Wellington Independent TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1871.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3254, 18 July 1871, Page 2

Wellington Independent TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1871.

The great question of " How we are governed" has lately been discussed al both ends of the colony ; in Dunedin by that impressible wit Mr Haughton, in Auckland by that unsurpassable cynic and special pleader Mr Gillies. The- first showed us the absurdities and complexities of our constitution, like a merry cicerone pointing out the incongruities in the style and the number of droughty passages in a building, portions of which have been put up at different times by architects of varied tastes and as necessity seemed to require; but cheerfully pointing out how some of tbe old buttresses may be now dispensed with, as the recent additions have left them nothing to support, and how as tho portions lately added by tbe present architect get one by one consolidated, the original portions whose place they supply can be safely tuken down under his inspection. The other ap proaches the subject of our " system of government" as a prosy physician of* tlie old school when called to a case Me looks grave, shakes his head, pronounces at once that it is a very bad case in language sufficiently precise to imply the profundity of his own knowledge and the good fortune of the patient in having called liim in, but sufficiently vague to cover any treatment be may decide to prescribe and any event tbat may be brought about by the vis medical riv natures. Irregularities of tbe patient he closely inquires into, and though some of these may correct tbe others, be shakes bis bead gravely at each, piling Pelion upon Ossa, till the patient and his friends have become so awed by the solemnity of bis manner and tbe rotundity of bis periods, tbat they wait with anxious hearts the result of his diagnosis, and grasp with frantic eagerness at the faint hopes he allows to glimmer through the darkness. He at last prescribes an alternative choice of two or three nauseous specifics of widely different properties and concluding with a melancholy shako of the head he tells them that if tho pationt is not much better after persevering in them, they must send for him, and he will see if nothing else can be done. He neither states distinctly the grounds of his diagnosis, nor explains how the remedies he prescribes (if indeed naming two or three nauseous doses iv succession without giving any preference to any be called prescribing) are expected to act. Above all, he believes so firmly in '-heroic surgery" that he leaves little for tbe healing power of nature to eff. ct. Such is, we think, a very fair estimate of Mr Gillies' speech, to which for the present we shall confine cur remarks. He begins by inquiring into the past irregularities of tbe colony, and after tbe manner of an Esculapius of the olden school, he calls the symptoms of robust health and the evidences of a vigorous constitution, causes of disease. " Here were six isolated communities," he says, speaking of the original provinces, with different origins and different aspirations, knowing little of each othor, and bristling with the antagonisms of competitors in ihe race of colonisation. Is it a wonder that our Constitution was not perfect '? Is not tho wonder rather that it has worked so long wiih so little alteration. Now, this is going back to the old theory we have, throughout the recess i.mv drawing lo a close, taken every occasion to explode. It is tho theory that " a system of Government" I is of more importance than progress in I the " race of colonisation." We have no sympathy with such a theory. We cannot away wilh it. Give us activity and progress in colonising operations, and it matters very little to us whether the provinces are governed by any uniform system, whether ihey arc divided into shires, or swallowed up by their more powerful neighbors. "We say," said the Colonial Treasurer in his financial statement, " that we attach far more importance to the progress of colonisation, than to the maintenrnce of any form of Government." lf by a perfect system of Government, therefore, Mr Gillies means a procrustean system to arise from an arbitrary and enforced fusion of the different colonising agencies in the colony, then we answer at once that we are better without ifc. The attempt to develop that system will be perilous and abortive. We cannot expresss our views on tbis point more tersely than by quoting from tbat financial statement, which, as Mr Gillies empirically condemned without duly considering it, so he has failed to appreciate the assistance it would have given him had he at last read it before he spoke on "our system of Government." '• It was an ambitious effort, said-

Mr Yogel, to attempt to settle the colony from so many points ; bvt the effort was made, tho work was effected, and its consequences survive ; you have to deal with a number of different committics. Provincialism represents not only their different ideas, and the different circumstances in which they are placed ; but it represents, also, their strong protests against an indiscriminate, precipitate, and arbitrary fusion. — .Interprovincial barriers will in time be removed ; but tbe removal should be effected througli tho agency of prosperity, not of adversity." Any attempt to divert the attention of the colony from the work of colonisation, by settiDg before it, as the beginning of a perfect system, any changes in its existing institutions wliich tbat work does not necessitate, will be a public calamity. Let the works now put before it be vigorously carried out, and the constitution will be found elastic enough to adjust itself to tbe necessities of each case. Let tbe railways go on, and it will be found that the existing anomalies in our system of Government will either disappear in the very course of their formation, or will, at least, be removed entirely by their bringing tho different communities so closely together as to make Ihem one in their interests and sympathies and aspirations. In other words, the complete unity of the colony, and "a perfect system of Government," will be naturally evolved ; they cannot be "empirically" arrived ot. Time, the great innovator, will have to do much. "More real progress will be made in the recovery of the patient, by strengthening the general health, than by hastily applying specific but nauseous remedies. Tbe malady will be thrown off in a state of convalescence, brought about by nourishing the system, which will not yield to the most heroic treatment that can be suggested by the physician of tbe North.