OVER-GOVERNED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 295, 24 April 1869, Page 3

OVER-GOVERNED.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE STAR. Sir, — The affairs of this colony have arrived at such a pitch, that Imperial interference is necessary. I will not take a Southern or Northern view, but as a colonist state my opinion. The colony is being governed to death. We have too much government. It stares us in the face in our daily avocation; it asserts itself in every Ordinance, which cripples the honest industry of the land; and it culminates in a Stafford Government, which rides roughshod over the liberties and expressed wi3hes of a people. It is not the war. The war is merely matte the pretext — the bugbear by which taxation crushes the life of colonisation out of us. It is not tbe Maori war that is depressing our energies, unpeopling our towns, arresting our progress—it is the feeble isis-directed system of government, based on imperfect representation, which has damned colonisation in New Zealand. Let us stem the decadence which has set in ; let us apply to England, ask her to send out a commission to make inquiry into the causes which are slowly but surely working out the ruin of a once prosperous settlement.' The principle of self-government is good, where all the circumstances are favourable, but in our ease it is de-colonization which England iB bound, if she loves New Zealand, to arrest with her strong arm. Your obedient servant, CURTIUS.