THE PUBLISHED DAILY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, IS7I.

Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 943, 4 August 1871, Page 2

THE PUBLISHED DAILY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, IS7I.

We one& read an Eastern story which was somewhat as follows : A band of pilgrims, on their way to Mecca, had, after suffering great privations on the journey, arrived at the castle of a wealthy noble. The owner received the famished crowd with all the ceremonious respect which Oriental etiquette prescribed. He conducted them to the bath ; he ordered his servants to bring forth the raiment to replace their tatters, and gave instructions for a grand feast at which to entertain them. But the poor travellers were starving with Imngar, and they would fain have exchanged all their prospective feast for a mouthful of drybraad. Their innate politeness prevented their interfering with the arrangements being made by their host ; but the feast was a long time preparing, and one after another of the poor fellows stoically turned his face towards Mecca and died. But a very few survived to partake of the gorgeous feast prepared for them. This story very forcibly applies to the circumstances of New Zealand, and more especially those of the West Coast Gold Fields. The population is suffering for want of the merest necessities of existence ; but the only consolation the Government offera them is a rich catalogue of prospective luxuries. Railways, huge Californian steamers, expensive governmental machinery, and all the pomp and show which our rulers have exhibited before the world, are all very good things in their way ; and so was the feast prepared for the unfortunate pilgrims. But when, as is the case, large communities in this Colony are daily and momentarily starving for the commonest wants, how grimly absurd does the magnificent policy of the Government appear. Here, on the West Coast Gold Fields — and notably those which are under the control of the Nelson Government — it is rather too high a price to pay for all the tinsel and sham show of Superintendents, Provincial Councils, County Chairman, County Councils, and all the attendant formalities aud ceremonies that the inhabitants are subjected to a deprivation of almost every condition of civilisation. It is not as if the dwellers on these shores were men who had cast themselves on some outlandish region without rulers, without means, and without any machinery for administering their common affairs. For years before the wave of population stranded in Westland, the territory was iinder an organised government. The miners were at once encountered by the demands of the tax-gatherers, and, for the six years that have elapsed, they have contributed enormous sums to the revenue. What returns have they received ? They have certainly been endowed with plenty of government officers, Courts of justice, police, and gaols have been given them, but what has been done towards bettering their condition? towards assisting them in opening np and developing the many resources of this rich country ? If we ask the Superintendent of N elson, he will point to his blue-book, and say that he has been a perfect Lord Bountiful to the mining population. If we ask the miners, they will point to impassable tracks, bridgeless rivers, deserted settlements, departing population, dear living, evei-y possible social discomfort, and hundred* of gravestones on which the word " ilrowne I" appears. And that is really what ihu authorities have done for this part of the country. What has been done with the hundreds of thousand of pounds which the Nelson Government has received as Provincial revenue during the last few years 1 We know that the money

has been expended, but how ? What is there to see for it ! If we travel up the Grey, in whatever direction, we cannot find hardly a trace of anything to indicate the existence of a government. With one paltry exception there is not a mile of serviceable road throughout the Grey Valley. People travel with their lives in their hands. Scarcely a creek or river is bridged, tracks exist which seem to have been especially designed to entrap the traveller to destruction — everywhere there is evidence of neglect, want of forethought, and mismanagement. True, the inhabitants have the consolation of boasting 'that they live under a Provincial Government, that they now and again see a Superintendent or one of his Ministers, that they return members to the Provincial Council, and that they are excellently looked after in the matter of taxes. Miserable consolation truly ! When they remember that if a tenth — aye a twentieth — part of the taxation they have paid, had been wisely expended, it would have provided their most urgent necessities. When they remember that for the want of a few simple foot-bridges scores of lives are lost every year ; when they remember that life to them is almost intolerable on account of the difficulties, privations, and dangers of their everyday existence, they would never rest until they have hurled the miserable apology for a Government which presides over them from its undeserved supremacy. We trust that the agitation now commencing, in the Grey Valley will not be the mere temporary protest of a cowed and browbeaten population, out of whom every spark of political independence and enterprise has died, but will show itself as the un deniable evidence of the determination of a spirited and free community, no longer to bear the burdens which a wretched, incapable Government, has cast upon them. They must make their protest known and felt throughout the Colony, and the Legislature of the Colony must learn to know that whilst preparing a prospective feast of fat things colonisation on the West Coast is dying for common food.