New Zealand Colonist TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1842.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 19, 4 October 1842, Page 2

New Zealand Colonist TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1842.

We have delayed,the publication of our paper far the,purpose of giving a correct list of the successful candidates for the'Municipal Council. We are glad to find that the good sense 1 of the Burgesses has placed Mr. -Hunter at the head of the poll, and that he will, consequently, have to fulfill the office of Mayor. The list, with one or two exceptions, we think will meet with general approval. There were 59 candidates, and 4000 votes polled. The following is the number of the 18 successful candidates: —

The late arrival from Auckland has brought, among other papers, the concluding number of the Auckland Standard, which has been compelled to stop publication. The article in which the editor takes farewell of his readers, is temperate, and generally sensible ; but it contains an attack upon \vhat the writer is pleased to consider the Wakefield theory, that we cannot allow to pass without notice.

We must first, however, Call attention to the circumstances to which our departed contemporary attributes the present state of decay and stagnation which he represents as prevailing at Auckland. It is comprised in one word; —the high price of Government land at Auckland. To this our contemporary attributes the stagnation of trade, the absence of agriculture, and the lamentable scarcity of money, public and private, which he represents as prevailing. We hope that there is some exaggeration in the picture drawn by the Standard, for we should be sorry to think that Auckland so nearly touched upon the brink of ruin as he appears to represent. But, supposing that the case is as he states it, then there is one reason for its occurrence which he has totally overlooked; the attempt to found a town with no resident population; with no existing trade ; and without arrangements for emigration, or for the supply of capital. It was to this circumstance alone that the anomaly is traceable, of town land fetching as high a price as £1,60.0 per acre, while country land would not realize £2. It was because persons who were among the chief purchasers of Government land, were not intending settlers, but as they have been termed itinerant land-jobbers, that the whole, or nearly the whole, capital of the settlement, has been poured into the coffers of the Government, for small patches of ground which are scarcely large enough for potatoe gardens, but which bid fair apparently to be useless for any other purpose, instead of having been employed in the purchase of farms, which might have been turned to the profit equally of the individual and of the. community. To sum it up in one phrase, the first inhabitants of Auckland were speculators, not settlers; and in their eagerness to realize profit, they overlooked the most obvious and palpable conditions of’eventual prosperity. To those who have resold their land with a profit, and have carried their funds and their speculations to other places, this is a matter of small moment. To the permanent residents it involves immediate suffering, and the prospect of ultimate ruin. In what way, however, is the Wakefield theory responsible for this result ? A number of persons have collected together without forethought, without plan, to make money, by buying and selling town land, to the exclusion of farming or productive industry, and they find that they are, or are in danger of being, starved. Hereupon a cry is raised against the Wakefield theory. Why, the very essence of that theory is the maintenance of a due proportion between what its author .terms the three elements of production—land, capital, and labor. But if

1800 men will, in the insane expectation of enormous and impossible gains, give about £20,Q00 for 400 acres of land—we employ these amounts only for the sake of iliustration, not being able at the moment to lay our hands upon the'returns- —and then find that they have not got land enough to raise food upon, it is clearly they, and not the theory, that are to blame. If they had spent, ten thousand pounds in buying country land at the upset price, instead of shutting themselves up in what is called a town; and had reserved the remaining sum to bring their farms under cultivation, they would have suffered none of the evils of which they now complain, and would have understood the beneficial' results of the theory which they now ignorantly decry.

There is one practical suggestion which we would offer to our Auckland friends. If their own statements may be credited; they have no means to purchase land for farming, and the main cause of this is the large sums which they have sunk in the acquisition of town lots. Let them, then, offer to exchange these town lots at the sum obtained by the Government, for land in the vicinity, either at the upset price, or at such an advance as may be agreed upon. In this manner, they will, be able, without further expenditure, to go upon land which they may. turn to some account; and the Government, if it remain at Auckland, may, at some future day, when the progress of the settlement warrants the price, recover the amount from new purchasers. This arrangement would neither injure the Government, nor violate the principle of the sale of all land laid down by the English Commissioners, and it would remove the great cause of complaint urged by the settlers at Auckland. The scheme which we have thus suggested, possesses one great additional advantage, inasmuch as it removes the chief difficulty which must have been felt as existing in the way of any transfer of the seat of Government. The great injustice of such transfer to those who had purchased town land upon the faith of the Government pledge, that Auckland was to be the capital of the Colony, must have prevented even the contemplation of any removal. But now, when it appeals that town land at Auckland has no more than a nominal value—that the acquisition of country land for agricultural purposes, is the great desideratum without which the settlement cannot prosper—the permitted exchange of the worthless, or at least useless, town land ; for farms in the vicinitv, would not merely free the settlers from the existing difficulty, but would relieve the Government from a serious clog. If this were done, we should see the gradual melting away of the town population of Auckland, and its reappearance in the surrounding district in the guise of cultivators, and the Government would no longer have a motive, or, we might almost say, a reason, for remaining on that spot.

In our last number we inserted a long correspondence as to some singular proceedings on the part of Mr. Wicksteed, the New Zealand Company’s Agent at Taranaki. If the statements of Mr. Waters and Mr’. Greenwood are well founded, of which there is no apparent ground for doubt, it is not easy to conceive of conduct more calculated to injure the Settlement, whose interests Mr. Wicksteed is bound to protect and advance. To make person, who is about to visit that place for the purposes of trade, aware that the only means of accomplishing his object depends upon -the caprice or the pique of one - person, is surely not the way in which to attract commerce, or to furnish inducements for encountering the admitted difficulties of the place. We shall take another opportunity of referring to this subject.

In another column is inserted an extract from the Auckland Times, stating, that it is in contemplation to form a Copper Mining Company at the Barrier Islands. A gentleman, lately arrived from Auckland, and who is perfectly conversant with the subject; has informed us that the specimen of copper ore taken home by Dr; Dieffenbach, and tested in Plymouth, was procured from the surface of the rock, and consequently does not contain the same quantity of metal as that which has been subsequently collected. Some practical Cornish miners, who have lately gone to the barrier, have represented that the ore is richer than any they have ever seen in England, and are so confident of suc-

cess, that they have offered to take larg6 shared in, and work the mine. This projection, in the event of its success, will open a vast and profitable .export from -this colony. \ We. understand that the existence of .this metal swas first discovered, by Captain Nagle, now-in command of Hef H Majesty£s;ißrig -Victoria, about eighteen months 1 since, and the locality is within four miles of his residence, situated in the principal ' larbour in the Barrier, named Port Abercrombie, and considered one of the safest in New Zealand. We trust that Captain Nagle and the proprietors of shares in the Company will, meet with every success that the arduous nature of their undertaking entitles them to expect, and that they .may not experience a similar failure to that met with by the silver mining speculators of South Australia.

'Hunter (Mayor) .i 273 Dorset ....... ... 176 .. 237 ,Waitt ... 164 "FlTZHERBERT. ... .. 220 .-Hort ... 155 Wade .. 212 ... 155 Scott 1 .. 196 -'Johnson JMolesworth .. .. 182 Jenkins ... 149 RESERVED LIST. • Wallace .. 144 -Daniell ... 124 Hanson ....... .. 126 Machattie ... ... 122 Cooper ....... ,. 125 Taylor