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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 46

Local Charges

Local Charges.

If we suppose that the remaining services of the country would be performed under Local Legislatures, we should have them dealing with an expenditure of £1,188,649 To analyse this expenditure accurately, it would be necessary to have page 6 House in the General Assembly of the Colony. They must be started fairly on their new career by such an equitable provision as will atone for inequalities produced by the past expenditure of loans and land fund in particular localities. Beyond this provision, they must raise their own revenue and ought assuredly to do it better than the General Assembly can do it for them. The Railway Revenue, the Property Tax and other direct taxes might be handed over to them. To the General Government would remain the Customs and other indirect taxes and the fees earned in the administration of the Departments left to it. The public debt, the Natives, the Supreme Court, and all work affecting the colony as a whole, would remain with the Assembly. The Crown .Lands could be better dealt with provincially in a country in which uniformity of price and of administration has already been found impracticable. Whether there should be two provinces or four, or what other number, ought to depend on the area that can be conveniently administered from a common centre, and yet be sufficiently large to enable its Government to raise an adequate revenue. Administration in the provinces, as well as in the General Government, should be decentralised so as to secure the distribution of power and patronage. As many local bodies as possible should be elected at one and the same time, so as to impose the least burden on the electors in accordance with the custom in all democratic countries. Still further following that custom, it might be well in cases like Road Boards, for example, to vest the administration in a lesser number of members. It is a question whether we should not have a keener sense of responsibility and a more faithful performance of duty if the work were left, in many cases, to a single, annually elected overseer, than when left to a Board which too often serves to shield from responsibility the one or two active members under whose control it may fall, These are important points in order that Local Self-Government may be conducted with the least possible burden to the people, but they are details which it is unnecessary now to consider. I have endeavoured rather to show in broad outline the grounds on which Local Self-Government is to be regarded as a paramount question, and the means by which, in my humble opinion, it can be best secured. Attempts were made by the late Ministry to replace by nominated "Roads Construction Boards" and other composite and fancifully constructed bodies, the provincial institutions which some of their number took the most active part in destroying. It is useless now to discuss proposals that were condemned as soon as heard. Ministries, by plunging the country into deeper debt, may avoid a settlement of the troublesome subject a little longer. The field is still a blank, but they cannot leave it a blank without imperilling the highest interests of our descendants even more than those which immediately concern ourselves. We leave to those descendants a great public debt. Let us also leave to them the priceless blessing of full and perfect self-government, without which we may build up a rich and powerful country, but assuredly neither a prosperous nor a contented people.

Vignette

H. Brett, General Steam Printer, Wyndham-street, Auckland.