The Lyttelton Times. September 20, 1851.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 37, 20 September 1851, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. September 20, 1851.

The "Lady Nugent" is'the thirteenth'ship which has arrived from England; three more are on their way : so that in nine months from the commencement of the Emigration sixteen ships will have been dispatched by the Association. The number of souls thus brought to the colony is about (in round numbers) two thousand five hundred. If we allow five hundred more^for the population already attracted betide the arrival of the first ships, together with that which has since joined us from the neighbouring settlements, the whole population may now be reckoned at about three thousand; this is probably under the real number. It is impossible that so large a number of persons should suddenly collect themselvesin I an wholly uncultivated spot of earth, without \ experiencing a great scarcity of food. In the f early days of colonization, when communication by water was iv its infancy, this necessity was so strongly felt that some settlements were literally starved. The vast facilities which now exist for commercial intercourse between one country aud 'another render such a catastrophe at the present day not only improbable, but^_ ahn iOj^ jm posj^ibte w -fore, arisingln an entirely new settlement from the scarcity and consequent clearness of food,

is to us comparatively trifling. We believe that in no new colony has food of all kinds been so cheap as it has been in Canterbury ; and yet in our case two circumstances have acted and are still acting against us. One is the general failure of all the crops in the Australasian colonies, which leaves them little to spare, and that only at a high price. The other is the disIcovery of gold in New South Wales and \. Victoria, which has greatly increased the expense of shipping produce from the ports of those colonies. Both theae are events wbich no human foresight could anticipate or prevent. Had they not occurred, the price of provisions would probably have been very slightly invflueficed by the immigration which has taken place. Our object in bringing this subject before our readers is to remind them once more, how much the progress of this settlement now depends upon their own exertions. We see no prospect of a considerable diminution in the price of the necessaries of life, until the produce of the settlement shall be sufficient for its wants. From various enquiries we have arrived at the conclusion, of course with no dependence on its accuracy, that nbout five hundred acres of land will be under crop before the first harvest. If we calculate that each acre, with the rudest cultivation, will produce the food of five or six persons, the quantity of food in the settlement before next winter ought to suffice for twothirds of the population. But it is probable that a much larger breadth of land will be under crop the second year, possibly three or four thousand acres. The seed required for this land would amount to nearly the whole produce of the first year ; so that we shall still be dependent upon imported supplies for at least a year longer. Now to pay for all these imports, capital is abstracted from the Settlement. Every ship which brings flour, carries away so much of the settlers' capital. Thepresent progress of the colony therefore depends upon putting a stop to this drainage of capital as speedily as possible, which can only be done by our own exertions in raising produce from the soil as quickly as possible. Every pound now spent in building more than is necessary, in fencing more laud than can be cultivated this year, in planting and ornamenting, is a severe loss to the settlement. The man who, next autumn, will shew the largest quantity of human food for the capital which he has expended since his arrival, ought to receivethe honour of a civic crown from his fellow-colonists. It has, we believe, been thought by some that the Canterbury Association ought to step in and import food, so as to lower the market. From such a conclusion we wholly and entirely dissent. Nothing would probably more permanently injure the Colony than that Government (for the Canterbury Association is nothing more than a department of Goverment for the administration of the land fund), should tamper with the food market in any way whatever. The experiment could only result in driving the merchants out of the market, and so permanently creating the evil which it was designed to prevent. It has now become an axiom in political economy, that no markets are so securely or so uniformly supplied as those in which private enterprise, and private competition, are wholly uncontrolled and uninterfered with by the Government.

We return therefore to our first position, that the only remedy for the present evil is in " ourselves alone."