New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1871. THE WEEK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 43, 18 November 1871, Page 11

New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1871. THE WEEK.

The principal event of the week has been the closing of Parliament by his Excellency the Governor. The session marks the commencement of a new era —an era of public works and of material progress. We owe both railway and public works less to our representatives than to a Ministry which was opposed throughout the session by the member for Wanganui, and by one of the two members for the Wairarapa. Let honor be given to whom honor is due. Our Superintendent and Provincial Secretary looked sharp after what might be called the present pecuniary interests of the province, and of the Provincial Treasury; but had it not been for the Ministry we should never have had a railway. The Wellington Loan would have been more favorably negotiated, if Mr Vogel’s clause had been inserted in the bill, than it can possibly be under the one proposed by Mr Rolleston and accepted by Mr Eitzlierbert. Mr Gisborne, Mr Eox, and Mr Macandrew, did more to secure the sanction of the House to the construction of the Wellington and Masterton railway than all of the members of the province put togetherThe latter showed much more interest in getting the Reclaimed Land and Loan Bills passed, than they did about the construction of that railway. In fact the anxiety manifested, and the opposition excited, relative to the former, placed the latter in jeopardy; though the former could only tide the Provincial Government over a temporary difficulty while the latter will be the making of the province. Barren as the present session has been of legislative measures, those passed will prove more fruitful of practical benefits than any ever before sanctioned by Parliament.

We referred in a sub-leader, in our last issue, to certain papers which, had been published with reference to the working of the Native Land Court Acts, and we have now before us the appendix to those papers, which also contains some valuable information; amongst others, a remarkable letter from the Eev. T. S. Grace, of Tauranga, with reference to large reserves being set aside for the exclusive use of the natives, in order to prevent them from coming into contact with the Europeans. He thinks that we shall have no more serious fighting with the natives : and he gives as his reason for this faith that Honi Heke, Bangihaeata, Wiremu Kingi, and the Waikato chiefs, after fighting against us, in which they were more or less successful, never once ventured a second time on the experiment. Eor these reasons he thinks no fear need be felt in seeing the natives located in large parties in four or five reserved districts. It is well to know what

a missionary thinks on a subject of this kind ; but it is unnecessary to say that his view's are in opposition to those expressed by Judges Eenton and Manning, both as regards the future conduct of the natives, and of the policy of keeping them apart from Europeans. Fiom a comparative table showing the amount of postal revenue, and the number of letters and newspapers received at and dispatched from the several provinces of New Zealand, from 1858 to 1870, both inclusive, we gather the following particulars. The postal revenue of the province of Auckland has gradually risen from £2OOO, to upwards of £10,000; of the province of Wellington from about £I3OO, to £12,674; of Nelson from £731, to £3093 ; of Canterbury, from £ 1049) to £8905; and of Otago, from £546 to £13,667. The total postal reveuue of the whole colony has risen from £6024 in 1858 to £55,780 in 1870. The total number of letters received in 1861 was about one million, and in 18/0 the total number was more than three million ; but while the total number of newspapers received during the last decade had increased from 600,000 to 2,266,934, scarcely any increase had taken place in the number of newspapers despatched from the various post offices in the colony; the number, in 1866 being upwards of 2,400,000, while in 1870 they only amounted to £1,622,000. Wellington despatches the largest number of newspapers to places within the colony, and Auckland the largest number to the United Kingdom and the Australian Colonies. The number of newspapers despatched to places outside the province, but within the colony, in 1870, was from Wellington. 113,624; from Auckland, 90,244; from Nelson, 86,146 ; from Canterbury, 76,861 and from Otago, 64,797. The number of newspapers despatched from Wellington to other places by post has risen from 145,768 in 1861, to 216,621 in 1870; showing a much larger increase in the number of newspapers despatched by post from Wellington than is exhibited, during the last decade, by any other province in New Zealand. We take no notice of the newspapers sent from Wellington to places within the province as most of these are sent by coach, and do not pass through the post office at all. It is gratifying to find that more than a fifth of the newspapers despatched from any one province to the whole of the other provinces in New Zealand are despatched from Wellington alone. The following remarks made by Dr Buchanan in the Legislative Council are too good to be buried in the pages of “ Hansard.” Speaking in support of the payment of members he said —“ In New Zealand they had no aristocracy except it be that of wealth, and that in itself was hut a spurious article. It had not the true ring of the genuine coin, and it would not pass current outside the colony.” On the same subject Mr Waterhouse observed—“To his mind there was no shame in the statement that a man did not possess abundant means of wealth. Too frequently the shame was in having the wealth, not in being without it.” This is quite true ; but as many of the members of the Upper House have little but their wealth to entitle them to their seats in that august body, they at all events ought not to receive pay for their attendance. Let them be satisfied with the honor of being called lionorables.