THE COMING SESSION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 260, 26 April 1878, Page 7

THE COMING SESSION.

The session of the New Zealand Parliament, -which will commence about the beginning of July next, will be one of the most memorable in the annals of the Colony. The limitation of the duration of Parliament to three years is a measure that will commend itself to all observant men. The extension of the franchise somewhat , so that every citizen resident for some time in the country and taking an interest in public matters shall be able to exercise a voice in the election of those by whom he is to be governed, does not contain anything revolutionery, and is bound to meet with general approval. I'be readjustment of the representation is admitted on all sides to be a necessity, in order that insignificant districts of the colony may not be able by a coalition to acquire an undue preponderance in the legislature. But these measures are the preliminary steps on the great road of Reform. They are necessary to secure a proper expression of the people's will in Parliament, and are consequently of primary importance. But when the House of Representatives shall be really what its name implies, and the popular will shall be directly and sensibly felt within its portals, then great questions will come to the f roDt, questions which will concern not this generation only, but which will affect the destinies of an unborn posterity. The first great question will be the constitutional one, and until that is decisively settled all other measures will have little prospect of being attended to. Some think that the abortive county system has been accepted by the people of New Zealand, but those who do so labour under an extraordinary hallucination. The constitution of this colony has been destroyed, the pillars of the. State have been torn down, and for the present all is chaos. "We are living in a tentative state. But yet a little while, until all traces of the old regime shall have been swept away, and the " new men " foretold by the Premier shall occupy the seats of our legislative chamber, and then a constiUition consistent with the principles of freedom and progress will be demanded by the people, and the dragon of Centralism will be effectually overthrown. One Parliament for this great colony will never suffice. The people of the North and the South have diverse interests and separate industries to promote, and each must have an independent political existence. Nature constituted New Zealand as two separate countries, and the deductions of political science go to show that under such circumstances the only feasible form of government is Federalism. Dean Swift says : " But man we find the only creature, "Who, led by Folly, combats Xature ; And where she loudly cries forbear, With obstinacy fixes there." These lines fitly apply to those who in the British House of Commous without consideration or debate persistently and stubbornly resist the just demands of the Irish people for self-government. They are equally applicable to our great political scientists in the colony, who, in opposition to the teachings of the greatest minds of the age, attempted to force an obnoxious and unwieldy central system upon the people, and to give into the hands of a petty bureaucracy in s distant city the entire control of our lives and liberties. '• A united country and one common purse " is a shallow and delusive cry. "Wherefore should there be one purse ? Can a minister sitting in his bureau in Wellington dispense the revenues of the most distant parts of New Zealand, and understand the genuine requirements of immense districts, that peradventurehe may never have seen, better than the local inhabitants from whom the revenues are wrung ! And how can the local legislation of such places — absolutely necessary for their progress, if not for their very existence — be carried on in a Parliament hundreds of miles away, to which the communication is irregular and costly, and the time of which is monopolised by large general questions upon which depend the life of the colony as a whole ? No ! A united country is desirable where a nation is surrounded by powerful and aggressive neighbours, and when for its own preservation it is necessary to maintain a great military establishment. But are we so situated here, and is there any adjacent country menacing our independance or our liberty ? Nobliing of the kind. We are placed here under propitious skies and with a salubrious clime, with the materials to constitute a great nation, free from the embarrassments of older countries, our soil undisputed and our freedom unbounded. Here we can devise a model government, and raise up a happy, contented, and prosperous people. From our standpoint we can note the failings of all great peoples who . have gone before and trace the lights and shades of their national character. The jurisprudence of Greece as well as the philosophy taught by immortal t minds in the sacred groves of her Academy are extant for our ' •struction, and the misfortunes and downfall of many nations re- . jrded on the scroll of History warn us to beware how we mould the constitution under which the millions who shall come after us will have to live. In such a position then, all the thought and intellect within our shores must be devoted to the consideration of what is the most applicable and enlightened form of government for this colony to possess, and no ill-conceived or hastily constructed abortion ought to be accepted. As I have remarked above, until the constitutional question is decided, any other subject will have small likelihood of commanding its legitimate share of attention. This I think is a prima facie certainty. Education, a matter supremely important, affecting not only the temporal welfare of the people, but also their eternal life beyond the grave, will probably have no chance of being fully ventilated during the next session of Parliament. If New Zealand is ever to rise to a high position of true temporal greatness, religion, morality, and science must flow concurrently into the minds of its people, aud our laws must be impregnated with the leaven of Christianity. Otherwise what would be the value of mere material prosperity ? We would possess the tinsel and gltttering dross, which are the fruits of worldly success, but the unalloyed metal which would secure for us admission to a celestial home we would cry for despairingly in vain. Let our legislators not forget the fate of Imperial Rome-«- " The mistress of the earth. Whom freedom nurtured at its early birth," and contemplate the instability of that greatness founded upon Gotllessness and gold.

I sincerely hope that our noble minded Premier will bestow upon this question of education his gravest attention, nnd adhere to tho views he enunciated in his speech on tho second reading of the present Act in the last session of Parliament. In common "with ever}' right feeling Christian, I tremble at the conception of a Now Zealand nurtured with the milk oil secularism, but the picture of a mighty nation founded upon religious principles, great in arts, great in manufactures, great in commerce, but above all great in righteousness and morals, is our beau-ideal Britain oE the South. To realise this, the foundations now being laid down must be cemented with religion, and the insignia of the Saviour must be emblazoned on the banner we mean to uphold. W. J. N. Auckland, April 10, 1878.