The Patea Mail. Published Wednesdays and Saturdays SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1875.

Patea Mail, Volume 1, Issue 40, 28 August 1875, Page 2

The Patea Mail. Published Wednesdays and Saturdays SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1875.

The debate on the abolition question still drags its weary length along, and continues to he the chief subject of public interest. Meetings have been held all over the Colony and in a largo majority of instances the resolutions carried have l been strongly in favour of the Government pushing the question, to a successful issue tiiis session. It might naturally have been expected that those constituencies which have expressed themselves averse to the approaching change in the constitution would have been those which have most benefited by the existence of .Provincial institutions, but strange to say such is not the ease, as in the Province of Auckland most of the electors arc opposed to the Government scheme. Now the Province of Auckland has been, as everybody knows, for years past been in a moribund state, and quite ripe for the abolition of the Provincial incubus, ami it does seem passing strange that its inhabitants having felt and seen the costly nature ami impotent functions of their Provincial Government should yet want to hug their chains, and remain satisfied with a state of things eminently unsatisfactory in themselves. What has Provincialism done for the Province of England during the last few years wo should like to know to so endear it to the hearts of the • ■lectors in that part of the Colony ? If it had opened up the country and made it as prosperous as it assuredly might have been under a better regime, we could understand the clinging fondness of our northern friends for what is on all sides admitted to be an effete and mischievous form of Government. What little has been done in the way of aiding the Province to partake in the general prosperity of the Colony has been done by the General Government, and not by the Provincial. Can Sir George Grey, who seems to have a perfect erase for the Provincial form of Government, show any good result which his muchlauded system of Government has accomplished of late, or any tenable argument for its further continuance. We think not, and are quite sure that neither he nor any of the leaders of the Provincial party could, supposing New Zealand had been endowed with a constitution similar to any ef the Australian Colonies advance any sufficient reason why this Colony should at this stage of its existence bo furnished with a dual system of Government analagous to that which now obtains. And if no reason can be shewn why such a system should under such circumstances be now inaugurated it is equally plain that having under widely differing conditions been created they should in the altered state of those conditions which furnished the cause for their introduction cease to be. This is the logical aspect of the question, and one which, so far as we are aware, seems to have escaped the attention of those of the Government side who have yet spoken on the subject. A great handle has been made of the fact that the very father of the present reform was at one time a firm Provineiulist, but we think that fact cuts deeper the other way, as it shows plainly that not even the political children of the system can consistently defend it. When Mr Vogel entered Parliament he saw Provincialism in quite a different aspect to that which he had been in the habit of seeing it in the Council Chamber in Dunedin where it only presented itself in its most favourable guise. In Parliament he saw it assuming the rapacious, intriguing, and obstructive combination, it was no aid to the progress of the constitutional coach of which it formed a sort of useless and expensive fifth wheel which was always costing large sums to keep sufficiently lubricated to allow of its keeping pace with the other wheels. The credit of the Colony was being imperilled by the extravagances and shortcomings of the Provinces, and it only remained for Mr Vogel to take the posi-

timi of Colonial Treasurer to thoroughly convince liim as it had his predecessors that so long as the Provincial form of I iovcrnnicut existed the financial condition of the Colony must remain in a most unhealthy condition. Bold as Mr Vogel was he dare nut, when he looked around him in the House and saw the place filled with men wedded to the continuance of that evil, make a direct attack upon it. But what he lacked in courage lie more than made up for in tact, as lie at once set to work to unobtrusively deprive it of its outworks, one after another of which lie quietly deprived it of, and finally when he saw the time had come for the attack on its very citadel he moved the abolition resolutions of last session, and carried them, to the chagrin of the garrison of provincialists in Parliament. All this is a matter of history now, and should not he thrown away on men like Sir George Grey, who for a long time did his best to prevent the people of this colony enjoying the blessings of constitutional Government. But then he was a very autocrat, dressed in a little gubernatorial authority. “ Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,” and stress of political weather, drives shipwrecked politicians under the shelter of strange gaberdines, and one of the strangest of such companionships is that now subsisting between Sir George C ivy and Mr Fitzlierbert, whom the former was barely civil to -when many years ago the latter waited on His Excellency as the leader of a deputation to urge upon the Government the desirability of constitutional Government being introduced into New Zealand. At that interview »Sir George Grey was a totally different person to the red hot democrat now known by that name, and would have been very angry had Mr Fitzlierbert endowed with the spirit of prophecy told him that not only would the peoble of New Zealand get the right to make their own laws but that His Excellency would be glad to creep binder the Provincial Gaberdine and become acquainted with strange bonehfcllows! But time plays some fantastic tricks wit!i us and brings about some curious combinations not the least strange, of which is the spectacle of Sir G. George and Fitzlierbert fighting side by side for the existence of a form of Government no longer required. The wily Superintendent of Wellington took office with the avowed purpose of giving the Government of the Province decent burial, but got so enamoured of its good qualities as to cause him to try and bring It back to life again ! By dint of putting every available asset up for sale and getting lots of money to work on, ho lias succeeded in galvanizing the moribund body into a spasmodic kind of vitality, but he knows right well that the thing is dead to all intents and purposes, and should be put out of sight without further delay. The mere fact of Provincialism robbing us of the valuable services of such men as Sir George Grey end Messrs Fitzlierbert, Kolleston, and Macandrew is to us a sufficient reason for its abolition, as once abolished these gentlemen will turn their undoubted talents to better account in the conduct of the government of the Colony as a whole.