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Lyttelton Times, Volume VII, Issue 464, 15 April 1857, Page 7

There is a great deal of truth in the letter of our correspondent " Farmer," notwithstanding some inaccuracies. On enquiry we find that on some of the works last completed, the men employed have made under the average rate of wages, while on others which have. paid them very largely they have regularly worked, early and late, long beyond the usual hours of labour. But taking all things intoll consideration, we etill agree* with " Farmer" as to his general opinion about contracts in a young settlement like this. They are not a, test of the lowest remunerative price of labour. It is useless to attempt to work a system, which succeeds in an old country where competition is excessive,—where probable expenses and profits are consequently calculated to a nicety,—in a country where competition in notoriously wanting. The result of such as attempt is, as our correspondent says, combination not competition.-This has been found to be the case in other parts of New Zealand, where the contract system has been for the most .part given up. We have repeatedly advocated the employment of labour on the roads under overseers, such as are employed at Wellington. In that province, where Public Works are being carried on largely, that system succeeds admirably. There, the Government does not enter into competition with the Farmer, by offering larger.--wages ..on- Public Works than are to made infprivate employment, but fulfils what we conceive to be its proper functions by giving work to those, who happen to be without other employment for the time. When our Immigration begins to increase, as we hope it soon will, what a boon it would bey both to the public and the immigrant, if Public Works were going jon, on which the latter could find immediate employment at fair wages ; wages,. however, which would allow the farmer an equal chance of obtaining his services. It is not an answer tp this proposal to say that the overseer would let the man be idle,—-would get drunk, &c, $.c.' If he does he can be dismissed, There are plenty of steady men perfectly capable of doing the duty. Some . of the best and cheapest work done in the province lately has been done under the supervision of an overseer, on the Port Hills. We would not advocate the total discontinuance of the contract system, but we would have one or two working parties to act as a check uppn it; a check which the circumstances of a young colony require. For instance, there is the Ferry road drain. The tenders for that work were all above the Provincial Engineer's estimate^ and he consequently rejected them. We find that he is obliged to offer the work again for tender. Would it not be well in such a case if he had a gang of men at command to put upon a work for which the tenders exceeded

his estimate ? We should then know who was right, the Engineer or the contractor.

Whebe is the once honourable British Merchant to be found? Where haa he gone whose proudest boast was that his word was his bond and that, whatever losses overlook him, that word at least remained pure and unsullied r Are we to find him in the gigantic money lender who,rather than put up with a loss brought on by his own folly and covetousness,connives at a fraud, and in saving his two hundred thousand pounds sullies the fair fame of an old and once honourable firm ? Or shall we look for him in the Banker, who sells his clients' securities in the vain attempt to avert the ruin that stares him in the face ? Or in the Joint Stock Bank Director who helps himself to seventy thousand pounds of his .victims' money, and bids open defiance to the inadequate power of the law to touch him ? Or in the Railway Directors who 1 cook' the accounts and ' make things pleasant' by paying fictitious dividends ? Or in the clerks who alter the transfers from £100 to £1000, and pocket the difference ? The columns of the English press, of late years, contain a succession of warnings addressed to the ever increasing, never ending body of dupes, against the small but compact "body of knaves; of warnings to the manufacturers of England, not to make their goods, like the Jews' razors, 'to sell,' and to the merchants, against a system of preparing false and dishonest invoices of goods, commonly known as ' salting.' .

These remarks have been called from us, as our readers will doubtless have' divined ere this, by the conduct of Messrs. James Baines and Co. with regard to their ship Ann Wilson—conduct most unworthy the title of the honourable British Merchant. It is unnecessary here to recapitulate the particulars of this case, as they have been fully laid beforejour readers in our last issue. It is sufficient to state that this, the third vessel of Messrs. James Baines and Co.'s much vaunted line of New Zealand packets, was a barque of only 432 tons • that she was not one of their own vessels but chartered from the owners, Messrs. Wilson of South Shields; that she carried #22 steerage passengers of all ages ; that, by the evidence of her own officers, her ventilation was bad, her cooking accommodation totally inadequate, that there was a want of proper medicines and medical comforts, and a short supply of water throughout the voyage, owing probably to her water casks being old and made of improper materials; arid, lastly, that she lost 18 passengers, viz., 4 adults and 14 children, mainly, it is to be feared, from having been ill found and provided with the necessaries for so long a voyage. Happily for the cause of truth and justice^ one of these poor unfortunates sur-, vived till the vessel entered ■ Wellington Harbour, where a jury of our countrymen, guided by the medical testimony at the inquest, gave as their verdict that Jonathan Deverell 'died from exhaustion broughron by a short supply of water and the absence of proper medicines and medical comforts.' The unhappy man had previously lost two children on the voyage, one, by the surgeon's statement, 'from exhaustion.'

' When we recall the fact that only six months ago Messrs. James Baines and Co. invited all the notabilities of Liveipool and "others interested in New Zealand to a grand dejeuner: qn board of one of their largest ships, "to inaugurate the reopening of the trade between Liverpool aid New Zealand by them, and that then and there Mr. Jas. Baines, in answer to a laudatory address made to his firm, declared that it was the/ one object of that firm to carry out the emigration arid other business that might be entrusted to them in a "' liberal and honest" spiritj —when we recall this and many other

things that were said at the aforesaid dejeuner, xte confess that we stand aghast at the effrontery and want ,o,f faith w,ith which these enterprising and honourable British merchants, only three short months afterwards, despatched such a ship as the Ann Wilson, so miserably provided, with 222 living souls on board, to our shores. Such conduct as this needs, no,comment. If the barque Ann Wilson, of, 432 tons, with only six feet between .decks, without proper ventilation, making a passage of 120 days, be one of the " Black Ball" line of packets promised to us, of which the Oliver Lang was to he a sample—if the fact of her being short of water and other necessaries, and a considerable portion of her provisions being mouldy and inferior, be " liberal and honest" treatment—then are Messrs. James Baines and Co. a fair sample of the-honour-able British Merchant. But if Messrs. James Baines and Co. are to blame for their part in this affair, there are others who are still more culpable, whose duty it was to have prevented this sad catastrophe, viz., the Emigration Officers of the port of Liverpool! Fortunately these gentlemen are wijhin reach of the Home authotitles, and will doubtless have to render a strict account of their reasons for passing the ship in,such an unfit state for so long a voyage. It seems clear that" they are unfit for their situation, either pn account of incapacity or, of" collusion.. • The fact of their appointment to such a responsible office in the second port of the United' Kingdom forbids us to entertain a doubt on the former point, while many- circumstances', point but' too clearly to the latter. ,It is the pride and boast of every Englishman that his mother country stretches forth her mighty arms to protect the interests of her meanest subject in the most remote portion of her empire. We feel assured that the authorities at home will sift this matter to the bottom, will cast the onus of.this crime on the right shoulders, and will refuse to countenance by their silence a trafc which recalls to the memory the direful horrors of the .slave trade.