Province of Otago, N.Z.,
Superintendent’s Office,
Dunedin, 13th May, 1876.

Sir,—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 3rd instant in reply to mine of the 22nd ultimo.

Knowing as I do the vast amount of personal labor which must at present devolve upon you, and the extent to which your time necessarily must needs be occupied in connection with the constitutional changes upon which you have set your mind, it is with some compunction that I again address you on the subject.

You will, however, I trust, pardon me if I should attempt in this letter to convince you, and the few people in Otago who are in accord with your views, that you both have misapprehended the nature of Abolition, and “the consequences which will flow to the people of Otago” should Centralism become the policy of the colony.

I am persuaded that any one freed from party or personal feelings who compares the position of Otago as it is with what it will become under Abolition can have no difficulty in determining his course of action and deciding on his political platform.

I find on perusal of your last letter that your only answer to the grave charges I made against political party with which you are now allied, and against the action of the Colonial Government is a brushing away of those charges by saying “that they seem to you of a tu quoque nature, and out of place in this correspondence.” Such a remark makes me hesitate as to the object of the various letters you have addressed to me, and if you think that the breach of faith I pointed out, and the mismanagement of colonial finance can be set aside in the tu quoque manner you adopt, it is evident you altogether misapprehend the sincerity and underrate the intelligence of the people of Otago. You may rest assured that the people understand more of politics and of political history than you seem to realize.

It would appear from your letters that I dare not even hint at the extravagance and maladministration of the Colonial Government. You, however, are entitled to criticise the action of the people and their representatives, and also, as appears from paragraph 6 of your letter, to bring sweeping charges against civil servants who have no opportunity of self-defence. In none of my letters have I written one single word against any General Government officer. My allusion to the cost of the Clutha Railway went to show that all works could be more cheaply constructed under local administration than under Government at a distance.

You, however, bring charges of the most grave character against all the eminent engineers the Province of Otago has ever employed. I need scarcely remind you that many of the engineers, and I might add other professional men of ability who have been employed by the General Government, have been taken from Otago. It appears to me ungenerous, to say the least of it, to allege that the many able and eminent engineers that the province has employed, have wanted competent “engineering skill.”

Passing on to the charges you made against the Provincial Government of sacrificing the landed estate of the province, I can only say you are entirely astray as to your facts. As to this I would refer you to my letter to the Honourable the Colonial Secretary of the 4th instant, with enclosures, from which it will be seen that the action of the Provincial Executive has been not only strictly in accordance with law but with good policy. You are, of course, aware that the law admits of land 1200 feet above sea level being sold for 2os. an acre with consent of lessee; whereas the action of the Executive would have secured at least 2os. an acre for the same land.

You seem to impute it as a great crime on the part of the Provincial Legislature that it should dispose of mountain lands for the construction of branch railways. In my opinion, if the whole of the mountain tops could be converted into branch railways to-morrow, instead of being a loss, it would be a vast gain to the Province. The latter would be as productive to the State as the former, while there would be the advantage; in as far as Otago is concerned, that its mountain tops would be disposed of for railway construction within its own territory, instead of in the North Island, which will be the practical result of your present policy.

While upon this subject I must say that it seems somewhat extraordinary that in other parts of the Island, under that system of free selection you have so long warmly advocated, vast private estates are being created, and the finest agricultural land alienated from the Crown in large blocks, and no objection raised; while in the only province in New Zealand where any efforts for conserving agricultural land for settlement have been made, fault should have been found with its land administration.

Because the Otago Provincial Government chooses to reserve the agricultural land for settlement on deferred payments, and to sell the hill tops sooner than let its best agricultural land go to auction to be purchased by the speculator, its action is condemned by the Colonial Government.

If your Government proposes that no person shall acquire or hold more than a defined area of land you will be inaugurating a new policy in dealing with Crown lands. As yet the Legislature has not fixed any limit to a man’s holding; on the contrary, it has made provision. See section 150 “Otago Waste Lands Act, 1872,” which shows that it contemplated sales of high lands at ten shillings an acre.

Were the action of Otago contrasted with that of Canterbury and the other provinces it would, I think, be found that the contrast would reflect no discredit on this province. Of course I refrain from even hinting as to how the Colonial Government has dealt with the lands under its control. I venture to predict that when the passions created by party feeling have subsided, and the true circumstances of the case come to be understood, the action of the Provincial Government which you condemn will stand the test of a rigid scrutiny.

I cannot but regard the attempt on the part of the Colonial Government to coerce what is supposed to be a non-political body like the Waste Lands Board as uncalled for, if not illegal and reprehensible. It is the small cloud in the horizon which foretells what Centralism really means.

You say that were Otago an independent colony it would mean “centralised power in Dunedin and financial difficulties of very grave character.” No doubt were Otago an independent colony the central power would have to be somewhere, and it requires but little acumen to see that it would be infinitely more advantageous for the province that the central power should be at Dunedin than at Wellington. Moreover there is this marked difference between the Provincial Council at Dunedin and the General Assembly at Wellington, that whereas the whole policy of the one has been to economise, to decentralise, and to divest its Executive of power in favour of local bodies, that of the other has been exactly the reverse.