Correspondence.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XI, Issue 681, 18 May 1859, Page 4

Correspondence.

THE PROSPERITY OF CANTERBURY.

How it may be shewn that all agree upon the point that as Waste Lands have not been sold dear, so that fancy cannot have caused.the Province's Prosperity. \

To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times,

Sir, —la your last issue you have favoured me with so much space to examine; and I believe to shew, the fallacy of the principle that has been approved, viz., that the prosperity of this province is caused by the high money price put upon the land therein; and have taken so much room for the purpose of merely admitting that my view of the case was the- true one, that I cannot expect nor do I desire to trespass upon you at this.time for any great length. In the third paragraph of your article you have condensed the drift of my arguments into the following sentence:—"No thanksj" New-Chum exclaims, "to those who suggested placing four times the price on Canterbury laud that is placed on the land of neighbouring provinces: the land itself has the merit, for it is four times as good." Then in the next paragraph of your article, after a sentence or two confirmatory of this view, you say.:—" This we allow to be true." That is, sir, your article allows that I am right in taking the negative of the question proposed at the head of my letter--Is.the prosperity of Canterbury occasioned by the high money price fixed upon its waste lands?—for. you most righteously admit and affirm that according to the value no high price was fixed at all.

Then your article goes on to say that be the fact ever so patent now it only confirms the credit due to those "who knew as much six years ago and therefore determined to charge a : proportionate price." I give to them all credit as men of business for so doing: they were perfectly right. But what becomes in this view of the case also of the much vaunted so-called principle of the prosperity being caused by a high price being charged for the waste lands?— Gone to limbo with a thousand whimseys of like creation. - .

The remainder of the paragraph from'whence I made the two last quotations certainly astonishes me. The'foundation being the words " if" and " perhaps," the whole drift a mere begging of the' question, and that too by founding the arguments, such as they are, upon assumed circumstances quite opposed to the facts, and which facts are patent to all who care to inquire about them. The truth being that from quality and other circumstances the lands of all the other provinces come-at-able, Otago excepted, are so inferior that alike fixed price must have ruined'them. About the merits of the Wakefield principle spoken of in the former part of your next paragraph I shall say nothing, because your article has in fact given up its soundness, therefore I have nothing, to contest on that point. But surely the writer might have been aware that his admiration of this said Wakefield principle hadled him to countenance, nay, to adopt more thoroughly, the exploded—the destructive theory—that the State or the Government can spend the people's money better than they can spend it themselves. The purchaser, is to pay a high price for his land, and the Government to spend the money so that he and his neighbours are to get the benefit thereof. Why this very principle —not alwaj's so nakedly turned into the world as it >it is in your article—is the excuse or the argument put forth for all the unnecessary taxation that Was ever imposed in the world. Prove it to bo well founded, and all finance Ministers shall idolise you from Ireland- to Japan—from Cape Horn to Behring's Straits. ' I pray all your readers to think awhile' Upon a proposition which affirms in fact that individuals —that is, the constituent parts of the public—are benefitted by the money being taken from their pockets for other people to spend, so that they may .get a share of the resulting good, if go,od there can be. Let not this destructive principle be mixed up with that of necessary taxation, for they are as distinct as light from dark, as far asunder as is the East from the West.

It is quite enough for one like me, writing only at odd intervals, when I can find the time, to have what drops from ray pen fairly quoted against me, and I most assuredly am bound to defend, retract, or modify what I may have said, as fair and close reasoning may demand. But I cannot. surely lie called upon to defend or even fin any way to acknowledge, but on the contrary to repudiate as far a> I am able, what is quoted wrongly, and especially if, to make a case, the quotation or summary; of my argument be directly contrary to what I have advanced. Your article accuses me of saying in fact;, "that the high price swells.the Government Funds; Government, to spend these funds must employ labour, and to get it must, where labour is scarce, offer high wages; high wages spoil the farmers' profits, and labour abstracted from them leaves the farmer helpless.'? Now, I have never asserted that the Government must employ labour to spend their funds, or that they must, in fact, monopolise the market for that article. That their having in fact done so has. put the crops of the last summer in serious•; jeopardy, and so convinced .does the Government > appear to be of this, that they have : offered contracts for the: keeping of the roads in repair, and.the more this principle is followed out the more,free will our labour market becbine.'and somehow I fancy that by this contract work a great deal more will be done for money; for, although it has so happened that I never saw above three men about filling one cart or tumbril, for: the .simple reason that no more- can get' round it to work economically, here I see not unfrequently six. JSTeU ther have I advocated the reduction of the price of the waste lands, provided the quality and,other

circumstances bo equally good. I did, it is true, put the question as a suggestion that some means should be adopted to reduce the action upon the labour market of the body using other peoples money, even against those people themselves, and as I before observed, the Government had already seen and commenced action in the line which I thus happened to hit. I also • suggested that a commutation of the purchase money, if. not all immediately wanted, into a rent-charge, .might be advantageous, and I believe that it would probably be so to all parties. If our customs become too profitable, why—reduce the duties. This would be certainly indirect antagonism to the principle of taking from the individuals constituting the public, that that non-entity the public might spend their money for them, and be aided in doing so by a monopoly of the most valuable article that the province holds. It is not the custom of New Chum to heed, and certainly not to feel, the sneers that opposers may think fit to cast at him. lie has had in all ways too many rubs to care for the fits of temper exhibited, and but too frequently for lack of argument. He has had occasionally to defend or impugn opinions where, among many others, men of the 'rank of those holding lately, if not now, the principal stations of the British Ministry (and the Chancellor of the Exchequer happens on one occasion to have been one) and he has ever found that honestly expressing what he believed to he the truth, and that only, with firmness and courtesy, has obtaiued for him an attentive reading or hearing.

Now, Mr. Editor, I have done -with this matter, and I believe' that when you have considered it calmly, and not in a Canterbury province or Wakefield sense, you will agree with me that the founding of a colony, or the buying of an ounce of snuff, must be done, to be done well, in a common sense, business manner, and that there is no legerdemain, no new-fangled manner to be pursued in either case if done properly. . , With all good wishes for the Editor.of the 'Times,' and the hope that he will look a little closer to his leading articles in future, I remain,

A NEW CHUM.