COLONISATION.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2353, 17 October 1870, Page 2

COLONISATION.

To the Editor of the Evening Star. Sir;—ln your pa;cr of the 6th, you say Otago, Canterbury, and tlic South Australian Proviees were founded by different sections of Christians ; that their advance had been independent of that first idea ; that now settlements have difficulties alike to overcome—namely, industrial and physical; but human wants arc much the -amo everywhere. Is there npt an intimate connection between creeds and human wants ? They are a statement to be believed in, not tQ lie questioned, but to be reverenced. Do not all creeds inculcate poverty is comnieiulabl 1 and is not poverty generally allied to ig-np’-ance and sup.-r.-titiqu, which prepares the mind to act# adverse tq progress, to liberty, to'happiness | Mayc they pot done so in all time past, at least until Cromwell establish civil and religions liberty ? 'Would they not do go still if they had the power ? The variety of Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan crcpds in Europ; ape thousands. The priesthoqd of the greater number of each furnish to their own satisfaction and followers indubitable proof, direct from the hand of Cod, as warrants for said creeds; and that

the whole human race holding a -contrary belief will be by Him condemned to everlasting punishment, and that it is His will that believers should propagate said truth throughout the world by persecution and by force. The priests of these various creeds, manjr of them are men of consummate learning. Being educated into the belief they teach, their education becomes rooted in their mind’s eye , a beam shutting from their view the horrible idea they entertain of an all-merciful God, and the grand principle they profess to teach charitj r . Early history is filled with accounts of perse utions of the early Christians, and of the Christians persecuting each other, and the Jews, &c. The Roman Catholics ultimately ranked under one head, and obtained a mastery. Then followed about a thousand years of religi us wars between them and the Mahometans, with mutual and vam attempts to exterminate each other, and all other sects, the establishment of the Spanish inquisition and other tribunals of confessions elswhere, where hundreds of thousands were burned alive or torn to pieces by the wheel or the rack, all for the advancement of their Church or the glory of God. Other sects as well as Mahometans ' and Roman Catholics persecuted each other also, and then, with equal virulence and cruelty where they had the power, these unhappy persecutions met the first grand check from Oliver Cromwell, wheu he established civil and religious liberty. Everyone who worshipped God agreeable to his own standard or that of others, and who provided for his own wants and did to others as he would be done by, was protected by Cromweil : but if he interfered with the opinions or a :ts of others, he was punished or expelled from the kingdom This lamp of civil and religious liberty with the freedem of the press uniting their beaming influence, quickly spread over Europe, dispelling superstition and darkness, and consequently religious wars and prosecutions. '1 he admirers of civil and religious liberty throughout Europe and the British dominions owe to Cromwell’s memory a of gratitude which will shortly be evinced by a tribute to bis memory upon a scale unequnlled. According to history of former times, I think it is better for the founders of the settlement of Otago, Canterbury, and South Australia and their success r.3 that they failed in their scheme; for they may now pay their devotions to the Author of their being in words and form as to them shall seem best. Citizen".