The Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1867.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 232, 3 October 1867, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1867.

'A nations labor well applied is sufficient to provide its whole population with good food, comfortable clothing, and pleasant luxury. But the good, instaut, and constant application is everything. We must nofc, when our strong hands are out of work, look wildly about for something to do with them. If ever we feel that want it is a sign that all our household is out of order. Fancy a farmer's wife, to whom one or two of her servants should come at noon, crying that they had got nothing to do, that they did not know what to do next; and fancy again the same farmer's wife looking hopelessly about her zooms and yard, they being all the while in considerable disorder, not knowing where to put the spare handmaidens to work, and at last complaining bitterly that she had been obliged to give them their dinner for nothing. This is but the type of the political economy which is practised too often in England. Would you not at once assert of such a mistress that she knew nothing of her duties, and should yon not be certain that, if the household were rightly managed the mistress would only be too glad at any moment to avail herself of the help of any spare hands, that ahe would know in one instant what to set them to do, what part of to-morrow's work might most serviceably be forwarded; and when in the evening she dismissed her servants to" their recreation or their rest, should we not find that none had been overtasked, because none had been letidle; that everything had been accomplished, because all had been employed; and that as none had been dishonored by inactivity, so none had been broken down by toil? The precise counterpart of sucha household would be seen in a nation in which political economy was rightly understood.

You complain of the difficulty of finding work for your men. Depend upou it the real difficulty rather is to find men for your work. The serious question for you is not how many you have to feed, but how much you have to do; it is our inactivity, not our hunger, that ruins us; let us never fear that our servants should have a good appetite — our wealth is in their strength, not in their starvation. Look around this island of yoursand see what you have to do iv it. The sea roars against your harborless cliffs — you have to build the breakwater, and dig the port of refuge; the unclean pestilence is raging in your streets — you have to bring the full stream from the hills, and to send the free winds through the thoroughfare ; you have to dig the moor and dry the marsh, to bid the morass give forth instead of engulphing, and to wring the honey and oil out of the rock. These things and a thousand such we have to do, and shall have to do constantly on this great farm of ours; for do not suppose that it is anything else than that. Precisely the same laws of economy which apply to the cultivation of a farm apply to the cultivation of a province or of au island. Whatever rebuke you would address to the master of an illmauaged patrimony, precisely that rebuke we should address to ourselves, so far as we leave our population in idleness and our country in disorder. What would you say to the lord of an estate who complained to you of his poverty and disabilities, and when you pointed out to him that his land was half overruu with weeds, and that his fences were all in ruin, and that his cattle sheds were roofless, and his laborers lying under the hedges faiut for want of food, he answered that these were too costly operations for him to undertake, and that he knew not how to feed his laborers nor pay them ? Would you not instantly answer that, instead of ruining him to weed his fields, it would save him; thafc his inactivity was his destruction, aud that to set his laborers to work was to feed them ? Now you may add acre to acre,. and estate to estate, as far as you like, but you will never reach a compass of ground which shall escape from the authority of these simple laws. The principles which are right in the administration of a few fields are right also in the administration of a 'great country; idleness does not cease to he ruinous because it is extensive, nor labor to be productive because it is universal.'

We offer the above as a sample of the kind of information people should search after and master, in order to qualify themselves for taking an intelligent part in the present Financial Reform movement that has been so weli begun, for we deem it al\ important that the members of the League, and in fact the public generally, should hold well defined notions concerning the principles of political economy which, in the words of John Ruskm, the author quoted above, 'simply means citizens' economy.' « There is,' he continues, ' not one of the really great principles of the science which is either obscure or disputable, and which might not be taught to a youth as soon as he can be trusted with an annual allowance, or to a young lady as soon as she is of age to be taken into counsel by the housekeeper.'

Although the matter quoted above was written in England and refers to England, all who read it will at once perceive its entire applicability to this province and to New Zealand generally. In addition to bringing the full stream from the hills (which, as far as Nelson is concerned, is happily about being accomplished), making the port of refuge, &c, we may add bridging our rivers, making our roads, and clearing the now useless Crown Lands, that form so large a portion of our province, of the scrub and undergrowth, and making grass and clover to grow there instead.

Tbere are thousands upon thousands of acres that might thus be brought quickly and [surely into grass; and, to turn the subject of tbis article to some practical account, we would suggest that blocks of the Crown Lands adjoining centres of population should be laid out in convenient sections for the purpose of being cleared of the scrub and small trees, up to a certain size, as is done on a small scale by private means, and then be left as a standing job at a reduced rate of pay to absorb the surplus labor of the locality, so that in all cases of a scarcity of employment, no time might be lost to individuals, nor any labor be lost to the country, but be employed instead in enhancing the value of the public property and increasing the grazing capabilities of the country. The land so improved would become valuable and capable of settlement, and the wilderness would be pushed farther and farther from our doors, and while this was being done the men and families who now suffer from want of employment would be relieved without the country being burdened, because, as Buskin says, 'to set our men to work is to feed them.' That scores of men would be glad to have such a resource to fly to when they had nothing better to do we are forced to believe, for there can hardly be a doubt that the country is crushed and crippled and out of order; and if better legislation and wiser and more intelligent political economy is not brought to hear, our rulers will have to lament, like the mistress ofthe ill-managed household in our quotation, that they have to give the people or a large portion of them, ' their dinner for nothing,' since too many now have too frequent cause to complain that they have nothing to do.