The Otago Witness. DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, APRIL 3.

Otago Witness, Issue 905, 3 April 1869, Page 13

The Otago Witness. DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, APRIL 3.

There is more political life in Otago just now than we have seen for a long time past. Even the ferment caused by the last general election produced no such general agitation of political questions as exists amongst us at the present time. The questions fought over at that time were mostly personal ones. The really important parts of our polity were much less understood and much less discussed in those clays than they are now. The people of Otago were awakening to a sense of the fact that things were not going altogether as they would like them to go. They thought the fault was wholly in the men who had been up to that time entrusted with the management of their affairs. To a certain extent they were no

doubt quite right, and that revolt which drove so many of the old politicians oi the province out of public life altogether, had a certain amount of justification. Since tho.se day?, the people of Otago have being undergoing, in one way and another, a very useful course of political education. They have had a few lessons illustrative of the important truth that those who will not look after their own interests will find no one to do it for them. They are beginning to see that an apathetic population must of necessity find itself a mis-governed population. They have found out, that however incapable they may have supposed their former rulers to have been, a mere change of men yields no change. They have learned, or at any rate are beginning to learn, that no Legislature arid no Executive, however well intentioned the men who form either body, will govern well unless guided at every Kirn by the opinion of a vigilant public.

These thoughts are suggested by various signs of the times. The newer portion of the population of this province can hardly be said to have taken any active interest in public affairs until within the last two or three years. There have been plenty of reasons for this which it is not worth while to discuss here. If they had earlier attended to matters which are of vital importance to them, and to the future of the province in which they have cast their lot, it would have been better for all. Tt is of no use now to look back upon the past, except for the purpose of learning lessons from it. We have no intention of entering into a discussion of those points upon which it is now seen that former Governments and provincial legislatures have eired. It is a lesson for the future that we -wish to inculcate. No one can doubt that the reason why there is less political apathy in the province than there formerly was, is that the ill effects of past mis-govern-ment are just now too sensibly felt to be ignored even by the most careless. Our land laws are excessively complicated, and so far inefficient that a great deal of existing ill-feeling between class and class may be traced directly to their operation. In almost every district of the province there is some land grievance. Whether there is any sound cause for complaint in this place or that is not here the question. Suffice it, that for one grievance that \\'Q heard of before the kst Waste Land Act was passed, there are now twenty. Undoubtedly personal annoyances, losses, and disappointments falling on individuals through the nature of the Land LaAvs, are at the bottom of a great deal of the political activity of which we have evidence. So, again, the manner in which the really fine revenue of the province, and the very considerable sums it has borrowed during the last half-dozen years have been wasted, is a subject which presses itself upon the attention of each country community, when circumstances awaken the sense of how little each has reaped from this lavish expenditure. This it is which has given rise to all the outcry about local self-government, which has been so prevalent during the last eighteen months. This is in fact the strongest moving power at work amongst the population of the country districts. It is a fact which is palpable to the eyes of every one that a thousand improvements are needed in his huruediate neighbourhood, for which there is not the remotest chance of any public | money being forthcoming. Even those which, in the eyes of the rest of the community, appear in the light of favoured districts, find plenty of cause to complain, and say with perfect truth that nothing like the amount of revenue raised from them has been directly returned to them. A great deal of this sort of talk is nonsense. There is, however, a residuum of truth which always remains after the most complete investigation into the fallacy of this or that complaint about the unequal distribution of public revenue. We do not get all we ought to do in proportion to the taxes we pay. If the money were distributed in the fairest and most equitable manner, a great deal of it has been, and still is,

year/ by year absolutely wasted. Hence we are" rathev disposed to rejoice that exaggerated notions of injustice clone to them, rouse the minds of our electors to something like an intelligent conception both of their duties as citizens and their own power when acting in combination. Let us hope that thorough improvements in. every part of our public business will result from the lively attention that is now being paid to all public questions in almost every part of the province. Nothing can be more evident than this — if sound and salutary, and very complete changes are not found possible under the rttjimc of Provincial Government, a still more sweeping change will herald them in the disruption of the province itself.