THE COLONY’S DETRACTORS

Evening Star, Issue 3782, 8 April 1875, Page 2

THE COLONY’S DETRACTORS

In compliance with our correspondent’s suggestion we reprint Mr Grant’s letter to the Dundee * People’s Journal.’ We do not know a more severe punishment than letting people know how he treats the interests of the people who feed him:— „ Sib,—ln the interests of humanity, and moved by the wailings of thousands of hapless immigrants poured indiscriminately upon these inhospitable shores, I forward, by the outgoing moil, these few lines for insertion in your widely-circulated ‘Journal. About 40,000 souls have been freely imported into this Colony, under the provisions of the Public Works and Immigration Scheme. By the end of tijeyear that number shall have been swelled up to 50.000 persons. In this city a public meeting of the unemployed immigrants has been held, and certain resolutions have been passed, exposing the sad state of affairs. After pressing solicitations I consented to preside autocratically over the noisy billowaofthatsocial sea of disgust, disappointment and indignation. About 600 men—whose wives anc. families were starving in a cold wooden barracks, pervious to wind, rain, hail, and snow—attended that meeting. I did my best to pour oil on the troubled waters; and, indeed, the local Press, on behalf of the community, thanked me for my labors. While sympathising with the people, I tried to exonerate, as far as I could, the conduct of the authorities, but on condition that the Government opened up temporary employment to the men whom they had allured to leave their homes in prospect of bettering their condition. Sheer terror constrained tiie Government to open up temporary works to keep the immigrants from rebellion. But, sir, the men were sent to crack diamonds on the roods! at wages varying from 2s 6d to 5s per day. They were turned out of the barracks, and the meanest hut or shanty cannot be gos for a rent of less than from 10s to 15s weekly. Provisions and clothing are proportionately dear, and, to add to these evils, the winter hna been very severe, and now the spring, just at its close, has been exceptionally wet, cold, and utterly unfit for outdoor occupations. Tender women and helpless children, in some cases, were dragged “ before the Resident Magistrate’s Court to get a warrant for their ejectment from the Barracks." This is worse than slavery. Even a pig-sty is not to be had for love or money. Is it not, sir, villainous to seduce people away from Home by mendacious representations ? The old land seems to be swarming with hired touters, agents, and emigration kidnappers. These men—ex-officials as they are—are paid to blow their trumpets and blazon forth the merits of the Paradise to which they offer to transmit their gullible victims. This country is chiefly adapted tor past oral purposes. It is intensely mountainous. A great area of it is unfit even for sheep. The best of the land has been sold. The squatter or sheep farmer leases the rest, and holds a pre-emptive claim over any other man. The idea of ploughmen in a few years becoming freehold formers is altogether a Utopian idea. Indeed, in many places a man on a small freehold, without roads or access to markets, would simply vegetate like Robinson Crusoe. Those who hold the land ore naturally anxious to get men as cheap as they con. Hence they clamour for free immigration. This is a very peculiar Colony. With a population of about 300.000 souls, it has ten Legislatures, about 400 representatives, am* 4,000 officials. The public debt is L 15,000,000, and the nominee of the squatters, merchants, and bankers is just now on bis way Home to raise a fresh loan of L 4,000,000; so that we shall be saddled with a public debt of nineteen millions sterling in a very short time. Woe to the man who shall dare to utter a word against the powers that bo and their venal supporters. There are about 100 local rags in the shape of newspapers ready to pounce upon any one who refuses to bow the knee before the golden Their combined circulation is not a quarter of the number of your own subscribers; but they are supported by the Governments, storekeepers, officials, and place-hunters. New Zealand is a very picturesque land, and were it well governed it would be a desirable habitation for any man; but it is verily d ‘spoiled with the locusts of officialism, the caterpillars of the law, the hungry wolves of the sheep-walks, the loathsome spiders of swindling Corporations and Companies, and the frogs, moles, bats, vultures, and vermin of the ten political vestries. One can scarcely speak with composure of such a state of affairs. To be felt it must be seen. I have been nineteen years in this Colony, and, speaking humbly, I have spent on an average Ll,oooa-year in the diffusion of knowledge throughout thin land. I claim, then, the right to know something of the ins and outs of the Colony. The roughing to which colonists, after their first arrival in their adopted land, are generally subjected is peculiarly discouraging to all classes of immigrants; but in the case of single females it is not only very hard, but it is also fraught with much danger of every sort. The demand for females is, perhaps, greater than for any other class; but the huts and wooden shanties that do duty for houses

bt new countries are totally unfitted for the reception of modest women, ana set the decenoies and proprieties of domestic civilisation completely at defiance. After landing, the females arc carried to a wooden barn, and thereafter engaged by settlers the country, and conveyed scores and hunIreds of miles into the interior, where, perhaps, their nearest neighbor resides miles apart from their future home. In this home a blanket or an opossum-rog generally serves ™T.+ a EZr.S* to separate the servant from the master’s bedroom. In the case of males, and more particularly so iu the case of females, it is almost next to impossible to leive when the situation turns out to be totally undesirable. Suppose they did leave, then they would °If r a desert, without roads or inns or aiiy sort of resting-place hy the way, many weary imlos ere theycoidd retom to the place oftheirhS baxkation. * m emmple auppose Dundee was toe only civilised town in Scotland, and from that spot mile and female servants wore to be conveyed to settlers m Caithness or Berwickshire. You are called upon to imagine the absence of anythin* anproochmg to cultivation or civilisationaUover toe land, save Dundee and its suburbs. Moreover, vou must suppose that Dundee is a town of 20 000 people, dwelling in huts, tents, and brick cottages of two or three rooms, incapable of taking in anv iodgers, and, indeed, barely sufficient to afford shelter to toe permanent settlers of the town, w here, then, ore new arrivals to be located ? Manife?tly iu the wooden Barracks, the Benevolent InIstitotion, or the hospital or gaol. I say the geol. tor latterly the class of immigrants that wo have nsceived have evidently been sent fmm the Irish and English reformatories and workhouses. After landing they soon make the acquaintance of the Police Court, and then they get cheap fare and lodgings m prison. On this ugly subject about 600 letters passed between the Government and AgentGeneral in London. They wore presented to Parliamont last session. I need not tell you that society under such circumstances must necessarily be vmy loose and immoral. But those who have got a footing in the country desire cheap labor, and will by all means put money in their purse—honestly if they can ; but at all events they must tom over the dirty (dulling. When a vessel laden with immigrants discharges her living cargo, the diamond crackers of whom I spoke are discharged, and the new-comers get a week's work at that interesting iccupation. These, again, on the arrival of another ship, get notice to quit, and thus the list of the uned is being weekly augmented. Sir, I write the words of truth and soberness in toe cause of suffering humanity. When I touched irst these shores, I was a Radical to the ind spinal-marrow. But. sir, a few years in these Glomes soon converted me back again to ideas more Conservative. There is nothing so intolerable is beggars on horseback—purse-proud and illiterate \nd vulgar Upstarts. Of such, iu the main, is toe toam aristocracy of this land composed. The better part of the people take no active share in politics acre. Our Provincial Legislatures are consequently becoming more and more Americanised. Besides toe nine Provincial Councils, a General Assembly, composed of two Chambers, meets for three months •innually m toe village of Wellington. The majority of the members of the Representative Chamber ore place-hunters. They ser.'e the existing Ministry for a given time, and then they ret permanent places and pensions. The quasiUpper Chamber is composed chiefly of toe woolly toiiauts of the Crown binds. With such machinery it m apparent nothing of a truly benevolent, liberal, P atno “° character can possibly be achieved, selfishness is the alpha and omega of the colonist’s ■’.reed. None but a colonist can really conceive the oeight to which avarice and greed attain here. Government handbooks and the ephemeral travels of such men as Anthony Trollope—who spent two nights in Dunedin, during which it rained incessantly—are utterly unreliable representations of existmg affairs. But, sir, I fear I am encroaching too largely on your valuable time and space. I may, however, state : nat if any man should call in question the accuracy n any iota in this letter, I am prepared to forward you another, backed up by two thousand signatures. I have often been importuned to write Home, but I always delayed, hoping things might take a more favorable tom. Iby no means disc juntenance a judicial selection of immigrants on favorable terms: but tins reckless system o! flooding the innd with P llu Pcra I heartily condemn. Just os lam going to close this note, I find that two immigrant vessels, with 500 souls on hoard, have cast anchor iu our port. At Lyttelton, Wellington, Auckland, &0., similar cargoes are being discharged. On the occasion of an out-going mail, all the Colonial papers publish fulsome summaries for Home. They are utterably unreliable. Like the frog in the fable, they will soon burst in the vain attempt to improvise a nation in a day, and to impress on the old country their own fancied importance and fictitious prosperity on toe strength of borrowed capital—the interest of which is always paid out of the principal. If a man is comfortable at Home, there let him remain, for the prospect of getting a freehold here is an ignis fatous. The cream of the arable soil is sold. The remnants toe capitalist will have at any P nC a‘ , Those who boast of their terms never procured them by the sweat of their brow. They held appointments in toe early days of the Colony, and invested portions of their salaries in land. Now, they boast as if they hod achieved this by hard industry. No, sir, it was only by egotism and syco* phoney that they got billets and rose to be men of such importance—in their own estimation at least. The People's Journal’ is, as its name imports, the people s friend. In that persuasion I venture to address this letter to its editor. I write out of the most perfect knowledge regarding the present con • dition of New Zealand. I would tliat I could conscientiously hai e written in a different strain 5 but a regard to truth and a clear sense of duty have moved me, for the sake of suffering humanity, to take up my pen and write these few lines to you on the present occasion.—l am, Ac., J. G, S. Grant. York Place, Dunedin, Otago, N.Z., Got. 28,1874.