THE COLONIST. NELSON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1867. MR. CURTIS'S LATE SPEECH.

Colonist, Volume XI, Issue 788, 17 December 1867, Page 2

THE COLONIST. NELSON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1867. MR. CURTIS'S LATE SPEECH.

There is nob much that calls for remark in the speech delivered by his Honor the Superintendent in his character of representative of the City of Nelson in the Assembly. Such seemed to be the general opinion of the audience, by whom at the conclusion of the speech no question was asked. Probably this absence of questions may have arisen in consequence of the rather too zealous haste with which the proposer of the customary vote of thanks placed his motiou before the meeting, .within about a minute after his Honor had closed his address ; and this being done, the ordinary apathy, the vis,inertia, which, unless in times of excitement are so difficult to overcome, were too great to induce the exertion which it is necessary for unaccustomed speakers to exercise in putting questions on the spur of the moment. Had one been disposed, there ' are several little questions which might have been effectively or usefully asked of Mr. Curtis by anyone who cherishes a tolerable memory of the past. The speech looked a cautious speech, prepared on .the idea that "the least said the soonest mended"; and without doubt there is often worldly wisdom in such a caution, although we nevertheless do believe in the enthusiasm which impels earnest minds to speak that which is within, uncaring consequences, so that they but speak the truth sprung from deep convictions ; men who seek to conceal nothing, and know nothing which they fear to investigate. But custom and experience do not warrant our expecting such philosophic attributes in an ordinary platform speech.. The statement that had obtained currency in Nelson through the instrumentality, we believe, of one of the Ministry, to the effect that Mr. Curtis, had he remained in Wellington, would have voted with the Ministry in favor of the Public Debts Bill, was, we think, vary fairly and .properly answered by Mr. Curtis when he produced the letters from Dr. Feafcherston and Mr. Stevens, both of whom bore unqualified testimony to his steady opposition in committee to the system of guarautee which was afterwards adopted by the House. How a statement of the kind should or could have been made by a Cabinet Minister, is inexplicable. Perhaps even any friends Mr. Stafford possesses here, will think that Mr. Curtis dealt with his proceedings with remarkable tenderness. With that clever art in which Mr. Curtis is notably an adept, namely, the art of keeping disagreeable points out of sight, and reciting only those that tell in his favor,—in the case of Mr. Stafford and the Otago difficulty, and while seemingly opposing Mi\ Stafford in the matter of the Public Debts Act, lie-' appeared almost to find excuses for him, and at last to lay the blame on the House itself. Then, on the Otago difficulty and Mr. Stafford's couduct'therein, Mr. Curtis quietly evaded the first and most important point in the case ; a point so palpable that we cannot pcssibly accuse Mr. Curtis of not having seen it, because such an accusation would imply an obtusene3s of perception that cannot in any way apply to Mr. Curtis. The point was one on which the whole question hangs. Properly managed the difficulty would have been restricted to small dimensions. And yet Mr. Curtis ingeniously omitted all reference to it, although (with this single and notable exception), he gave a clear history of the ease, from the defalcations of Mr. Macandrew to the practical reversal of, the Ministerial decision. The point were the" gross error in straightforward frank conduct and clear duty oi which the-Ministry were guilty in allowing Mr. Macandrew's election, and gazetting Governor had as full power to disallow that him aa Superintendent of Otago, if they meant to. make him such in name only. The election as he had to refuse to delegate the G-oldfields powers; and had.the Ministry caused such disallowance, the public at large would have supported that decision; but, having refused to exercise the veto, having allowed the election, and thereby d?clared Mr. Macandrew fit to be Superintendent of the Province, there was no warrant for refusing the delegation. It was a contemptible blunder of the Ministers, and they were miserably beaten, as all men should be who prefer a tricky policy to a straightforward one. In omitcing this important point, and defending to a certain extent the Government's duplicity, Mr. Curtis omitted the I chief element in the case, and one which would have destroyed his defence. But this reminds us^that Mr. Wells, in his speech ab Wakapuaka, was infinitely more unfair respecting the position of the Ministry in this matter, and did not scruple to .distort fact; for he represented that the Ministers actually gained a victory over the House, when everyone knows, and Mr. Curtis himself testifies to the fact, that they were signally beaten, and were compelled to retrace their steps, and were only saved, from utter numerical defeat by yielding the entire question at issue. This was not particularly ingenuous on the part of Mr. Wells, who did not on that point rightly inform his constituents on a matter notoriously different from the manner described by him. Mr. Curtis in alluding to the letter of Mr. Fox, quoted in Mr. Russell's evidence before

,ife§*CQ!tnmittee, states that., that, letter (of which only a very small portion is given) formed a certain ground work for an expec. tation. that a guarantee was contemplated. But he did not notice the very much stronger letter of Mr. Stafford, sent to Mr. Crosbio Ward, nor the manner in which the Bank of New Zealand had made uae of the same to dispose of Auckland debentures ; and in the face of this last letter, and the whole proceedings which followed and culminated i n the Debts Act, it seems to us exceedingly "illogical to say that Mr. Fox's letter Had "done all the mischief." That was accotn. plißhed last session; and Mr. Curtis tacitly admits that the letter of Mr. Fox could have had no actual influence on the understanding between the lenders and the borrowers, fop it in no wise affected the market value of debentures as Mr. Stafford's proceedings tliia year have done, to the Colonial loss and damage. One statement without-proof is as good aa another; and as we have proved the thinw before from the incontestable evidence of the Blue Books, we decline at this time to enter again into any elaborate refutation of Mr. Curtis's statement on the subject of Gt-overnor Browne's policy and the Waitara. The noncarrying out of that system he says was the cause of the borrowing of the three million loan. The plea is a bad one- and it can be proved from the dry details of Parliamentary records, that the disastrous failure of Governor Browne's premature and mistaken action in the Waitara business was the beginning of the war on an erconeous basis, without due provision, and ending in a destruction of our prestige in the eyes of the Maori, a prestige we only regained, by the costly struggle of the last three or four years. JSTo good case can be made out against Mr. Fox on that head, whatever may be .advanced against him for his mistake in taking part with Mr. Whitaker, in connection with whom Auckland's extravagance of public colonial funds reached its height, under the three million loan scheme of settlement, of which Mr. Domett, the now comfortable sinecurist, was the confessed parent. We have only space' to refer- to a point in Mr. Curtis's scheme for local self-Q-overn-ment as he terms the "idea," which is intended to take the place of the present" fact" of the Provinces. That is his notion of levying eight or ten systems of Income and Property Tax in the Colony; each Province fixing its own rate within a maximum sum settled by the General Assembly. Anyone practically acquainted with the working of the Income Tax Acts, must see how totally impracticable is such a scheme. Income Tax, to reach absentees, must be made to affect interest on capital and interest on debentures, together with profits on bank and otfter shares belonging to absentees. How would it work in the money market to find Nelson Income and Property Tax,at, say, sd. per pound of annual profit or income; Auckland, at Is. 6d.; Canterbury, at lOd.; Wellington, at Bd.; Otago, at Is., and so forth? The thing is utterly unworkable and would create an amount of confusion equal to what-would arise from similar diversity of Customs duties in the different provinces. Income and Property Tax must be an imperial or general tax. We have never yet seen anything like a demonstration attempted of the oft-repeated allegation that by going from general to local taxation a great saving would be effected. Let it be shown how. Mr. Curtis, not long since, admitted that a course like that he proposes —the abolition of provinces—would not lessen the cost of management; so that, in point of fact, the change would but come to a levying of new taxes locally with a multiplicity of local machinery for the purpose, thereby causing more cost, and in reality adding to our burdens. # No ; that is not the true scheme yet, and oursudden abolishera would find their fine theories swamped in that sea of working detail of which many of them can understand but little, else the? would not be so prompt in advancing scheme the working of which they always fail to explain. I