The New Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 291, 14 March 1849, Page 2

The New Zealander.

Tun pioposilion of E,ul Grky to dcgiade the fiee provinces ot New Zealand to the condition of penal cesspools is befoie the community. Yes, a Whig Colonial becicUuy has pioposed Hie deseciation of that New Zealand, which, not ten years since, was trumpeted beyond e\ery other British possession of the youth Pacific, us the most fitting emigration field for "the virtuous peasantiy of England! And wherefore? Simply because, m New Zealand, they would escape the moral and social contamination which had so curelessly infected Ncuv South Wales and Van Dieraen's Laud ! Excellent ! Either the advocates of 1830 must have been very bigotted men, or the Colonial Minister of 1848 a very reckless one. What say the former ? Quoting as a textbook, Ui> elaborate transportation lepoit, emai'-itjii^ iom a committee of which Sir "Wiii; \m MoleswoUth was chairman. •• That rerpectable families should be warned oi ihe pernicious inliuence which pievailed in i'iocv! penal) colonies, to initiate the yning in vice, and perpetuate and increase the ilc j lavity of the old ; — colonies in which every c- ling of \iilue would surely be extinguished, _vt| \ice of every kind openly indulged: — \ her 0 a paient could not commit a greater cmne with reference to his olYspung than to tiiu" them to buch a soil !"' ;•'' spoke the late Reverend Dr. Dickinson, cu/'im to the Archbishop of Dublin-, at a ~ to ! meeting held at the Mansion House, lh.b.m, in November 1839, in suppoit of a resolution expressing "That, m the opinion of this meeting, it is unjustifiable to induce inten.lins emigrants to take up their abode in the ■miu-'.t of the vice and immorality which notoiiou c .l> prevail in the penal colonies; but that sutli jmsoiis should be encouraged to settle in count nos where they wijl he likely not only to thsiMj in foitii'.e, but to lead good lives, and brine; '-'p their cluldicn in viituous habits." Now this meeting, and this and other resolutions proposed and cauied by acclamation at tin* meeting, had especial and avowed reference to the i hen incipient colonization of New Zealard, which, as unaccuised with the penal "brand, was glowingly, contrasted with her polluted neighbours, and invidiously and oflensivdy vaunted as the sole fitting home for emigrants of pure minds and virtuous habits. The stigma thus cast upon the penal colonies caused no little controversy, exciting as it did univeisal Australian indignation ; but New South Wales having almost immediately thereafter cast her felon slough, and hapless Tasmania being converted to the one great " dunghill" of the British empire : — and she, moreen e< , being partly bribed by a lavish government expenditure to wink at her own dos-vi.ition, until aroused from her delusion by fpy'Mv; that more than a moiety of this piobatioii expenditure, she \ainly dreamt was exciushtly to enrich her, crossed Basses' Straits in payment of beef and mutton ; — felon denunciation went to sleep, until the Tasmanian ■stiller:; discovered that the Probation farmers »veie, in their own maikets, their ruinous competitor, ?nd that theit fieelabouieisand mechanics, I'lmiHmg and unable to encounter such com,vtition, " escaped for their lives," by eveiy us'el to Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. — i'hui Van Diemcn's Land sank rapidly in the moial and social scale •, and, for years, the cry uf her convict nddeii settlers has been poured into the deaf ear of a legardless Colonial Office. Com ids continued, and continue, to be poured &hip load after ship load, upon her groaning shoies, until in utter extremity her crushed but loyal people have sought to establish a league to pi event the employment of felons amongst them. hi 1 Sl6, Transportation was attempted to he renewed to New South Wales, but the inhabitants of that great colony, too long, and too pivfticaljy conveisant with the bitter curse hoi-! which they had escaped, scouted the proportion with indignation: — meetings having beei. wirened thioughout the length and breadth of the land to give utterance to their «ibl'<ti,< ace of a system fraught with such an accu dilution of evils, moral and material. li v, th»;n, to pure and undefiled New ZeaLikL • -u<j New Zealand lauded and recom= iuend.il above all the bistei colonies as a place of emiy.ition — Is it to our shoies that the Itight Itonourable Earl Grey would insinuate the tilthy stieam at which the land once polluted with it revolts, and from which the other land bill I swamped by its noisome flood strives and stiujjglos to be set free % Bui v<\jit iuve we to do with convicts ? Or upon nfuit jj.mciple of law or equity dare any Seo-'L'i) or S'.-'te endeavour to palm them upon us ? Neu Zealand antecedent to the treaty A \\Min\i\i V/-X3 a fiee countiy whose inde{•nJei.ti* \!'i«! jruardutei'd by the British Crown. lie. .he Noil hern chiefs, in solemn conclave, iriiKfcd '-'.'he shadow of the land to the .•ucc/i, ii vis not that then piopeity m the s.iljslatur of (hat land should riist be made a iialLero! ,/. rial pleading, nor— that question ■ MrtjJunjil) and ungrtcioui-ly disposed of,— iUt the lard should be iniquitously thiown

! open as a receptacle for British crime, Earl Grey has clearly and repeatedly evinced his contempt of the treaty of Waitangi, and in no instance, we contend, moro pointedly than the present:— the attempt to thrust the disgorgings of the British gaols upon a semi-civilized county — whose people smrendeied their sovereignty in full and implicit confidence of British integrity and honour — being, in our opinion, as Mitual an infraction of that treaty, and far more detumental to the native race, than the meditated confiscation of their lands. We tiust this contemplated invasion of their and our lights will be contested with equal energy and success. The Colonization of New Zealand was and is essentially free and untainted, and we most sincerely hope that the Minister who aimsat our conspurcation may take nothing by his motion but the infamy of its proposition. But let us pause and inquire upon what plea or pretext we are sought to be thus degraded 1 None other that Aye can discover unless upon the sic volo sic jubeo of an oppressive Colonial Office. Earl Grey, indeed, euters into an exparte history of the marvellous efftets of " discipline" in reforming offenders according to act of Parliament. Does his Lordship imagine Mr. Kingsford competent to dive into the heart 1 Or does he suppose that any man, at all conversant with piison discipline, is in the slightest degree deceived by an acted hypocrisy the more dangerous as it is the more deep and designing'? Earl Grey is particularly unhappy in his endeavour to hold up Port Philip as a working model of the excellence of the system he is desirous of introducing here. People, at a distance, might be deluded into the belief his Lordship professes to entertain ; but here where we aie paitly behind the scenes, we are familial with all the noxious machinery, and we know that not even in Van Diemen's Land is vice and ciime more rampant than in the pseudo fiee settlement of Port Philip. It is the very hot-bed of infamy -.—and so outiageous and so continuous are offences, that the Journalists of the place have been necessitated to coin a phrase — " Pentonvillianism" — as at once indicative of the force and source of the atrocities to which they are subjected. Yet Earl Grey complacently points to "the rapidity with which men who arrived there under the name of Exiles have been engaged for the service of the resident proprietois !" Is this ingenuous, is this honest argument 1 Loid Grey knows full as well as we, that proprietors with crops uncut, sheep unwashed and unshorn, would engage Old Nick were he a sheep shearer, and that without question asked. And the crime of their necessity which Lord Grey and his colleagues should avert by a stream of free and untainted labour is made the plea and the pretext to void upon them, upon us, and other feeble colonies the moral pestilence of Britain ! "Oh shame, where is thy blush?" To use an expressive Colonial phrase, Lord Grey should have kept Port Philip dark. Melbourne is the head quarters of Exile Villainy. Its thieves are proclaiming a soit of vested interest in the province, since we perceive by the local press that a " Thieves Association" has been organized. This Club is to provide counsel for the defence of its members,- to support them in gaol, and to work the oracle in the way most likely to effect their relief. Such is the style of men whose labour Earl Grey professes to think it would be to the advantage of New Zealand to accept : — and, that the nauseous pill may be more easily bolted, his lordship seeks to bronze it with the paltry amount of passage money wrung from such polluted hands. Destitute as New Zealand is of needful labour Aye hope Aye knoAV her too Avell to doubt that she will resist a I 1I 1 out ranee the introduction of labour so depraved as this. She Avasj as a colony, founded in freedom, and to tamper Avith that fieedom is an injury and an injustice Avhich should be loudly promulgated to the British nation Avhose sympathies Aye feel assured will be ours, and Avhose Christian membeis will resent the atrocity of rendering every settlement of the Southern Ocean a field for the development and exercise of British crime. Convictism has been the curse of every colony into Avhich it has been introduced. Even in its most rational and reformatory arrangement — the assignment system — it was a great and a crying evil ; the physical benefits being far more than counterbalanced by the moral and social injuries. Every iicav fangled change, since the suppression of assignment, has been but an alteration from bad to worse ; and if " the unblessed thing" is to be made to spread, and the Australasian family — nay, every colony to the south of the equator — to be reduced to an English lazaretto, farewell to all the fond dreams we andjthey have been indulging, of handing down with honour and honesty the much prized vittues of the Anglo Saxon race. Will free and unvitiated minds direct their thoughts toAvards the leprous and poisoned South, when they can bend their footsteps toAvards the free and unsullied West "? We ask any man, avlio, under the extraordinaty inducements held out, from 1818 to IS3O, to migrate to NeAV South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, Avhether he had not a hard struggle betAveen honest piide and pinching poverty — whether the disgrace of emigrating to a convict colony, did not go far to ouhveigh the .Mattel ing piospects of Avealth that aAvailed

him on a felon strand ? If feeling ran so high then, what would it do now, when no such inducements exist, and when instead of two penal colonies, we should find none other in oui southern seas ? We could say more, much more, on this disgusting subject. We have had a long and intimate experience of the workings of convict - ism ; but, we refrain, at present, from fuither comment. Exiles, we are not likely to receive. These felons had been covenanted to he admitted by New South Wales for an equivalent in the shape of an ample supply of free immigrants. From that solemn paction Earl Grey has departed, and, in lieu of Kingsford's regenelatcs, or his own Poit Phillippiau marvels, is shipping unpurged convicts in their stead. We commend our readers to the opinions of the Sydney Heralh, on this nefarious breach of faith. Ere this, universal Australia is, no doubt, in furious indignation. Tasmania has long been tugging and tearing at her chains— South Austialia, will be equally anxious to avert infamy from her shores, and South Africa, (a colony, which like our own, should have been the last to be made an experimental convict field) is unanimous and energetic in its purpose to repel the felon invasion. North and South we feel assured ouv colonists will be up and doing. Indeed, public meetings, we have heard, are already in agitation. Heaven speed their purpose, and impart energy to their eloquence. We have more than once advocated the advantages of a Colonial League, in constitutional resistance of the oppressions of the Colonial Office, and in redress of the numerous grievances under which every colony groans. But we never saw so momentous an occasion for Union and Unanimity of Colonial purpose as now. We aie of opinion tliat independently of individual colonial protests and public meetings — local committees might be formed to concert and co-operate with a central committee at Sydney, to collect facts and to demonstrate that every colony is agreed, and that they virtually constitute a firm but loyal Soim Colonial, Anti-Anglo-Pollution League!

We have heard it mentioned, and the opinion .we believe has existed for some time, both here and in other places, that the town and climate of Auckland is unhealthy. Although there is as much truth in the rumour as in the story of the " three black crows," yet it is a report which must be crushed in the bud, because it is not only highly injurious to Auckland, but also to the colony at large. We have therefore considered it to be our duty to adduce a few facts which will show that the report is not only inconect, but without the least foundation. From the first settlement of Auckland in 1841 up to the year 1846 the inhabitants enjoyed a high degree of health, a circumstance confirmed by the testimony of those who have lived in the town, and also by a calculation drawn from a rough estimate of the number of graves in the different places of interment. It is, however, the year 1848 which gave to Auckland the bad name we have entered the lists to combat, and although we do not pin our faith to the accuracy of the Government , census, yet, as an approximation to truth, we have pleasure in quoting from it. During the year 1847, out of 5,167 souls, in the town and settlements around Auckland, 60 died — or 1 death out of every 90 persons. During 1848, out of 7,002 souls, 106 died, or 1 death out of every 66 persons. Here we have, better than any words can show, a convincing proof that 1848 was more unhealthy than 1847, but the health of the inhabitants in Auckland during even the year 1848 was much better than that experienced among the population of any part of England. To those who may shake their heads at this we would refer to the "Register of Deaths reports," where it will be seen that among the people of England one person dies eveiy year out of about every 47 persons, and in the large town of Manchester the mortality increases to one in 27. There is no conjurer required to explain the increased mortality of 1848, because in Auckland, during the month of April, scarlet fever, that fatal disease of infancy, made its appearance for the first time in the colony, and it prevailed for eight months, during which period it attacked 146 persons, out of whom 18 died ; if, therefore, we deduct the deaths produced by this epidemic, we shall find that 1848 was as healthy as 1847. But while we laud the climate let us not forget to point with indignation at the filthy state of some of the streets in the town, and the existence of lanes which would disgrace a place fifty times the age of Auckland, and which crowded and badly ventilated lanes gave origin to almost all the bad cases of scarlet fever which occurred during the epidemic. A starving population is all that is required in Auckland to call into existence a contagious fever. As another proof of the salubrity of the climate of Auckland, let us look to that accurate barometer of the health, the militaiy population, and from it we learn that during the year 1848 the 58th Regiment lost fewer men than would have occurred had it been stationed in Great Britain. All Englishmen will talk about the weatner when they have nothing else to say to each

other; and it is often said that the Auckland climate is " damp and disagreeable, and productive of coughs and colds." To give, howe\cr, some mote tangible idea of the weather than this, we insert a register of the climate for the year 1848, from which it will be seen that the average temperature was 00° Fahr., and the number of days on which rain Ml was 107. The people of Auckland had, therefore, during the last year, the enviable satisfaction of enjoying a climate similar in temperature to those gardens of health, Montpelier and Madeira. But hcie the comparison stops, because the year was more moist, and more rainy days occuned in it than we find in many parts of England. It is however a doubtful, if not an erroneous opinion to say that the climate of New Zealand is more producthe of consumption than England, because during the last year the 58th and 65th Regiments lost only about five men out of eveiy thousand from chest complaints, whereas the men of the Heavy Dragoon regiments, who never leave Great Britain, lose about eight men per oiie thousand from pectoral complaints. So far, therefore, as we can observe, there is no doubt that the climate of Auckland is a good one, and that the Anglo-Saxon race will increase and multiply over the whole countiy -, and, as a proof of this we would refer to the increase among the families of the missionaiies who have been long settled in the country. Candour, however, obliges us to confess that we have some misgivings whether the North Island, from its too genial climate, and from the ease with which the soil yields up its fruit, will ever pioduce a race of men equal in mental or bodily energy to those who have migrated from Gieat Britain, and who have been brought up during their boyhood in the less luxurious, but moie bracing climate of that country.

By the arrival of the " Cheerful/ on Sunday, we have Sydney intelligence to the 27th ult! Only one or two newspapers and a few letters came to hand, — the mail being on board the " Maid of Erin," which sailed a few hours before, but has not yet made her appearance. We copy the most interesting matter. ' The chief topic of discussion is the forcing of transportation once more upon New South Wales, which, as will be perceived, has filled the public mind with indignant disgust. It is clear that the Southern Colonies must confederate if they would successfully resist these unjustifiable outrages.

We are requested to call tlie attention of the loveis of the Fine Arts, to Mr. 11. Joseph's sale of Engravings, to come off to-morrow. The engravings arc now on view at the mart. — Communicated.

Programmp,.— On Thuisday, Maich 15th, 1819, by the permission of Lieutenant Colonel Wynjartl,) C.n.) the Band of the 58th Regiment will perform the following pieces oi music, wilhin the cnrlouire of the government giounds, from half-past four to halNpast six o'clock :—: — Overture . . Op. " I I'lintnm" Bellini Waltz .. .. " The Jenny Lind" Konig Melange ...Veid.'s (),>. "1 Lombardi" Verdi ,s Ollg " Siivournah Dhfccl.sh" Cnnipbell Qu.uliille., "The Minuet" Jullien Gulop . . ..." Le Postilion De Longemea»"...Adara Son^ .. .. " The Land of the West 1 ' Lover Polka "La Carriole" Jullien

M»nths of 184 S. it O O h5 \ & u SD O « o (U'o o 1) 4) ■a a H 3 1 S o a i is if 5-2 <-C I ■S 3 it o M I I "l January 80 59 72 12 12 February March 78 75 78| 64 66 4 10 62 69 5 5 kpril Way Fune. 67 « 43 66 56 4 6 11 22 64 45 54 7 17 fiily GO 41 54 15 \ugust September Dctober 66 36 51 12 16 67 77 j 77 79 37 37 51 57 13 23 15 15 November 50 62 13 16 December 49 66 16 5 i 1 i Averages . . . . 60 I 9 167