The Evening Star. FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 1870.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2273, 19 August 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star. FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 1870.

We Anglo-Saxons are a strangely purblind people. We are bad organisers. So long as all goes well there is no care for the future, and in consequence, when a difficulty arises, we’are not prepared to meet it, and are astounded to find that an act in itself well intended is productive of evil. Unfortunately experience seems to be of no use to ns. The examples and warnings of history are unknown to most of our Provincial legislators, and even events passing under immediate observation fail to lead to any sound conclusions from them. Is it not a disgrace to our boasted advancement in knowledge, to our institutions and modes of action towards our fellow-countrymen, that a batch of two hundred and fifty immigrants cannot be brought into the country without putting us into the utmost perplexity what to do with them ; while several hundreds of Chinese can be brought into the couu-

try, and placed at once in circumstances where their labor is not only c self-supporting but fortune-making 1 J In disposing of them there is no coufusion—no knocking at the door of the j Provincial Buildings to demand a job at road-making or stone-breaking—no 1 reviling one another, as in the case of ( our own countrymen—no finding fault ( that late comers have had the best , work given them. They have merely ] permissive right to work ; and almost without their doings being known by the settlers, they quietly dig and get rich, and take their savings away. Were it not that we have faith in truth, we should deem it expedient to deal very cautiously with this subject, for unfortunately sound principles are so little cared about that national antipathies are easily roused. consider the Chinese valuable aids in Colonial development, but we do not wish them as permanent settlers. Our desire is rather to make the Province a home for Britons. The Chinese are a profit to our farmers and storekeepers only to the extent of their necessities, but they add nothing to wealth beyond the profits that the farmer and our distributors make by supplying their needs. The surplus product of their own labor is taken away from the country. Were it not for their labor, the gold they obtain would have remained in the earth, useless and unproductive ; and in a cosmopolitan point of view, it is better that Chinese should have the use of it than that it should remain idle. But that is a poor compliment to our genius as a people. We may boast of the liberty of our institutions, but unfortunately that word liberty is made an excuse "for all sorts of indolence and folly. It seems to be thought not only consistent with permitting a man to reject or accept work, but with accepting legislative or executive respousibili- ' ties without understanding them. We have a theory amongst us that it is no part of the duty of the Government to find work for the population : and we accept it as true. But every truth is to be accepted with limitations, according to circumstances ; for, on the other hand, it is the duty of a Government to see that no man perishes of want; and it is better that he should Work for what he is supplied with, than that he should eat the bread of idleness. Next comes the theory that no Government has a right to enter upon mercantile or other prof) table occupationsthat is, we suppose, they shall not lie employers of labor. The idea here is that Governments shall not enter into competition with capitalists. In this we cordially agree. But how squares this theory with breaking stones at 3s. a yard 1 Now since a stone-breaking machine would do this for very much less, and perform the work very much better, the community loses by this mode of temporaiy employment. It gets bad work done at a high price. Quite in keeping with liberty, no doubt. If this were unavoidable, no one ought to find fault; but we hold that all the men who have been unemployed during the last four months might have been working on the goldfields with advantage to themselves and with profit to the Provines, There is nothing like figures, and as we do not purpose exaggeration, we shall be quite content to submit them in illustration ; of our position. On the 17th May, the petition of the unemployed, signed by i 350 names, was presented to the Provincial Council. We accept that number as our basis. First lin4o of our adult males was tlien unemployed, and we may fairly say has been for seventeen weeks. Beckoning their labor worth five shillings a day each, as suggested by the Committee of the Provincial •Council, the loss to these men amounts to very nearly £9OOO, But tins is not all. Tins £OOOO is not spread over the whole community, but is borne by a particular class; and the estimate is formed, not upon the value of their labor, but upon a scale of wages based upon the idea that they would bo able to live upon that amount until they could meet with more profitable employment. Now, what nonsense it is to have people writing about men out of work one-third of the yeai) saving money to buy land with, as some wiseacres have had the hardihood to do in the columns of our contemporary. And what short-sightedness it is not to take a lesson from the Chinese, and if men want employment not to give them it on reproductive labor. Had those 350 men been employed in gold working the probability is that.they would have earned £20,000 or .£30,000, instead of losing .£9OOO. That is, tjie Province might have been richer by that cwount. And now for another bib of shortsightedness. We profess ourselves very anxious to bring population, ( and talk a vast amount of speculative 1 rubbish about settling people on the hind ; but rich as the Province is in re- 1 sources, and capable as it is of sustain- f ing fifty times its present population in t affluence, without better arrangements * there is every temptation to get out of 1 it. We bring men in, but take no * pains to retain them wfcen they come.

To Correspondents. —We have received a letter from a “Casual Observer,” which wo think likely to intensify the evil to which he alludes. Although agreeing with its spirit, it would be unwise to give it publicity. Princess Theatre.—lt will be seen by the advertisement that Mr Hilton will open the Princess Theatre to-night. We need say nothing in recommendation of his talent, nor of the character of the entertainment. Both are too well known and appreciated to need that. We trust he will have a full house. Masonic Hall. —We really become more and move bewildered with what happens nightly under Mr Heller’s direction. Wonders new and strange —things unimagined and unimaginable—wonderful developments of sleight-of-hand. It was troublesome enough before to see money dropping from tha clouds between his nimble fingers, and not to know how to catch it instead of him; hut now stranger tricks arc played that wc cannot exactly describe, Talk of wizards ! If ever there was one, Mr Heller is ho not one of your malicious pinsticking, fledi-wasting-away sort, but a goo I tempered, laughter-lovinr, music-making necromancer—no, that term’s too black—we will have an English one—wonder worker —that has the nonce to make even dolls, like little niggers, and the harlequin automaton act, with more anpareni intelligence than many a Irish and blood being. Then there is another startling phenomenon, Wha-, is It ? We cannot tell—go and see.

A Hake Privilege. The Comma mM Artjns contains an obituary notice of Captain Wright, on the supposition that he was lost in the Tauranga. The Aiyus says : —“Amongst those said to be lost is Captain Wright, the United States Consul in New Zealand, who was on his way to the Bay of Islands, where he resided, as a national calamity. The signal services he lately rendered in assistingfhc negotiation between the Washington ami New Zealand Governments in the matter of the new mail route by way of of California are fresh in the recollection of most of our readers, and his worth and character arc well known to both Euro-' peans and natives. The latter, when they heard of the calamity, ,arc reported to have bewailed their loss by loud lamentations, and the former were doubtless but little less moved, though with the absence perhaps of much outward manifestation.” Captain Wright has the good fortune to have been able to enjoy, what must he a rare privilege, that of reading his own obitaary notice. The Government of Westland. — During the discussion on the second reading of the Payment to Provinces Bill in the House of Representatives, Mr Vogel, in reference to the ’expressed opinions of the Westland members, stated that the Government would be prepared to bring down supplementary estimates, giving to Westland not less tnan L2UOO and not exceeding L3OOO, as an increase to the special allowance to Westland. The hon, gentleman further stated that the Government, looking to the fact that the present machinery of government in Westland was not suited to its requirements, would bring forward a proposition that the Chairman of the County Council, for two or three years at least, should be a nominated officer by the Governor. The proposed change seemed to meet with the approval of the Westland members then in the House —At a public meeting at Hokitika last week, Mr Carreras, M.C.C., was appointed as one of a deputation to proceed to Wellington, with power to treat with the Otago members for taking over tho County, in case the annexation of Greymonth to Nelson be carried into effect. A special meeting of the Directors of the Caledonian Society of Otago will he held at Wain’s Hotel, Manse street, this evening, at 8 o’clock.