THE SCANDINAVIAN SETTLEMENT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 41, 4 November 1871, Page 9

THE SCANDINAVIAN SETTLEMENT.

[to THE EDITOR OE THE NEW ZEALAND MAIL.] Sir —Knowing the interest that is taken in the settlement of the Scandinavians in this district, I wish to bring befoi’e the notice of the public the facts of a case which deserves, in my opinion, the gravest censure. These immigrants were judiciously located in the Bush near Palmerston, where they have been working hard during the winter on Gtovernment contracts, and many of them making progress on their land and saving money. In short, the experiment bid fair to be a success. Not very far from them there is a tolerably decent publichouse. At the last licensing day, however, at Foxton, a stranger, who had neither land nor house in the district, applied to the magistrates for another license, which was very properly refused, as the justices thought that one house was enough in such a locality. The applicant, on this, goes off to the Provincial Government, who, without consulting the local justices , give him a bush license ; and forthwith, before he has any decent house erected, or any accommodation for boarders, the man hurries up with a lot of grog, runs up a miserable slab shanty, close to the Government pay office, and begins distributing his poison. Broken heads, broken collarbones, and worse, are the immediate result, and the probable failure of the Scandinavian experiment. I believe there is not a respectable person in the district who is not disgusted, but the temptation at their doors will be too strong for many, and hundreds of pounds which ought to go in the Land Office and Savings Bank, will pass into the pocket of a ehanty keeper, who, too lazy to work himself,

will live on the hard-won earnings of the poor stranger. Has the Provincial Government no bowels of compassion ? Is a five pound note of so much consequence to it that it cannot resist the temptation to get hold of it, though it destroys the fair prospects of the suceess of these great experiments going on ? It had far better turn loose a score of mad dogs in the district than one such grog-seller. If the advance guard of colonization is to be followed up with the rum-seller licensed by law, take my word for it you will see little success follow in the track of the heavy expenditure for which the country i 3 borrowing money.—l am, &c, A Manawatu Settles.