LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

Timaru Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 1833, 7 August 1895, Page 4

LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

As bearing upon the talked-of new local government scheme, which is to create a number of large local bodies that will perform the work now done by so many small ones, a Southland contemporary quotes the following extract from a speech delivered by Lord Salisbury as not without interest ■■: — " There is m modern society a natural tendency towards the enormous and big —a passion for huge things. You know that for a long time we went on making our guns bigger and bigger, until they got to 100 tons, and bo big that one of them bent before the other could be Eut up. So, too, we make enormous attleships; and now, I believe, the general opinion is that we have gone too far, and so I think it will be found that a vast machinery, vast beyond all history and experience, for the ministering of our domestic affairs is a mistake. These things have to be done by people who do it for nothing, by people who give their own time, very much to their honour and credit ; and I hope it will be so m Parliament and everywhere else, that we may depend on gratuitous labour. But if you depend on gratuitous labour, you must not overwork the labourer ; men cannot give their whole time to their country, and the only result of your overloading your servants, who serve you for nothing with so much public spirit, is that gradually their grasp of the affairs committed to their hands must diminish, and the whole machine will fall into the hands of the unseen paid officials of the Council. That is the great danger you have to fear."