POLITICAL NOTES & NOTIONS

Observer, Volume 2, Issue 31, 16 April 1881, Page 328

POLITICAL NOTES & NOTIONS

The City Council has resolved on getting tramways.' The suburban corporations are heartily with it, and the people almost unanimously eager to see the project carried to maturity. One would have supposed this to be enough,* but a still furtherordeal must be passed. The General Assembly— a body of 140 Lords and Commons— must also be consulted, and nothing can be definitely done till it is pleased to approve. That Assembly consists of gentlemen from all parts of an exceptionally long and diversely featured country. Few of them will know anything of the tramway question in Auckland, and fewer still will care about it. It sits at an expense of about £500 per day, and has its hands always full of similar work which could be better done by people on the spot. We mention the tramway question, but it is only one of dozens of a purely local kind, constantly being brought forward. When is all this to end ? When will people refuse to put up any longer with a system that takes the control of their own local affairs so completely and at such enormous cost out of their own hands ?

The answer may be nearer at hand than many suppose. With the stoppage of the borrowing system the subsidies to local bodies will cease. They must then depend upon themselves. The Assembly will be able to do nothing for them and its interference will become a burden, and an unmitigated nuisance. The people of the colony will then probably wake up to the enormous waste of money and energy which centralism entails. They will see that with a proper system of decentralisation and local Government, there need not be one-half the number of members in the Legislature, one-half the number of Ministers, one-third the number of Under-Secretaries (the real governors of the country just now), or one-third the number of officials in the huge Government caravanserai in Wellington. The saving of money would be great, but the revival of the old political vigour would be even a greater gain, and give new energy to local progress.

Does it never strike our readers how quietly Auckland men are being pushed aside while the South is taking to itself all the patronage of the public offices. It is rare enough to lind an Auckland man gaining promotion even in his own province. It is still more rare to see him getting it in any other. In Wellington the Government buildings teem with the old provincial officers of Otago and Canterbury, avlio fill the highest, as well as many of the lower positions in the State. It is rare to see an Auckland face among the crowd, and if one does turn up, it is sure to be in an inferior office. Do not let it be supposed that this is due to any inferiority in Auckland men. They are admittedly equal in all respects, but the increasingpower of the South is telling in this as in all other expenditure of the public money. That power will be still greater if there be a redistribution of seats next Session unaccompanied by some thorough measure of Local Government which wemki relieve the Assembly of its duties as a great Boaul of "Works, and reduce and distribute Ministerial patronage proportionally.

The success of the Property Tax — as a tax — is now proved, but Major Atkinson has set a good deal of nonsense going about its rectifying the finances of the colony. It will do nothing of the kind. Major Atkinson's estimates were for 12 months' receipts against only ] 1 months' expenditure. This was effected by funding, as part of the duulic debt, the £250,000 of liabilities left over from ISSO. But that can only be done once, and the Treasuier, for ISSI-2, will have the full 12 months' to provide for as usual. The savings effected in the expenditure are not likely to exceed, at the furthest, the liabilities funded for last year, but which cannot be funded for this. Nor must it be forgotton that the expenditure from revenue does not include subsidies, school buildings, nor public works of any kind. The army we are maintaining on the West Coast is also largely paid from loans, and when thcloan money ceases, all this expenditure must cease with it. The colony will then be in the proud position of meeting all outside claims upon it, but only by being left destitute of funds for internal purposes. We need not say anything more to show how grave are the problems which this condition of affairs will raise. Major Atkinson eschews them altogether But he knows well that the difficulty exists, and that no one is more responsible for it than himself as a member of the Yogel Government and as Premier of the colony during the time when the great liabililities, which are ca\ising the trouble, were authorised and the great borrowing policy in full fling.

The Treasurer told his constituents at Patea that the general results of the year promised to "be satisfactory. He hoped the revenue would quite cover the expenditure, but he kept in the background the fact we have referred to that the expenditure was only for 11 months, while the revenue was for 12. As to Public Works, the Government would confine themselves to completing main lines of railway, but it would be impossible to pay subsidies. ' The Treasurer was kind enough to add that there must be special taxation, and it was much better to let the local bodies do the taxing by themselves We doubt if the local bodies will be so so ready to accept the gracious gift Avhile the huge central bureaus are absorbing so much of the country's resources. There never was in New Zealand a Ministry so thoroughly official as the present, so little capable of looking "beyond the Government to the people whose welfare that Government must not be allowed, at all costs, to impede. The Government is everything and the people are only convenient because they find the means of supporting it.

It is an inversion of the natural order of things, and it will be for the people themselves to see it righted at the next election. They will have to see that the system which entails such ruinous charges is reformed and the expenditure reduced. The Treasurer gives no hint, and probably has no idea, of change in this direction. All he can see is that so much money must be provided, and so much taxation put on — by hook or by crook — to get it.

Sir Cmcroft Wilson was the fortunate owner of very large estates in Canterbury. They exceed 60,000 acres, and in chide some of the best land in that tine province. Sir Crarcroft has just died, and has, after the English fashion, left a will which bequeaths this enormous property to a number of his living descendants, who are to take successive life interests. At their death the property is to go to the eldest son of the last tenant for life. A magnificent block of country will thus be locked up for certainly 80 years, and, perhaps, for a century when the tenant of that date will be able to repeat the deadly process for an indefinite period longer. It is the English law applied for the first time in New Zealand. It is an example which other great land owners will not be slow to follow if it be allowed to pass unchallenged.

The future of New Zealand will not, in that case, be difficult to forecast. A century hence we shall have the colony largely composed of great properties locked up from sale, locked up from subdivision, locked up from improvement, and held as life tenants by people who will probably leave them and spend the rent out of the country. The vista of dependent tenants, absent landlords, and hard-fisted stewards, which we thus have opened to our view, is not pleasant. One hears a good deal about the impossibility of this occurring, and that the present owners will be obliged to sell. But this will not apply if the fashion of entail is once fairly set and if we have an immigration of English capitalists who can hold the land, and will not be obliged to part with it. The question arises whether it was worth while for a number of enterprising people to found this colony merely that it might fall into the hands of a few territorial magnates, who would, by virtue of their cash power, become the masters of the colony and of the children of those who founded it. Surely a Government having due regard to the welfare of the whole of the people could prevent this by timely legislation, and could make it clear, once and for ever, that New Zealand shall not become another Ireland with its absentee landlords, and helpless tenants squeezed to death by those landlord's agents.

The number of people living abroad, and drawing great incomes from New Zealand, is already larger than most people suppose. Take, for example, the son of Sir Donald Maclean, who cannot be drawing less than £10,000 a-ycar. Sir Charles Clifford is another, and Governor "Weld is in the same category. They are only a few out of many. Delay in this matter is full of danger. Prevention is easy, but cure "will be difficult if the disease is allowed to gain head.

It is one of the chief points on which the next elections ought to turn. The danger is great and imminent, despite the easy-going people who pooh-pooh the possibility of the crushing evils falling upon u.s, which have destroyed the yeomanry and peasantry of England, and have caused the terrible condition to which the peasantry and farmers of Ireland are now reduced. A man ought to have power io deal with the land as he likes during his life, but he has no right to ask his fellow citizens to lot him keep a grip upon it, to their prejudice, generations after he has died, and been forgotten.