a large step towards the centralisation of authority in the country. Other issues, the existence of which the survivors of the days of provincialism will not have forgotten, entered into the struggle that was excited by the proposal for the abolition of the provinces and that was marked by a display of intense feeling on the part of the principal actors in the political history of that period. It is, however, interesting to recall that the formation of counties was contemplated by the Home Government at the time of the proclamation of the sovereignty of Queen Victoria over these islands, for the instructions that were given to Captain Hobson on his appointment as first Governor included one directing that the colony was to be divided into counties, hundreds, and parishes. In compliance with these instructions, the boundaries of the county of Eden, in which Auckland is situated, were proclaimed in 1842, and some years later the county was divided into hundreds. The instructions, however, were more or less disregarded, and the first administrative county was Westland, which was separated from the province of Canterbury in 1867 and was granted a system of local government in the following year. The complete scheme

of division of the country into counties followed in 1876. The Counties Act, which was passed in that year, contained provisions for the creation of sixtythroe counties. Six of these were, however, exempted from the operation of the Act, and actually fiftyseven counties were placed under the control of councils with power to construct and maintain roads and bridges within their respective territories and 1 7 undertake certain specified publio services. Gradually the number of counties has for one reason or another been increased until at the present time there are no fewer than 129 of them. That this number exceeds the legitimate requirements of the country is more or less generally admitted. The rather foolish tendency towards the multiplication of local bodies has been manifested less in the South Island than in the north. The number of counties in Otago, for example, remains the same as it was fifty years ago, and steps are being taken at the present time to effect an amalgamation of two adjoining counties, but even in the South Island there are, as in the North Island, administrative counties with populations of absurdly small dimensions. Yet the manner in which the county system has been extended may reasonably bo regarded as a proof of its applicability to the circumstances of the rural districts of the dominions. Tne powers that are statutorily exercisable by County Councils are a good deal wider than these bodies Lave elected to assume, but it is a prudent policy on the part of counties with comparatively small populations and distinctly limited resources to restrict their operations to the performance of the obviously necessary services in their respective ayeas. Within its narrow limits the county system must be held to have yielded satisfactory results. But they are limits which have been somewhat destructive of n really healthy public, interest in the operations of the county councils, and it is to bo hoped that the developments of the next fifty years will go 1 in the direction of the fusion of local bodies, each with special and restricted interests, into larger concerns controlling the many services upon the efficiency of which depend the convenience and comfort of the settlers of the Dominion.