The Southland Times. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1875.

Southland Times, Issue 2243, 23 December 1875, Page 2

The Southland Times. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1875.

There was plenty of life at the Invercargill Nomination on Tuesday, and quite as much good humor If the speeches and the manner of their reception showed sufficiently the excitement of parties, there was no rowdyism and no malice. Mr Lumsden came first, with an address showing a mastery of the points that, by adroit manipulation, can be made to tell upon a popular audience. It was a good hustings speech. Rut it was worth little. It had the defect under which moat Provincial speeches have labored since the controversy began, of failing to grasp the principles that are really in conflict. When Mr Lumsden had pointed to the prosperity of Otago he seemed to fancy that he had made out a plea for Provincialism. Nobody disputes the success of Otago, and with regard to the question in hand, her prosperity proves nothing. The grand objection against Provincialism is that it involves double government, and complicates and ruins colonial finance. Where was the answer to this capital charge? Mr Lumsden's propositions are at least original. The Abolition Act, he says, is aD attempt to establish cla^s legislation. The accusation is mere insanity. Nothing short of the most imaginative interpretation could make the Act speak a word that favors one class of the community above another. It simplifies legislation, abolishes "talking shops," and gives equal administration — but all this for the benefit of one class as much as another. When Mr Lumsden finds abler men than himself willing to aid in settling, as far as legislation can settle, the people on the land, what are his tactics? To discredit the sincerity of everybody but himself. This monopoly of his and of his satellites, of taking care of the working man, and assuming the full charge of settlement, is not to be invaded by any other patriot. If they presume to put a hand to the work, who cannot pro nounce the party shibboleth, they (

must be turned to the door. This is the rank vanity and assumption of Mr Lutnsden and Mr Wood. Given, all the sincerity that they claim, they might have the modesty to acknowledge that stronger brains than theirs are wanted to devise, not schemes of settlement only, bat schemes to meet a hundred other exigencies of the state. They go about the country with their little cuckoo cry in their mouths, attempting to persuade the people that they are the men, and that wisdom will die with them. Any unprejudiced listener to the two speeches delivered on the hustings will have little difficulty in determining to which to award the palm for reasoning and for statesmanlike utterance. Mr Cuthberfcsou prappled boldly with every principle involved in the controversy between the two systoras that divide at present the mind of the country. It was not i Provincialism here, or Provincialism I there, upon which he set himself to | discourse, but upon Provincialism • itself, as a polity so inherently vicious and fatal to fair and safe administration that, for the prosperity of the country, for the prosperity especially of outlying communities like this, it was necessary it should simply be swept out of existence. If the gross fallacy that local self-government is bound up with the Provincial system should outlive, in the minds of those who heard him, bia dear and emphatic exposure, it must be because men want to persuade themselves and persuade others that a falsehood is not false. Local government ! Centralism! Have any of us for<rotren that it was necessary for Southland to turn out Mr Lumsden and his colleagues before she could got even the semblance of a just appropriation from Duuedin for Southland works' ? Do the people of Invercargill want to perpetuate a system that will oblige them to go with their hat in hand to Mr Donald Keid to beg for the Bluff a share of what may be left ■ over after Dunedin harbor has been made? No' we want au Invercargill Board of Works to go, as it will do under the Abolition Bill, and receive from the Kxchequer its legally apportioned and inalienable share of tho public money. Mr Lumsden would like still to have the power of misinterpreting the lie-union Compact, of stopping Southland immigration, of starving the Hospital, and of robbing the Athenaeum — but those days aro past — and will never return. Mr Cilder eaid well, that the day when Invercargill makes a start under independent administration will be the first day of her true development and prosperity. Me Cuthbertsou was able to say with reference to the land, that all his recorded utterances aud public acts bore out that he was in favor of settlement. Yet, this is the man whom Mr Lumsden presumes to taunt with being a novice, and a convert unworthy of admission to the inner chamber, n't only, we suppose, for the sacred presence of Mr Jaggera, Mr Whitefonl, and himself. Well might Mr Cuthbertson say that it is on false issues — on issues known to be false, ho might have added — that this contest is attempted to be fought. So long as the question was unventilatecl, we might have feared, but it is too j clearly before the public now to allow us to doubt. Dunedin may well return a team of Provincialists to maintain her supremacy — let Invercargill return au Abolitionist to protect herself.