CONDITION OF THE COLONY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 5, 25 February 1871, Page 1

CONDITION OF THE COLONY.

The “ Times” newspaper, in a recent arrival, contains an excellent article, which we have already extracted, contrasting, in strong colors, the condition of the colony this year and a year or eighteen months ago; and, among other evidences of itsprosperity and tranquility, it points to the fact of natives competing with each other for contracts for embankments, side cuttings, sleepers, and

other railroad works supposed to be going on in the colony. One or two of , our contemporaries of the bad bird school affeet to make great fun of the Eden like picture drawn by the “Times,” and ask in a derisive manner how the natives can be competing for embankments, &e, in a country where we have not yet be'gun to construct railways ? No doubt, to penny-a-liners, whose knowledge of what is going on in the country is limited to the principal street of the city in which they lire, this may seem a very fine stroke of wit, and the “Times” may seem to have got its “quietus.” . Substantially, however, the “ Times” has spoken the truth, and the contrast which it draws between New Zealand as it is, and New Zealand as it was, is a perfectly fair representation of the fact. It may perhaps have anticipated the dates when it describes the lately rebel natives as .competing for contracts for “ sleepers”; but that they have been for many months competing for road work, embankments, cuttings, and so forth, everyone who takes the trouble to enquire may know for himself. Any one who will take a ticket by Sheppard and Young’s coach to Taranaki will travel over miles of road, up and down deep cuttings, and other road, operations, which have been constructed by competing ex-rebels during the past year; and this he may do sitting beside the guard of the coach, who was the principal leader of the attack on General Cameron at Nukumaru, when that officer very nearly sustained a tremendous defeat at the head of a large section of the British army. Nor will the traveller fail to hear as. he passes by Manawatu of considerable road works constructed by contract, and exceedingly well and cheaply done, by the Ngatiraukawa and other tribes of that district, on the line by which the Government are rapidly connecting the

East Coast at Napier with the West Coast at Foxton—operations of which, no doubt, our sneering contemporaries are entirely and profoundly ignorant.

In some recent numbers of the

“ Hawke’s Bay Herald” are three very interesting articles, giving a tourist’s account of what he saw at Taupo, in

the course of which he describes at length the road work in operation there, partially executed by intelligent constabulary, who build athenaeums, and do not patronise grog shops, and partly by natives, the idea of whqra “ competing for contracts” our enlightened contemporaries deride. Notwithstanding their sneers, it appears that man f miles of road have been made, and many more are being made, by the united action of constabulary aud natives, the

former “ competing’’ for the open, and

the latter for the bush work. The connection of Taupo with Napier is now so far completed that a coach has already gone up to ply between the constabulary posts, and we venture to predict that it will not be long before one will be running .right through from Napier to Auckland, with probably a branch to Manawatu, and so down the coast to Wellington. Besides this, there are other roads for the work on which the natives are

“ competing;” notably one connecting Taupo with Tauranga, through the Arawa country, which will pass by the Roturua Lake, and let light in upon districts hitherto almost sealed. We have omitted the horse track from Runatia, on the Wanganui River, to Muru Mutu, at the foot of Ruapehu, a work entirely in native hands.

We think all candid readers will admit that; though the “ Times,” as was perhaps natural, writing at so great a distance, may have spoken, in ignorance of the precise kind of work on which the natives were engaged, the writer was perfectly correct in the contrast he drew between things as they are and things as they were. The natives are competing with each other for road work wherever the Government is ready to. employ them. Late facts have abun* dantly proved the truth of the,statement of the Rev Mr Grace, read in the Assembly last session, that road work would be the certain means of bringing in the rebels and putting down rebellion. The surrender of the Ngatiraukawas of Waikato, so well described by the writer in the Hawke’s Bay paper referred to, is the latest rhanifestation of this truth. This large-section of that powerful tribe which had hitherto been the very staunchest adherents of the King, who had fought in every engagement on his side, now abandons him, comes in, and offers to “ compete for embankments, side cuttings, and sleepers.” If the Government could find the money, we have no hesitation in saying that it might have every able-bodied native in New Zealand employed on public works, and we trust that so soon as its arrangements for carrying out its large plans are complete we shall see to a far greater extent than at present the pickaxe and the spade taking the place of the spear and the tomahawk.