".financial, disasters." It is possible that we might have avoided much more than " financial disaster f in such.a case, though the connection between the existence of the General Government and such a catas trophe is not very clear, seeing that the Provinces-had learned the art of borrow ingmbney as well as the Central Go vernment 1- -arid, have manifested, in some instances, a tendency to speculate in that line, which wasoiily kept within

due bounds by the Central Power. The wisdom of the policy of mortgaging the revenue for purposes of great public utility, is one thing ; the impossibility of that policy's having ever been initia ted in the event of the Provin.cs having been left to grow into independent Colonies, is another consideration. But tlie Standard writer denies the tor mer and asserts the latter, without the smallest attempt to establish his posi tion by argument. According z0 him the loan system has proved disastrous, is destined to turn out a failure, and would never have existed if there had not been a Central Government, his ob jections to which he states as follows : —

" Tlie aims and objects of the Centi-.il "ists, as.of tlie company, were well " meant ; but neither of them took " sufficiently into account the physical " features of the country, and the " natural rather than the political ob c< stacles which stood in the way of " those aims and objects being success - " fully realised. * * * Those ob •' stacles exist in the features of the " country which make ■ inter-commun l( cation difficult and expensive, and " they have been aug-mented by the " mode in which it has been colonised, " not from one centre, but almost simul " taneously from many different and dis " tant ones. This truth, we say, the " Procrusteans, or Anglo-maniacs, as " well as the Times, will perhaps, when v too late, acknowledge." If some New Zealand Kip Winkle had written this on awaking from a twenty years' sleep, one could understand it. No body thinks of denying- that the time has been when the two Islands could not have been governed from one centre, or that Provincalism has clone good in its time; but we have to legislate for the present and the future, not for the past. 