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New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 780, 5 October 1853, Page 2

The recent arrivals from Australia have placed us in possession of a complete file of San Francisco papers, extending from the middle of May to the 6th June. We transfer to our columns to-day several extracts from the leading articles of the Alta Califor. nia , which will be found illustrative, in several aspects, of the condition, prospects, and designs of California, and which are not without instruction adapted to other lands, in their bearing on questions of general ini terest.

The first of our selections, headed “The Legislature and the Mines,” exhibits sti skingly the unsatisfactory position of the labouring miners, who, from the absence of any consistent policy or uniform system of administration with regard to the mineral districts, are kept in a stale of constant disquiet,—uncertain whether the regulations of to-day may not be reversed to-morrow,—and who, from the impossibility of obtaining such lilies to their claims as would secure a requital for the toil and expendilureiocorred in the establishment of them, are forcedeven where they are most disposed to settle down in the occupation of digging as a steady and permanent business—to remain, whether they will or not, little more than so many units in a heterogeneously compounded mass in which mere adventurers form no inconsiderable part. The Legislature of the Slate, democratic though its constitution is to the heart’s content of the most ardent republican, seems to have scandalously neglected the interests of the mining population. True, the mining counties had (so called) representatives, but those gentlemen attended to the furtherance of objects of their own, to | the practical disregard of the concerns of their constituents. Even-handed justice must decide, however, that the constiluences were themselves much to blame. We leant from the Alta that—instead of choosing “men who have families, or at least have a deep and abiding interest in the welfare of the Slate, and who have chosen California for their home and mean that California shall be their grave”—they gave their suffrages to candidates destitute of these essential qualifications. Constituencies acting thus have little right to complain if their members pursue privateer personal ends rather than the welfare of a land in which they can have only a loose and passing concern. They desene the treatment they receive, and the result would be matter of small regret were it not that in every such case the innocent more or less suffer with the guilty, and the general welfare of the country sustains damage from the presence in its Legislature of men who have ho root in its soil, and no prospect or intention of bearing their share, either individually or through their families, in the consequences of any experimental, crolchelty, or niichievoHSmeasures to the origination or promotion of which they may direct their amateur endeavours. We are induced to copy another articleen* titled “ Chinese Citizenship, "especially on account of the striking light it sheds upon me character, and the too probable consequences, of the introduction of a number of Chinese labourers, such as our readers are aware u has recently been contemplated in me Southern Provinces to import systematical, into our own colony. We have s ° nie hope that this project has been put down by m loud and indignant reprobation in "hie many influential voices have been uplm against it, as on searching through o recently received files of Wellington pape we have not found any reference to it, * ‘ cept, indeed, in an advertisement iMffl patriotic bootmaker at Wellington win )s headed “Chinese labourers not * Still, the mere fact that the speculation nas been announced as sanctioned by a *® w 0 > wise respectable persons at Canterbury < Wellington is sufficient to excUe marm, to call for sustained vigilance until all da » of its being carried into effect has uneqt cally passed away. The expenmen been tried in San Francisco far mor lensively than in Australia, and l ‘ ie 1 , n( i have been proportionately more niarkeo i mischievous. As respects the Cm - themselves, a great majority of them, ‘jj known to be—what we have already most of those who might be brougm New Zealand would beyond all u virtually be— slaves. As a class, w® ,j tells us, “ they are the depressed and se ‘ coolies of the land, who in coming * | leave everything they have behind mem, t0 give their wives and children as hostag their masters that they will not break compact when they get beyond the rear Chinese laws.” True, their being « , would be nothing revolting in the bn Stales: slavery is recognised and cl,eris u under the banner which significantly eaouji bears stripes as well as stars; and * which we copy is a painfully instructiv hibilion of the cool effrontery with wi this gigantic abomination is treated as a m ter of course, and the degradation ot negro is assumed as most necessary ana nr

„ bv a people who are offensively clammoils in vaunting of their pre-eminent love of freedom,— apparently unconscious that die Fugitive Slave Law, even if it stood alone, would brand upon their brow in burn- . s characters the inscription of “ Political Hypocrisy,” however other trails in their /liaractcr ni ;ght command admiration. This strain, which pervades the whole article, would merit for more of animadversion than e ca n now offer, especially when we view it in connexion with the sneers at Uncle Tom's Tabiih and much more tending in the same direction, abounding in the Californian pacers before us. But we leave these portions of the extract, without further notice at present, to the indignation with which our readers are sure to regard them. As we have intimated, our chief object in making the quotation is to adduce the evidence it affords on a point on which it may be received as trust-worthy authority, viz.—the evil of throwing such an element into even anEuronean population as is produced by the importation of a race from contact with whom “nothingbutdegradalion can ensue,”and, far more, the fearful consequences which (for reasons at which wo glanced with perhaps sufficient distinctness on a former occasion) might be expected to follow from the intermingling of such immigrants with a people like the Maories. If it might truly be said, — “the whole advantage in having them here at all may be summed up in these words, — it benefits American commerce at the expense of American civilization,” in how much stronger terms should the scheme be denounced as respects New Zealand ! But we would willingly trust that we shall hear no more of it here. It is enough—too much—of disgrace that the project should ever have been broached at all, and if the Canterbury settlers or adventurers from whom it is understood to have primarily emanated are not themselves ashamed of it, their friends and patrons in England will we doubt not feel ashamed both for them and of them. Another of our extracts has reference to the relations between the United States and the Sandwich Islands. It is not difficult to perceive throughout the article an undercurrent tending in favour of that project of annexing those places to “the glorious Union,” of which many significant indications have lately appeared. We should regret to see the independence of the interesting little kingdom of Hawaii engulphed in what the Alta calls “the neighbouring democratic dominions of Uncle Sam,” and are unwilling to believe that England and France would be consenting parlies, or even indifferent lookers on,—unless there were at least a desire for the revolution on the part of the great majority of the Hawaiians themselves, which, from the best information we have been able to gather on the subject, we are satisfied is very far from existing. There arc several other articles in our present San Francisco files which are worth extracting, but to-day we can add only one more. It is on the anticipated overland immigration to California this season, and contains some very faithful and judicious obser - vations on the extravagant and visionary expectations which have hurried numbers to the land of gold—there to meet with only disheartening disappointment, if not actual ruin. The spectacle of “ farmers, mechanics, traders, and all, forsaking houses, competence, and often opulence, where they are sure of doing well, to seek precarious fortune in a distant land” is a painful one,—whether they start from the Western Stales of America or from districts nearer home, and whether the supposed El Dorado to which they rush be California or Port Philip. The latest notes of the San Francisco markets will be found in another column.