THE OUTCAST ORDINANCES.

Otago Witness, Issue 801, 6 April 1867, Page 1

THE OUTCAST ORDINANCES.

(From the Daily Times, April 1.)

Whether the recent letters of Mr Stafford to the Superintendent were conceived in a spirit specially hostile to Otago or not, there is no question that they were cauched in a tone entirely at variance with the integrity of Provincial Institutions. The Colonial Secretary assumes a right to consider questions of Provincial policy in

a manner quite opposed to the intention of the Constitution Act. He virtually ignores the fact that Provincialism is a distinct and decided feature of the New Zealand Constitution, and that it is little short of revolutionary for any Government to invade its privileges without legislative sanction. We will even go further, and siy that we do not believe that the Assembly has the power "to swallow up" the Provinces, as one of the members of th? Government playfully phrased it. Amongst the irreversible clauses of the Constitution Act, there are some which afford ample evidence that it was intended to phce a limit to the extent of the control the Assembly was to exercise over Provincial institutions. In plain fact, it was meant to give a sufficient protection to the vested rights which it was certain would grow up under the new Constitution. It would have been very unstatesmailike to have opened the road to the growth of large interests in those of the Provinces wisely governed or prosperously settled, and to have exposed these to the absorption of a numerical combination of the other Provinces. Ta put a hypothetical case : supposing Auckland and Canterbury to have been the only two Provinces in which large wealth was created, it! could never have been intended that the other Provinces, by a political combination, should step in and declare a Gommon partnership. The tima has come when it is imperative to remember that there is a New Zealand Constitution, and that there may be a desire to override it. We should be sorry to preach resistance to lawful authority; but it is necessary to utter the warning that, under the pretence of lawful authority, much that is unlawful may be done. The Assem bly may exceed its powers, and it is within the limits of possibility that the Provinces may be called upou to maintain the rights they hold direct from Imperial Legislation, and the unmaking of which can only be effected by the. body that made them.

Mr. Stafford is unquestionably wrong when he assumes to act in advance of legislation. If the Assembly cannot give the General Government the right to step into the place ot the Provincial Governments, it is certain the members of the General Government cannot take it for themselves. Any one who studies the letters to which we refer will see, beyond the legal arguments used, the scarcely veiled assertion of the right to discuss the policy of the various measures. Now, the New Zealand Constitution is an intricate one, and the machinery was confessedly weak for the purpose it was meant to work out. For example, it was impossible to draw a distinction between that power of disallowance of Provincial measures left to the Governor, and which was meant to be based upon paramount considerations of public welfare, and that use of the power of disallowance based on the assumption of the ri j:ht to decide upon the details of Provincial policy. Buttbough no law defines the difference, in practice the difference is well understood. It is for the interest of the Provinces, conjointly and separately, that a central authority should stand between any one of them and the exercise by it of excessive authority calculated to injure the others. We may admit the right of the General Government to prevent the Provinces from committing illegal act?, or even to prevent them doing anything calculated to damage their neighbors. If difficult to define in word?, the limit of this power is not difficult to understand One readily sees that it is being overstepped, when under its color the right to discuss the details of Provincial policy is arrogated. The time has, perhaps, not come for the Provinces to discuss the precise steps they will take to oppose a lawless invasion of their integrity. But it has come for declaring that it will be grossly opposed to the spirit of the Constitution, for either the Assembly or the General Government to make use of powers meant to be exercised on the broadest grounds. of public welfare, for the purpose of upsetting part of the institutions it was designed those powers should protect. The playful intimation of swallowing up was, there is good reason to believe, a faitb/ul exposition of a cherished design. In other words it was meant to be considered ag the expression of the intention of the Colonial Ministry to absorb the Provincial authority iato the General Government. That waa what was meant, and that was what was

understood. If Major Richardson nrr>i represented his colleagues, it is for them to declare without delay that such was the case. The letters we have under consideration indicate, a leaning to the " swallowing up" policy. If Mr. Stafford did not mean them to bear that interpretation, and if he is no party to his colleague's threat — we can call it nothing else — let him at once ?o declare himself. He came into office through the Provincial party, and he has more than once declared that he would protect Provincial rights.

If he is still so minded, he would be doing himself but justice to state so. Otherwise the verdict must go by default, and it must be understood that the Colony is heine governed by men bent upon a no less revolutionary measure thin the subversion of the leading feature of the Constitution. When this becomes understood, it scarcely need* to be added it will be necessary for the Provinces to consider how they should protect themselves in. the event of revolutionary intentions becoming revolutionary acts. If there is to be a fisht between Proviocialists and Centralists, the terms of the engagement should be agreed upon. The Provincial^ have the right to demand, and, if necessary, to insist, that one of those term 3 should be that any hostile measure to the Provinces should require the ratification ot Imperial legislation.