A TEMPERANCE SETTLEMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 4293, 29 November 1876, Page 4

A TEMPERANCE SETTLEMENT.

Mr Broomhall, now in Auckland endeavoriDg to obtain land to establish a temperance settlement, has communi CMted his views in a letter to the 'Southern Cross.' . The letter is too long for us to copy, but the gist of it is as follows:—He says the credit is due to the Hon. Mr Fox for his visiting New Zealand, and that the object of starting the Temperance Settlement is a commercial one the " Good Samaritan " element not entering into their intentions. He then goes on to say :—" We must have security for our capital, in the land which we purchase, and we must have a reasonable return for our labor, and interest on our capital. These are the essentials of all undertakings, profitable to the State and to the individual. Find us the land, and the obligation of the State ceases; the return must depend on our common sense and prudence." After speaking of an offer he had in America, and "of the refusal of 200,000 acres of the wheat land of the State after he had visited New Zealand, which was described to him as being one-third swamp and one-third sterile mountain, he proceeds to speak of the settlement it is proposed to start. Mr Broomhall has lately been travelling over the Provincial district of Auckland, and owns that 100,000 acres of land of tolerable uniformity is no easy matter to find ; and in one of the native settlements he found, that although the chief was willing to sell swamps aud sterile mountains, yet the valleys, where the finest land was to be found, he was most unwilling to part with. The ' Star,' commenting on his letter, says:—"The only conditions insisted upon by the promoters—who are men of capital, and are not embarking their money into the undertaking without view to profit—are, that the land shall be in one block, and the settlers believers in nogrog principles. When the land is secured, it will be laid off in farms, and sold or leased to steady industrious immigrants introduced by the Association and joined, no doubt, by some adherents to teetotal doctrin- s in the Colony. The scheme is simply a colonising one, carried on under the supervision of an influential board of management peculiarity interested in its success." One block in thp. vicinity of Aroha meets Mr Broomhall's views, if procurable, and he has gone to Waikato to inspect a block west of the Waikato river. Afterwards he pin-poses to visit this and other Provinces in pursuit of his investigations.