The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Morning News. TUESDAY. DECEMBER 2, 1873.

Auckland Star, Volume IV, Issue 1204, 2 December 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Morning News.

TUESDAY. DECEMBER 2, 1873.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For'the wrong that noeds resistance, For the future in the distance, Ami the good that we can do

We announce in our telegraphic columns the successful floating of a sugar-refining company at Wellington. Rejoicing, as everyone wishing well to the general welfare should at the initiation of any colonial enterprise, we cannot but admit to a pained feeling at seeing all the good things being picked up by the South while our hands hang down in listless idleness. Why has this enterprise, so often urged here, not found a home n Auckland ? That it is profitable, experience has abundantly shown. That this city is the nearest in New Zealand to the sugar plantations of Queensland and Fiji, with one of which we have present, and with the other immediately approaching steam communication, a glance at the map will prove ; and that our situation is adapted for distributing to the rest of New Zealand this product of commerce and of industry is equally incapable of being questioned. That avc have among us money lying idle and seeking for legitimate investment is a fact of which we are informed and assured ad nauseam ; yet

such an enterprise as this is not to be mentioned among us, or if mentioned is passed with a shrug of the shoulders. And yet next week or so, when the Wellington shares are placed on our market, our investors will rush after one another like sheep, and when on the allotment they find that they have received but one tenth of their applications they will call lire from heaven or any place else to destroy the Southern "swindlers," who won't give them enough of shares in the sugar reiinery. Why is this ? Why this looking away wildly from Auckland for means of investment for Auckland money? Why this want of confidence in local enterprise '( It is because there is a shadow resting on the conduct of our local enterprises. It is becauso the hands of the priests in tho temple of Plutua are dirty. It is because there is scarcely ever a local company started, but thoso whose hands are engaged in it have ulterior objects to serve. It is because either from mental inability or obliquity of moral vision they are incapable of looking to the legitimate fruita of honestly working out the objects presented to the public eye, and can only seij in the chances of finding fools to take shares and be fleeced, ;the hopes of reward. Thisiathe curseof Auckland, and this will be the bane of our progress until in the course of nature those who have hold of the purse-strings shall have rotted off the earth, or until we have an importation of pure fre&h blood that will dilute or neutralise the corruption that has poisoned our whole commercial system. Meanwhile we suppose we must continue to hang our hands and gaze sorrowfully on the lise and growth of enterprises elsewhere. Here we are not likely indeed to see another swindling enterprise successfully launched. We have reached at least that stage when the appearance of dirty hands in connection with a speculation damns it, and wo may recognise in this the approach of the time when those associated with such things in the public mind must ■ cease to stand in the way of honest and legitimate enterprise. Not even excepting'a woollen factory, there is no class of industry presenting so fine a field for the operations of a company as a sugar refinery. All honor to little Wellington for being the first:to occupy that field in New Zealand • but execrations deep and bitter should be the expression of our public feeling respecting, our local capitalists who while looking out with mouth and ejes for some swindling speculation in which they may fleece the unsuspecting, have overlooked •an enterprise so promising, so legitimate, and so beneficial both to promoters and to the public as this business of sugar refining