PROSPECTS OF OUR COLONIES. [From the Emigration Gazetted]

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 27, 10 September 1842, Page 107

PROSPECTS OF OUR COLONIES. [From the Emigration Gazetted]

The last advices from Sydney, and other Australian settlements, may lead many to suppose that those colonies will languish for a while, and finally sink under the pressure of their much-lamented and existing difficulties. But these difficulties are nothing more than what we must naturally look for in what may be termed the bud of civilized and commercial nations ; whose founders must be and are confined, in their days of early infancy, within very narrow limits — concentrated for safety, or hemmed in by the sterility or the apparently unconquerable fertility of the wilderness: for the contest with the almost supernatural fertility of a virgin soil appears as hopeless in the onset as the repeated struggles of the agriculturist with most barren spots in the world ; and when a civilized and energetic people are so situated, they instinctively turn their thoughts to other

pursuits, and the whole community on a sudden become traders— as we find them at Port Nicholson at this moment — instead of devoting themselves to cultivation of the soil. And thus it, is that bastard commerce springs up in young states, which leads to temporary prodigality and ultimate ruin, unless the spontaneous productions of the country providentially supply them— -as, for instance, the wools and oils of New South Wales — with little labour, with some articles for exportation. This is precisely the state of affairs in Sydney ; a bastard system of speculative commerce has long existed there, and those speculative capitalists in this country who have fed the flame will be the only sufferers by its total extinction : and no act of the Legislature can relieve them. The Home Government must look to something more than the relief of such commercial difficulties as these. They must look at the physical capabilities and the physical wants of our colonies. The former are known to be as vast as they are various, while all their wants resolve themselves into one, namely, want of labour; and this is a legitimate want in a young country ; a want that increases in an equal ratio with the necessity for a transition from the speculative pursuits of illegitimate commerce to the certain, progressive, and profitable occupation of developing the resources of the soil. But here we arrive at the horrible subject, Emigration. Of late the word emigration has become unfashionable. Colonization is the current phrase in Parliament and in the Cabinet. But we lose nothing, as individuals, by this change of fashion — and there are many such recorded in the doings of our politicians — for we find that Sir Robert Peel's policy is to heap the favours lie has denied to poor Kitty on Miss Kate. Making this distinction is, perhaps, highly politic at this moment. But we must keep a watchful eye on the man that has made it in every emergency of his career. Great fiscal and commercial revolutions are necessarily being hurried on, in quick succession, to divert and distract the current of political opinion. In the universal tumult there is only time to name each interest of the nation separately and rjistinctly. There is no time for making nice distinctions between colonies and foreign countries. The whole system of our commercial intercourse with the nations of the earth is to undergo a total change, and should the interests of our colonies sustain any injury in the convulsion why then Sir Robert can refer us to his financial statement, wherein he says " there may be votes on account of Australia and other colonies which are not included in the sums I have already stated. Ido not take into account a charge which it will not probably be necessary for us to incur — it is not exactly a charge, but there are engagements into which it is necessary we should enter in aid of the credit of Canada for a loan to that colony of £1,500,000. But that I apprehend will be independent of any actual charge, and the grant will merely be passed on the part of the country in aid of the credit of Canada." He also proposes several very beneficial reductions in import duties on colonial produce. But there is really nothing in all this to compensate Canada for the transfer of her timber trade to her ■foreign competitors, or to lead the Canadas to believe that they will be treated as an integral part of the empire. It is evident, from Sir Robert Peel's speech, that he wishes to do so ; but the time is necessary to consuit the colonists themselves as to the expe- < diency'dr measures thus proposed for their , good. If Canada bad other resources matured, she would have but little to fear from our hurried legislation ; but, as she is at present situated, if we throw open our ports to her active rivals in the timber trade, her ' forests will remain unfelled, the land uncultivated, and her shipping and our own unemployed. And where are the existing y exigencies of the mother country that can' be urged to justify such a ramification of sacrifices as these? Even admitting the existing exigencies of this country would justify such, surely there is nothing that calls for the extension of the provisions, or rather principles^of our new international tariff to our intewolonial trade. The least our colonies may be allowed is to exchange their productions with each other, without being exposed to the almost unrestrained competition of foreigners. But these are all matters for mature consideration, and not for hasty legislation : for on legislation, at this critical moment, depend the present, aiUfc future prospects of our colonies. A*sm emigration, that must go on^ unfashionable as it may be in Parliament and elsewhere. <

Arrangements, we understand, «re in progress for extending the benefits of steam communication with India, by establishing a mail every fortnight It is to be regretted that some plan is not devised, by which the inhabitants of this coSosfy; k might also be benefited by this arrangements '*<. J