Wellington Independent MONDAY, MAY 22, 1871.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3205, 22 May 1871, Page 2

Wellington Independent MONDAY, MAY 22, 1871.

We lately attempted to show the absur- 1 dity of those who think that the new Executive can not " do any good until they have turned out the present Ministry," and that our newly-elected Superintendent must pass an interval of official torpor until the meeting of the Assembly," where alone," as our evening contemporary a few days ago solemnly assured the people of Wellington "he can carry- out the ends he has in view for the regeneration of the province." If any of the readers of that journal had begun to bewail the dreary official hybernation of so able a Superintendent for so long a time, they must have discovered from more recent articles, that their cornmiserration was entirely uncalled for. That the Hon. Mr Fitzherbert can do much for Wellington in the Assembly we do not doubt ; but the Superintendent of Wellington can do far more. We had the gratification of putting before our readers the principles of two most important bills now being drafted for — not the Assembly — but the Provincial Council of Wellington. Yes : this despised Provincial Council will have the power to pass the two most important measures that can affect the future of the province. And Provincialism, that "effete and corrupt system" whose " speedy abolition" our contemporary has so perseveringly advocated, will yet, we venture to believe, have done great things for Welington long before the Assembly sits. We hope the day is not far distant when the province will be able to point with pride to roads and schools equal to those for which Otago and Canterbury are justly famed. This hope we cherish from observing the course the Provincial Executive are so wisely following, viz., adopting the very same political machinery that in these provinces has proved so successful. It must be a subject of great rejoicing throughout the country districts that the " regeneration of the province" is not put off to a more convenient season, and is not to be made dependent on the deliberations of an Assembly in which their wants and wishes so little are likely to be studied. It is peculiarly gratifying to us to see the course «c long ago pointed out closely followed. The settlers in the province have had a bitter experience of the unfitness of the Assembly to legislate on the subject of roads. The complaints, litigations, un certainties, and wranglings of the last year must have taught them that Mr Fitzherbert was very correct in asserting that such a body is utterly unfit for " parish business." Of the large class of our settlers (the small farmer) there are few in the lower, and none at all in the upper house. In the Provincial Council, on the other hand, this class is most fully represented. In the work of dividing the province into suitable road districts, and in determining the rate, mode, and amount of assessment, and in arranging the details of a new system of administration, it would be a manifest absurdity to suppose that a Legislature, unsympathetic in one branch, and actually hostile in another, to small farmers, would take as much care to protect their interests as one largely composed of small farmers themselves. This parish business, as the Superintendent justly said, is actually of more concernment to us than matters seemingly more important. "It is," as he happily styled it, our " very bread and butter." It is, therefore, wisely, and according to the spirit of representative institutions, left in our own hands. Bitterly does Otago now rue the day when Mr Donald Reid presented the petition of 78 settlers in the Clutha to the General Assembly asking them to interfere in the administration of the waste lands of the Crown. That was a blow to the province from the effects of which she is only now beginning to recover. She has awaked at last from the hideous nightmare of the Reid administration,

but affected with a fearful lassitude. The new Executive are, we see, to meet the Council with the surplus Mr Yogel left in the Treasury when ousted by Mr Reid, not only all gone, but £50,000 or £60,000 on the wrong side of the ledger. The Reid Government, to the folly of resisting the Hundreds Act passed by the Assembly, added the still greater folly of resisting the Public Works Act of last session ; and the General Government are actually opening up the lands, and constructing the railway to the Clutba in spite of them. Now that wiser counsels prevail, we expect soon to hear of both matters being relegated to the Secretary of Land and Works (Mr C. E. Plaughton, M.H.R.) ; and as in all the other provinces, Wellington not excepted, the Colonial and the Provincial Governments working amicably together in carrying out the colonising policy agreed to last session. The course adopted by the new Executive implies faith in our resources ; and it is very cheering to see that its adoption haß already " done good." Our evening contemporary that lately used to bewail in the most doleful terms our " bankruptcy, ruin, and disaster," now asserts " without fear of confutation" (even by the " Canterbury Press") that the landed estate of the province ig, in point of value, second to that of no province in New Zealand," and roundly asserts, what we bavc long tried in vain to convince him of, that " it will be impossible for us to abrogate our provincial institutions without forfeiting the position in the colony which we ought to hold, and sacrificing a large ' portion of our property." We may expect, therefore, that our " utter ruin " will not henceforth through its columns be so blazoned to the world, and the fact that the mere enunciation of this policy has brought about the conversion j of the " Evening Post," shows that we were correct in stating that it had already done some good. That this con- 1 version, though sudden, is sincere, we cannot doubt. The very words first used by Mr Stafford to the mysterious Reform League of Wellington, and often since by our contemporary, when more than usually in earnest, have been employed to set it forth. Perhaps it is thereby intended to explain to Mr Stafford, with the greatest possible precision, that the " Post" no longer holds with him in thinking that the immediate abolition of provincial institutions " will raise the political capital of the colony to its proper position," seeing that it now " advises the people of Wellington," (and the Reform League, we suppose, more especially) that the policy of seeking the regeneration of the province, not through the abolition, but through the legislation, of the Provincial Council, is " a policy which holds out a hope of raising the political capital of the colony to its proper position." We cordially agree with our contemporary in his support of the Provincial Executive, in bis newly-found faith in the resources of the proviuce, and in his balance sheet of our provincial assets and liabilities. We remember the time, and that not many months ago, when a similar statement and balance sheet brought out and read by Mr Pearce in the Odd Fellows' Hall, met with a very different acceptance from our contemporary, and we hope we are correct in inferring that the general policy advocated by that gentleman on that occasion, aud which Mr Bunny would have also supported (had he been allowed to speak), now meets with his approbation and support. If so, we may hope for more cheerful and hopeful views of the colony and more favorable estimates of its splendid resources. If " the bankrupt province of Wellington" turns out so well in this new arithmetic, what value may we not put upon the estates of such provinces as Otago, j Canterbury, and Auckland ! How sound must be the condition of the colony, and how rational must appear I the policy of the Government and the financial proposals of Mr Yogel, which only aim at doing for the colony what the " Post " now advocates for a part of , it — the province of Wellington !