CORRESPONDENCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 20, 24 May 1851, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times. Sir, —We may, I think, in some degree congratulate ourselves upon the long notice bestowed by the Wellington Independent of the 3rd instant, upon our proceedings at Canterbury, and the good feeling expresssed towards us by that organ of our sister colony, but inasmuch as that paper assumes to denounce the recommendation made by our Pasturage Committee Report, in reference to the extension of the settlement, designating it "as the most absurd, mischievous, and unwarrantable that has ever emanated from any body of men," without venturing to challenge the grounds or reasoning on which such recommendation proceeded, we think ourselves called upon to direct your particular attention to the subject.

Whatever may be the opinion of the Wellington Independent, or of our sister colonies in New Zealand, as to the success or failure attained by the Canterbury Association to this time, we ourselves feel fully justified in affirming1 that, the Canterbury Association has thus far most signally succeeded, and that the basis upon which the Settlement has been formed, is in our opinion proved to be most thoroughly sound. The reason assigned by that paper for the Association having "completely failed" is, that "it had not sold land at 3/. an acre up to the present time to any greater extent than some 14,000 acres." We on the contrary feel greatly assured by that simple fact; we conceive that the sale of 14,000 acres in this new colony, at a period thus quickly following times so ruinously speculative as to have destroyed confidence in almost all public bodies, is' of itself the strongest possible ground for maintaining that the project of the Association has the full confidence of the public, and when it is considered that these sales have been made at a time when the Government has been most earnestly pushing emigration to the Canadas and other quarters by sales of land at ss. per acre, to the various colonies in Australia at 205., and to Port Natal with greater advantages ; and whilst public companies have been facilitating emigration to those identical colonies, by offering loans to the colonists proceeding there ; and whilst the Hudson's Bay Company have been forcing emigration to their settlements in North America and Vancouver's Island, by sales at 20s. per acre, and the New Zealand Company to New Zealand at a less price than that fixed by the Association for their lands in the Canterbury Settlement, we cannot but hail the sale even of 14,000 acres of land, within the short period of the Association's existence, as an evidence, of the strongest possible character, that the system is right, and that the settlement must rapidly progress and succeed. Your cotemporary, however, seems fully to admit the success of the colony, although he attributes it to the great advantages of the district, and the character of the first body of settlers, rather than to the efforts of the Canterbury Association, and the comforts and advantages assured to us in having an organised society and an Educational and Ecclesiastical establishment, such as that we have been accustomed to esteem in the mother country. Should the Association (as suggested by the Wellington Independent) hereafter fail in obtaining sufficient sales annually to retain their charters, (by which default the Settlement would devolve on the Crown,) we should be inclined rather to attribute it to the unequal competition in price in which it has resolved to engage, than to any error in the great principle it adopts, that of establishing a fixed and " sufficient price" to bring its lauds into more gradual, bin profitable occupation in the colony, and to appropriate no portion of the produce to the profit of individuals, but to expenditure in the colony alone; and we have yet to discover whether it may not so well work that the Government itself may not ultimately see fit to adopt similar fixed prices, and to proceed in a similar way in regard to the disposal of waste lands in the adjoining settlements; the fact being already established beyond question, that 3/. per acre may well be realized for the lands in New Zealand with the advantages offered by the Association, which it may be argued the Government may also realize in the other settlements if it should see fit, provided nothing is to be attributed to the peculiar advantages which the Canterbury Colonists conceive they derive from the Canterbury plan of settlement.

Such, then, being the prospects of the Canterbury Settlement, we would ask, why might not the Settlement of Canterbury, with great propriety, be extended to the natural boundaries proposed in the Report for the object stated in it, rather than be limited by the present arbitrary assumed line, which will be found to present many inconveniences ? If Canterbury is to grow rapidly, as Port Philip has grown, and Christchurch soon to become a Melbourne, (the probabilities of both which are suggested in your cotemporary's leading article,) it would not then be very unnatural to suppose, that the adjoining territories, separated from the other parts of our Island by the barriers referred to, might well desire to be included within the prosperous settlement of Canterbury, and be admitted to share its privileges. There are two other points on which the Editor makes particular observation, which call for some reply. They are, First, The assumption of superiority which he alleges the Canterbury Colonists hold above their neighbours, and, Secondly, The desire of the first body to claim to themselves peculiar privileges. To the first we reply, that they boast of no superiority, either as men or colonists ; but they do claim to themselves the peculiar advantages derived from the plan and system of the Association ; that of having provided for them within their settlement, an organized Educational and Ecclesiastical establishment, such as they have always been accustomed to regard and revere in the mother country, and to which, we doubt not, the sister settlements will soon be sufficiently alive, shortly to avail themselves of, for the benefit and advantage of their families. The second point is that of the peculiar privileges to which the first body of colonists lays claim. The privileges are matters of special contract between the Association and those particular individuals to whom such rights and privileges have been assured, and which have been accepted by them as part of the rights and privileges for which they determined to leave their native country, and to pay their consideration as the price. These particular privileges were assured only to that portion of the settlers who should form the first body, leading the way to establish this particular settlement, and such privileges have thus become a part of each of those individuals' contracts, identified in the Terms of Purchase, and are now therefore private and individual rights, from which it would require an Act of Parliament to absolve the Association ; and it was those private rights which the Committee recommended should be treated with good faith, and it really seems that as such they are not fairly within the province of the public journals, and certainly are not so insignificant that the proprietors could be expected to yield them. We hope these few observations will have tended to shew that there is not sufficient ground for designating the recommendation of the Committee either as "absurd," "mischievous," or " unwarrantable." We readily admit the palm of pioneering in the colony of New Zealand to be due to the settlers in Wellington, but the struggles they endured, and the battles they fought, have not been told without their terror to many who have followed, and are yet following to the sister settlement of Canterbury, they not yet being aware of the good feeling subsisting between the natives and the colonists. It is due, however, to the well concerted arrangements of the Canterbury Association, that we have had none of those hardships to contend with on our arrival here, which we had a just right to anticipate in an unoccupied country. Begging that you will pardon the length of this communication, and my speaking the sentiments of others as well as myself, I am, Mr. Editor, Yours obediently, "A Canterbury Colonist" of the First Body. Lyttelion, May 14, 1851.

From the N. Z. Spectator, May 7. DREAM OF A SHAGROON. " I had a dream, which was not all a dream."— Byron. As I lay upon my bed in the stillness of the night, methought I saw along train of Pilgrims proceeding from a far country of the West towards an unknown land. On, on they journeyed, till at last they closed their weary way, and rested them in the strange land. When

they looked forth on its mountains and its valleys, its plains and its rivers, they pronounced it to be, indeed, a goodly land, and fair to look upon. They forthwith apportioned unto themselves the country whereon their pilgrim feet now rested, and appointed places for cities, for towns, and for villages wherein they might dwell, themselves, their wives, and their little ones. Some did build them houses of mortar and of clay, of turf and of timber, in all forms fantastic. Some did wander over the mighty plains, while others sat by the sweet fountains of delicious waters, whereat they ever" and anon did strive to slake their parched throats. I looked and beheld two beings of a northern aspect, unlike in form and feature— and yet alike— they had one heart and one soul. Long had they sojourned in the land, at peace with the ancient possessors and dwellers of the country, sitting day by day at the door of their tent to relieve the wanderer and the wearied. The Pilgrims looked on them with an evil and a jealous eye, and said unto them, " This be our land, ye shall no longer have place herein." But the ancient dwellers said, " Nay, these he our friends, they have weighed us the price of our land, and here shall they dwell." So they of the northern aspect abode there still. They smiled at the Pilgrims, continued to get them riches, and waxed fat in the land.

" A change came o'er the spirit of my dream." I saw men of another aspect arrive at the pil-grim-land. Some were fair, others of dark and swarthy hue and of determined mien, and their embrowned fronts told of toil and labour and exposure under sunnier skies than those which curtained the pilgrim-land. They journeyed over the mountains and over the plains, and by the valleys and the streams, and they came unto the inhabitants of the plains, unto the wanderers and dwellers by the sweet fountains, and said unto them, "Ye.be a vain and ignorant people—supine and indolent, ye do only exact usury of the strangers that would get them habitations in your towns and villages. This is a pleasant land, and withal goodly for the depasturing of herds and flocks—we shall possess it, and make of it a great nation." So they departed unto their own country, and returned, bringing with them oxen and sheep, and horses and mules, —only asses they had none—and they spread themselves with their flocks and their herds over the hills and over the plains and by the rivers, and the Great Chief welcomed them and gave them honor in the land, for he knew that the riches and the prosperity of his country depended on the increase of its flocks. The Pilgrims looked with contemptuous eye on this people of strange aspect and of impure blood, and did despise them. Still they stretched them wider and wider o'er the land. The Pilgrims wondered, and while they wondered and were bewildered they wasted away, and the people of strange aspect remembered them as one doth remember a pleasant dream. Time had passed on. I awoke; —and, lo! the land which was to have been sacred to the orthodox foot only of "a body of English gentlemen," was in possession ofi the " stragglers, the whalers, and the stockdrivers from other settlements." * Alas! for the goodly land, the land of the Canterbury Pilgrims! Ko Motiuau, April, 1851".