THE Mount Ida Chronicle SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 1874.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 261, 7 March 1874, Page 2

THE Mount Ida Chronicle SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 1874.

When Mr. Hampden was transcribing " The Grounds of Settling a Planta- " tion in .New England: Objections " and Replies thereto," forwarded to tiitn by the author, Sir_John Mlior, then a prisoner in the Tower for the of civil liberty, we do not think it occurred to liiin that a very few generations would only pass before all the evils as regarded class distinctions, and the monopoly of capital weighted with political interest, would be reproduced in the Colonies—of which the. scheme then before him was to result in the establishment of the pioneer. .It is true that the chief pressure that led these high-principled men to turn their attention to America was the tyranny of the favorites and ministers of a bigotted king—meu who employed agents in every county to raise unjust levies and even condone grave offences at the high (-'ash bids of the offenders. ret Mr. JB'urster, who Has studied the h;story ol' the" English Revolution for a Jong period, and has 1 made public the results of tfhat'eareful search in scvoral well-known works, .says: —"Though i" the - immediate design (of the New

" Jbngland settlement) had at first " scarcely extended beyond the provi- " sion of a relate abroad for the vic- •" tims of tyranny in Church and State " at Home, yet it soon became m:mi- " fest that there had also entered into •" it a larger-and grander scheme: that " with more security for liberty of per- " aon, and freedom to worship God, " had mingled the hope of planting in " those distant regions a free eominon- ': wealth and citizenship, to balance "and redress the old; and that thus " early such hopes had been inter- " changed respecting it between such "men as Elliot and Hampden, Lord " Brooke, Lord Warwick, and Lord " Say and Sele." '

The wpste lands in any proposed Colony were always regarded as the property uf the people, to be administered for their interest as individuals as far as system could be called into play. The object of all schemes of colonisation being to remove the stigma from future nations that attaches to the old—of the interests and coinfort of the i'ew over-riding, to the very gates of the poorhouse and the grave, the rights of tie many. On this .principle, and with these fair views, the American . and Australian Colonies were planted, and, if possible to secure such desirable fea'tures as a perman-" ency, self-government was bestowed by the colonising State as nearly as possible free from Imperial interference. We now know that, all such schemes, as a permanent realisation, through the different degrees of men's minds their instinctive love ,of "power and grasping after wealth—are Utopian : that some must sink, or, at the best, remain stationary, while.-others rise at the former's expense. No. year of jubilee appears practicable in which men should restore th-3 overplus of goods they have obtained, and that then a communism of property should' take place! Nevertheless, wise legis-. lalion would have prevented the traffic,- as a matter of speculation, in the people's estate—the land. When restrictive measures are urged to ctriserve the lands, the movers are. told, Oh, you would drive capital from thy country, then ? No, they reply ;we would not drive capital away, but re strict it to its legitimate branches of trade. Speculation in land should be as punishable as usury formerly was •We hear now of the duty of the State to conserve the : forests: -The Conner-" vatiyes are, the loudest in,this cry. Yet, why should the forests be protected, and the la ,% d which grows the timber be ruthlessly given up for ever, at often less-Dhari its-rateable annual value, to be held in monopoly as" against the population it should maintain, arid whose it is. '' 'New Zealand, one'of the youngest. Colonies, is fast becoming, the !most'aristocratic. The lands are .either locked up.in leases, which promise to be kept reneweC through the strong interest of their holders, or what lands ! are sold are too often sacrificed to capital, to relieve the necessities of the hour, to the total disregard of the. future ; and, to crown all-to put,the cope stone', as it were,.upon a building, of faulty legislation—thousands of men are being brought into the country to work for wages, on the Public Works for an uncertain period of time, and the land which these men's labor> should develope for the after maintenance of themselves is passing away in immense tracts to individuals at prices that will not necessitate any improvement at all. - The features of the old Grecian Colonies are being singularly reproduced. In ancient" Greece ail manual labor, was performed by slaves; who were the property.of the great men. The deficiency of food was not distributed, therefore, in the shape, of general poverty and wretchedness over the great, body of the population, but it fell on the great "men who had, at a consequently increased', expense,' to maintain the slaves; and, of course, this resulted in further oppression, to obtain, if possible, an equivalent from the costly labor. '" This law of human na- " ture," we are ,told, " was not less "faithfully observed" in the States of " Aucient Greece for their be'ng called " .Republics. Called Republics, they " were aristocracies, and aristocracies " of a very bad description. They were " aristocracies in which the people " were cheated with the idea of power " merely because they were able, at " certain distant intervals, when vio- " lently excited, to overpower thearis- " tocacy in some one particular point, " but they were,aristocracies in which " there was not one efficient security " to prevent the interests of the many " from being sacrificed-to the interests " of the few—they were aristocracies, " accordingly, in which the interests of " the many were habitually sacrificed "" to the interests of the few, meaning " by "the many, not to 3 "slaves only, " but the great body of the free "eiti- " zens." Is it not so with us in Otago? What is our Waste Lands Act" but a

measure legislating for the few at the expense of the many? The many get roused occasionally—but .far too occasionally—and get some unbearable grievance remedied;, but these buull victories act only.as opiates.-to.lull.op-position, and the many are again and again found returning to their legislative bodies men with no other merit but their capital and their landed estate. • no other grounds can we account for the aristoera'ic and unjust legislation with regard- to the settlement offered to the people who have left England to share equally in the privileges aud the st.rugglps.of those already>in the Colony. - No system of leasing—of landlord and tenant ou a large sca'o, even although the State be that landlord—can-be of any effect in remedying the evils of ..a fast-increas.-ing and proportionally domineering aristocracy of wealth, but rather a system that would settle all industrious

Colonists on homesteads of freehold land—teaching independence, and raising a class of serviceable and manly yeomanry,' such as were at one time the glory and the strength of England.