The New Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 310, 19 May 1849, Page 3

The New Zealander.

tte just ami fear not: Let all tlce'ends thon aims't at, be thy Country s, Thy God's, awl Truth's.

SATURDAY, MAY 19, 18 49.

In the history of the world—ancient or modern—there is probably, no such example of colonial prosperity, as that which, in less than a quarter of a century, elevated New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, from the depth of penal degradation, to a rank of the first importance amongst the British possessions. The cause and the effect of that unexampled elevation cannot be too minutely or too curiously investigated i nor can the statistical inquirer probe too keenly the malign influences which have not only neutralized that beneficial prosperity, (inducing scepticism, because of its evanescent duration, to question the truth of its having ever existed,) but which have plunged those flourishing provinces into a state of almost hopeless stagnation. In the endeavour to illustrate that subject, and to show that New Zealand fails to advance, because of the imposition of similar fetters to those which crush Australia, we shall, necessarily, be compelled to re-travel a somewhat beaten path ; yet, such is the importance of the question, that we trust whatever we may lack in novelty of style, may be compensated by the magnitude of the interests involved. Let us in the first place, then, glance rapidly at " the rise and fall " of the penal colonies ; reverting to the strong inducements held out to families of character to qualify the impurity of those settlements by an infusion of free and uncontaminated blood. What were those inducements ? Primarily, free grants of land with prison labour for its reclamation ; — rations from the government stores ; — government stock to enable the emigrant to breed herds of his own from ;•— and further grants of land, promised to his sons and daughters when arrived at an age equal to its management. Without some such all powerful attractions, is it likely that the energetic emigration which, during twenty consecutive years, in a full and generous tide poured those provinces would have been won to the comparative extinction of their felon character, and to the positive creation of their far-famed colonial pre-eminence 1 ? Does the question admit of any but one reply 1 If it does not — If Great Britain found that she not only relieved her own redundant population by granting her remote and felon wildernesses to her hardy and intelligent adventurers to reclaim, but that those emigrants whom she incited by so shrewd and so liberal a policy, were men of mini sufficient to hew a home of happiness for themselves from out the valueless wastes of Botany Bay, and of manners and education to invest those wastes with the stamp of their own adventurous spirit, theieby inducing the mor*; cautions to be attracted to the

fields of enterprise they had opened up. — If Great Britain, by expedients so sagacious, could append a vast, a valuable, and an increasing territory to her empire, and attach an intelligent and a prosperous section of her family to her sway — surely she had hit upon a perfect tion of colonial policy to be cherished — since she had discovered a vent which gave relief to the British Isles, and encouraged British industry to develope i's inventive fertility, even in a field from which the first adventurers shrank, — until, lured by dazzling promises and driven by direful pressure, they dared to create the globe's fifth quarter. Success achieved — the infamy of the penal settlements obscured by the reputation of their vast tenitorial capabilities, and the rush of English emigration directed to their shores, — then came the time for the genius of Colonial Office wisdom to display its arbitrary bent. One by one, the incentives to emigration were withdrawn. One by one, delays and difficulties were conjured up. One by one, covenants and conditions were imposed, until free grants became fettered locations, from which, according to the tenor of Bir George Arthur's titles, the Crown Was privileged to draw not merely minerals, but metal for roads, the growing timber, way, the soil itself ! We appeal to all who recollect the indomitable and cheery alacrity with which the possessors of a Macquarie's grant went to work in improving their estates, saddled with no iniquitous restrictions, and held at a peppercorn quit rent, with the discontented gloom that discouraged the holders of an Arthur's title, burthened with a quit rent of rapacious amount. We appeal to such settlers and would ask them to contrast the flood tide of emigration which, from 1820 to 1825, poured its thousands into Van Diemen's Land, with the slack water, from 1827 to 1831, and with the all but total cessation from ] 832 until now ; and, having recalled the pleasing vision of the bustle and prosperity of the earlier and brighter years with the dullness and ruin of the latter, we would ask them whether the state of decadence into which they have been hurled, has not been the result of the ever varying ignorance and interference of the Colonial Office and its Quacks ? Assuming, as we shall, that this question has been answered in the affirmative, and that the prostration of New South Wales, (Van Diemen's Land being latterly convict swamped) has arisen from the cessation of the free grant system, let us endeavour to show that the exorbitant price which now precludes the reclamation of Australian waste lands, equally prevents the colonisation of the Province of New Ulster, as v/ell as of New Zealand in general, which can merely be regarded as a waste, studded with a few overgiown, headquarter, settlements. Nay, New Zealand is in an infinitely worse condition than Australia, where the pastoral pursuits of squattage are sanctioned, and where a vast amount of territory, alienated during the era of free grants, is available to the colonists. These free grants made the Australian country, and it is their absence, or the impossible price of land which prohibits a New Zealand country. New Ulster is a possession of nine years standing. The nucleus of its population was formed from among those who during the period of New Zealand's independence, had chosen to migrate from the other colonies, and acquire a home under the protection of the Native Chiefs. The colonization of New Munster by the Company led to something very like a rival colonization by the Crown, and hence Wellington and Auckland were nearly of co-equal foundation. In the south, under the Company's auspices, and under the WakefieM plan, a system of colonization was organized. A great cry was raised in England whence a Coloniarstaff, settlers, and land purchasers, departed. Very different was the birth of Auckland, — It was a Government emanation. There was no settlers to acquire its town acres and rural sections. It crept into being because it was the capital. The sack of Kororareka augmented its numbers, and as it became a garrison town, it opened a wider and wider field for the operations of shopkeepers and tradesmen. Town allotments for the purposes of building were laid out. These, of very limited dimensions, brought immense prices to the Local Treasury, and for suburban aud rural lots equally extravagant sums were demanded, and, here and there, obtained. For many country lands forty shillings an acre are demanded, and no where are less than twenty shillings an acre accepted. Squattage is disallowed. The largest portion of the soil remains uncultivated. The province is, threefore, still greatly dependent upon the neighbouring colonies for bread stuffs and other food, and we have the fact of an overgrown town with the fallacy of little or no agricultural or pastoral interior to feed it — and all this, apparently, that Mr. Wakefield's delusive theory may be glorified — that the distress of Antipodean colonists may be perpetuated — and that the most enterprising spirits of Britain may be driven to other States where common sense, and a sounder policy prevail. It is affirmed by the opponents of cheap land that low prices introduce a pauper proprietary to the detriment, if not the subversion, of the colonial labour market. The objection is a feasible but not an insurmountable one, because, whether lands be alienated by free giant or at a minimum charge, a clause might very

reasonably be introduced such as should render it compulsory on the part of the grantee or purchaser to satisfy the Government that he was possessed of adequate means to reclaim the land he sought to purchase, and rural lands might be sold to such an extent as to be beyond the ambition of the labourer upon his first arrival. But, has Mr. Wakefield's plan been productive of the vast labour benefits it so loudly proclaimed its superiority to achieve 1 Was not South Australia, colonized under his delusive system, a convincing proof of its folly ? Was it not, in fact, but for its after mineral discoveries, a wretched and a ruined failure 1 Has the self supporting dream been realized at Port Nicholson 1 Does not the system exhaust itself after a few feeble drafts, and contribute to a pauper, or, at least a struggling, proprietary quite as effectually as the cheapest land system ? We leave Governor Eyre to reply :—: — Another question to which I would invite your attention (and it is one of vital importance to the prosperity and progress of the Province) is that of immigration j with peace and tratiquility reigning around us, with the necessaries of life in abundance, and at moderate prices, with large tracts of fine and fertile country waking only to be occupied, and with a climate which may vie in heal hiness with the most salubrious in the world, there is yet one great drawback to our prosperity —one, until removed, an insuperable bar to our onward progress ; we have no immigration. The natural result of this i', that labour, and more especially skilled labour, is both exorbitantly dear and difficult to be ob tamed, and the best energies of the settlers are cramped and restricted by an inability to carry out improvements, or ex'end their operations. In other colonies, and in the Northern Province of thin colony, the proceeds ot the sales of land constitute a fund from which the means of promoting immigration are provided, but in this Province, owing to the peculiar arrangemmts which exist in reference to the demesne lands, no lands are sold in the Province, and no such fund exists, I, of curse, exclude from consideration in these remarks the Otaso district, where the New Zealand Company are still sending out emigrants ; and I exclude also the prospec ive Canterbury settlement, not because an emigration in connection with those settlements will not be productive of indirect advantage to all the others but because tln-re is every probability that they may shortly be erected into sepaiate Provinces ; and I both think that each Frovince shou'd have a distinct emigration fund of Us own, and I believe that such a fund might be obtainable in all, if the u^uil facilities were afforded for the sale of land within the Provinces themselves. A sound and practical colonial system is beyond the experience of Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, or his facile Colonial Office neonomians to originate. It must be of colonial birth, if it be designed for colonial benefit. At that conviction England must eventually arrive, and, we rejoice, from the following extract, to observe that to that opinion the " London Daily News" already subscribes :—: — The true way to promote emigration is to give to each colony free institutions and a good system of disposal of waste lands. And in truth the two things are identical. " Free institutions for a colony ' means leaving the whole business of local government in the hands of the colonists, and the disposal of heir waste lands among the rest. This latter point is one which has been iorced upon us by experience. At first we were led to adopt Mr. Wakefield's view, that the disposal of the waste lands should be retained by the Home Government. The arguments for such an arrangement are specious. The waste lands of a colony are the common property of the state which discovers and set les it. They are to be administered by the Government for the benefit of all who have gone out to the colony, and of all who may hereafter go out. What a priva c individual acquires is his own to do what he likes with ; but what remains yet in the common stock is as much the property of the stay.at-home public as of the more adventurous settlers. It has been acquired and must be defended at their common cost. Now if the partitioning of these lands among settlers is left to the settlers themselves, there is a great danger of an unwise rapacity tempting those who go out first to take more than they can use, leaving none for those who are to follow. We still see this danger, but eight year's experience of the management of co'onial lands by the home authorities has convinced us that entrusting it to them is a cure worse than the disease can possibly be. The pr. gress of sound opinions, experience of the bad consequences of over-acquisition of lands, may— will, in time— bring the resident colonists to adopt a sound system ; but the red-tapists of the Co'nuial office are unteachable. You can neither impart to them the requisite practical knowledge of how co'onial waste lands ought to be managed, nor can you give them a motive to exert themselves to acquire that knowledge, and act in comformity to it. What i* at present wanted, there, fore, throughout the Australian settlements (New Zealand ezcepted, which has peculiarities in its condition) is this : — Let a reasonably extensive territory with de finite boundaries, be assigned to Sydney, Moreton Bay, Port Phillip, and Perth ; let the whole local legislation be consigned in each settlement to one elective assembly ; let local taxation and the management of the waste lands within the sett'ement be confided to the same body; let the nomination of governor remain with the crown, but let the determination as to what ministers he is to have, and what salaries he and they are to receive, be left to the assembly ; let the term of a Governor's appointment be for so many years, with a break in the term in case he cannot contrive to govern the colony with and through the local legislature ; let the crown have a veto on all legislative acts in so far as they contain any principles irreconcilable with the law or constitution of England; let the colonial land and emigration commissioners be charged with the superintendence of the emigration to the colonies, and with the furnishing of information to intending emigrants, and let them be remunerated for this trouble by the colonies. New Zealand has been made the home of men of the most antagonistic opinions. In the North, the predelictions, if not actually in favour of free grants, unequivocally incline to low prices. In the South, the Wakefield theory is said to prevail. The settlements are widely apart — financially, have little in common. Are each under distinct rulers. Their legislative separation could, therefore, cause no political disruption. It would be much more practicable and much more profitable than that of Australia Felix from Australia Proper • — and, were the Imperial Government desiroup of

testing the value of the cheap and the dear systems of land sales, the most equi'able opportunity might thus be afforded ; since, if the Crown lacked lands of its own to h ; ng into the noithern market, it might act quite as dignified a part by playing thi broker between the eager native vendors and the anxious European purchasers, as by i.'self buying for a song, and seeking in vain to sell at a price which no one can be coaxed to give. A free grant is much less of a gift than its name would lead one, at the first blush, to infer, for, is it not the bait to lure the capitalist to the province conferring it 1 ? And, when the land is made over, is it not always upon certain provisoes, nearly, if not quite, as beneficial to the state that grants as to the capitalist who accepts 1 ? We point again to Australia in her palmy days, and express a fearless conviction that the fact is so. It cannot be the desire of the British Crown to be considered the " Lord of barren wastes, and the Prince of sterile deserts." Nor can it be supposed that a nation which accords a subsidy to her youngest offshoot, seeks to profit by a hard bargain extorted from a handful of An - tipodean settlers. This trucking system, however congenial to the Colonial Office tricksters, would be indignantly spurned by the British people, and convinced of the accuracy of that opinion, we think that if free grants are impracticable, the natives, under the Imperial right of pre-emption, might be empowered to sell to Europeans, under such covenants and conditions as wouM be most advantageous to both races, and of the greatest benefit to the empire. The prohibition of native land sales — the frightful sum demanded for land acquired by the Crown — the incertitude respecting titles — the doubts and the debates that constantly arise — perplex the mind and paralyze the energies of the most enterprising. Capital is consequently locked up in the bank and in private coffers, to the ruin of agricultural and commercial speculation. Government retains its wastes, and men are, consequently, compelled to cast their eyes about them to discover other and more accessible fields for investment. But it is in England's easy power to bind her sons by honest interest and natural attachment to her own highly favoured possessions. To none of those possessions are Englishmen more warmly or more sincerely attached than to New Zealand. — And there must be something very rotten in the state of Denmark which leads our population to think of forsaking their much vaunted Britain of the South. Were the disease irremediable we should blink the question, but as it is one of simple medicament, we expose it to the English eye in the hope of a prompt and efficacious English cure. Our remarks have extended to such an inordinate length that we must, for the present, forbear. The subject, nevertheless, is far from being exhausted, and we shall return to it at an early day.

Exile Memorial. — The petition to Parliament against the introduction of convicts into New Zealand will lie for signature at the office of Messrs. Brown and Campbell ; at the shop of Mr. John Williamson ; and at the Royal Exchange Hotel. We beg to call attention to a translation of the Native petition to her Majesty, upon the same vexatious subject, which will be found in our Supplement of this morning.

Resident Magistrate's Court. — In consequence of Her Majesty's birthday falling on Thursday, the 24th instant, all Civil Cases standing for that day will be heard and determined on the 23rd. We understand due notice has been or will be given to all plaintiffs and defendants of this alteration.

Birth Day Ball. — His Excellency the Governor and Lady Grey have issued cards of invitation to a Ball and Supper (o be held at the Ordnance Store, Albert Barracks, on the 24th instant, in honour of Her Majesty's natal day.