PROVINCIAL LEGISLATION.
As another instance of the now extremely unsatisfactory condition under which Provincial legislation is carried on, may be found in prescribed limitation within which such legislation is legal. Not, however, so much in the thing itself as in the use — the of ten absurd use—that is sometimes made of it. If a Provincial Council passes an enactment outside the boundaries of this prescribed limitation, and such an enactment happens to be impalatable to the Ministry of the day ; if there be no other means of defeating it, there is the ever ready ultra vires plea, with which dublike weapon the poor little bantling is knocked on the head and summarily despatched. On the other hand, if the enactment happens to chime in with the policy of the Ministry in power, then the ultra vires baton can be allowed to slumber quietly in its aheath, and the Bill is, by the Governor's gracious assent, suddenly advanced to the position of a veritable Ordinance. In illustration of both these points we again refer to some of the Bills passed during the late session of our own Council, and the treatment they have received at the hands of the General Government.
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Bibliographic details
Otago Witness, Issue 1239, 28 August 1875, Page 17
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200PROVINCIAL LEGISLATION. Otago Witness, Issue 1239, 28 August 1875, Page 17
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