SmphatioaUy, there ara, at present, in JUw Zealand some 40,000 parsons who would gladly return to Britain if they had •ffered to them similar opportunities to what , they had experienced and received before they finally, and in an evil hour, quitted the land of their fathers to drag out a miserable existence in this mountainous— essentially mountainous—desert of sheep farmers. It is the very apex of villany and the very culmination of baseness to seduce plough- ' men, for example, to expatriate themselves on the strength of being promised good ' wages, and of becoming freehold farmers • themselves. In this Colony there are men - toiling for less wages than prevail in Eng- ; land. As for the land, the very cream of it, as I have had occasion to remark frequently, has been lone ago sold. Of the nine provinces of-New Zealand, only Canterbury and Otago have any land to spare, and •ven here, whatever is remanent is certain to gravitate into the maelstrom of the squatter and capitalist, or absentee land company— it which, by the way, Bome hold as many as half a million acres. A band of land sharks continually prowls about the waste land offices, and snatches up greedily, and even voraciously, any available plot of ground that may be open for sale, or applied for. The landshark and the colonist,.generally, hate two things preeminently, viz., education and honesty.' JBut lies and dishonesty are poor foundations for the future greatnesr of the much vaunted "'Britain of the South." After the discovery of gold ; n 18n'l, hordes of Australian miners and speculators rusher? to New Zealand-chiefly from Victoria. Properties rose to fabulous prices. Old settlers suddenly became wealthv. Now, these naturally desire to improvise a nation in a day,*and to flood the Colony with cheap labor, the,ill-disguised veil of philanthropy. Thus suddenly elevated, like beggars on horses, they are sure, if we give them plentyfof, rope, to j rideJ;o the proverbial terminus. In the towns the mass of the people live in huts, scarcely fit for English swine, at rents varying from 10s to 15s per week. Other things are proportionately'dear, and when men do get' work for one week they have generally to wait three or four weeks ere other jobs turn up. To work under contractors is a very precarious business here. When a man is going to fail he generally does a few days previously among his friends and bleeds them as copiously and as nicely as he can, and thereafter he collapses and is finally whitewashed in our model bankruptcy courts. Others again, suddenly and mysteriously clear out for Hong Kong. It is to be hoped they will not go to a warmer climate. For exposing rogueries of such description I have been frequently vilified by a venal Press and a corrupt public, and have even been despoiled of my goods. But let that pass. Selfishness is the Alpha and Omega of rhe Colonial confession of faith. The celebrated Jeremy Taylor saya thai; the optic nerves of swine are so constructed that they cannot look upwards. Certainly the moral constitution of the Colonial mind is such that it cannot glance heavenward. In the case of the porcine tribe there is, of course, no exception to the learned bishop's rule; but as regards the Colonial human species, there are a few distinguished exceptions; albeit they may be looked upon as fools and madmen, " not having their heads screwed on rightly." Seriously, English people have really no adequate conception of the extent to which avarice expands in these infant Provinces of New Zealand and Colonies of Australasia. We have inaugurated shire clubs. or county associations. The end sought after is to induce a stream of emigration ! from Britain to New Zealand. The members enrolled belong to the prosperous classes that naturally desire to increase their wealth and power by the importation of their quondam poorer brethren. These societies are just so many Tammany Rings. Their secret doings will not bear j the lightjof/publicj criticism ;J,lj therefore Sass them over. To name them is to conemn them. But Nemesis is on their wake and track. Our loans are almost exhausted. Our trumpery tramways of single lines of railways are left unfinished ; we must therefore borrow more money at ruinous sacrifices. It is contemplated to raise an additional loan of six millions. If this cannot be had, then we must go in for heavy taxation and the wholesale alienation of the Otago and Canterbury pastoral lands in order to finish, at last, the so-called Grand Trunk Railway of the Colony. I venture to predict that in three years hence New Zealand shall be one of the most oppressed colonies under the protection of the Imperial Crown. She has realised gold to the value of L 32,000,000, from ten mines, and yet what has she got to show for it ? She has ten millions of sheep, owned mainly by absentees, and she has realised good prices for her wool. And after all, she is, as I said before, thirty-one millions sterling in debt including, of course, municipal indebtedness; for wherever twenty or thirty cottages of wood are erected on borrowed capital from land and building societies, then a deputatian waits on the Provincial Governments, and demands the township to i e proclaimed a municipality, with its mayor, clerk, councillors, local paper, town hall, &c. Like the prodigal of old, New Zealand has literally wasted her resources in riotous living amongst a vast host of useless, busy, ignorant, i»ud worthless officials. New Zealand -—with its twofold system of Government is the most difficult, and at the same time the easiest of all colonies to govern. This sounds paradoxical enough to a stranger • but to an observant colonist it is fraught with triith. Each Provincial ring goes in for • a scranible for the loaves and fishes in the General Parliament. A venal ministry buys and sells patronage. An upright administration could not stand for twenty four hours. It is a mean system of log-rolling legislation and administration. The people's representatives meet, like moles and tats, in the obscure village of Wellington, and burrow for three months, as it were underground, and after having aett'ed matters amongst themselves, they return to their respective Provinces, in which inauy of tbem hold state offices, and during their absence from their Provincirl posts they invariably draw their salaries, besides their pound a day and travelling expenses, while attending the General Assembly of New Zealand. For years New Zealand subsisted mainly npon the vast sums of money spent—and ■pent most unadvisedly—in connection with the so-called pacification of the poor Maoriß by the British soldiers. Afterwards we had » temporary shower of prosperity on the bursting open of our gold mines; and now Ibsvns are all the rage. In short, our whole 'social fabric is a network of mortgages. A breath of adversity— and it is just risintr slowlybut surely-shall soon shatter intS pieces our financial policy, like the spider's . web that shrinks from every breath that blows. . • Su'.'h, 8$ is the very truth, most- pure regarding the present condition of NewZealand. My subject muat be my only apology for having thus engrossed so much of your time, attention, consideration, and space. **•■ I am, sir, yours very truly, _. _, , J. G. 8. <-RAKT, JBirst Rector of the High School of Dunedin Otago, > .Z„ and the Founder of the Eight Hours' System of Labor. York Place, Dunedin, June », 1876.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD18761024.2.21
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Evening Star, Issue 4262, 24 October 1876, Page 4
Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,237Untitled Evening Star, Issue 4262, 24 October 1876, Page 4
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
No known copyright (New Zealand)
To the best of the National Library of New Zealand’s knowledge, under New Zealand law, there is no copyright in this item in New Zealand.
You can copy this item, share it, and post it on a blog or website. It can be modified, remixed and built upon. It can be used commercially. If reproducing this item, it is helpful to include the source.
For further information please refer to the Copyright guide.