New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 1872.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 53, 27 January 1872, Page 11

New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 1872.

Monday last., the 22nd January, being the thirty-third birthday of the colony, was celebrated at Wellington, the H'utt, the Wairarapa, and other places in the province of Wellington, with the usual rejoicings. On the 22nd January, 1840, the first shipload of settlers, sent out by the New Zealand Company, arrived at Port Nicholson. A number of other vessels came soon after, and continued to do so at more or less regular and distant intervals for the next ten years ; the last vessel despatched by the Company having been the Phoebe Dunbar, which arrived at Wellington in November 1850. By far the larger portion of the present population of this province are either New Zealand Company's settlers, or their descendants ; and the same mav be said also of the population of Nelson, Taranaki, Hawkes' Bay, and Canterbury, as the New Plymouth Company and the Canterbury Association were simply offshoots of the New Zealand Company. This statement, which wo think will be found correct, confirms the truth of the remark made in our last, that companies had proved more successful than Governments as colonising bodies; and as the Colonists Aid Corporation has been 'started under much more favorable prospects, and will have nothing approaching the difficulties to contend with, its operations will probably prove still moro marked and satisfactory. We find it stated that speculative operations at colonisation, though ruinous to the projectors, have proved advantageous to others ; but there is no absolute necessity why they should prove ruinous to either ; and many an absentee land purchaser, who thought himself ruined by the New Zealand Company, has since made his fortune.

The question of immigration is, or ought to be, the prominent topic of the day, as the success of the public works policy now being inaugurated chiefly depends upon the manner this important branch of the public service is conducted. Whether agents should be sent from this colony, or be engaged at home for the purpose of bringing the subject of immigration to New Zealand before the British public is a matter which has been recently discussed ; but it is of much less importance than the question as to the special knowledge and qualifications which an immigration agent should possess to enable him to obtain the ear and secure the confidence of the laboring classes. New Zealand offers greater attractions to these classes than any other British colony ; and they constitute, on the whole, in the present circumstances of the colony, the most desirable class of immigrants. It might be readily assumed that men like Messrs Birch and Carter, having ascended from " the lowest rung in the social ladder" until they had attained a seat in the colonial Senate, would be the best possible persons to engage as iin* migration lecturers ; as, though no orators, they would be able to show by example—'•' a

pilent eloquence, more rich than words"—the great advantages which New Zealand offered to the industrious British emigrant. But, in truth, such men, as a rule, are the worst that could be chosen to arouse the sympathies and secure the confidence of the laboring classes. Colonial snobs, as a class, wouhl never be in.

duced to refer to their former " low estate" except to set forth their own merits' which, and not the advantages the colony had afforded them, would bo sure to be credited for their good fortune. Successful men are more remarkable for shrewdness than sensibility—for hardness of head than warmth of heart; and are never gifted with that self-abnegation which ever distinguishes the successful missionary whether engaged in obtaining converts to Christianity or colonisation. An able article on the " Preservation of Commons," in Eraser's Magazine for September, contains facts upon which h would be well for our colonial statesmen to ponder. In the middle of the seventeenth century nearly half the land in England was unenclosed. Ove r much the larger portion, if not over the whole of this, the public, or those at least who lived in the vicinity of any unenclosed land, possessed rights more or les3 extensive. They enjoyed the right of depasturing their cattle upon it, and of taking wood, furze, turf, &c for firing and other purposes. These lands comprising a moiety of the whole area of the country, by the increase of stock and population, could no longer be permitted to remain wholly uncultivated. But, says our author " Fad the destinies of England in the early part of the last century been in the hands of statesmen of enlightened and disinterested views, the whole of this vast extent of territory might at a very small cost have been pre-

served for the public benefit. . . . Of the land thus acquired for the nation, a sufficiency adjoining towns and villages might have been left open for the sports and recreation of the townspeople and villagers. The remainder might have been let on long leases, care being taken that the state should never be divested of the beneficiary interest in the land." But in the eighteenth century in England, ;?s in the nineteenth in New Zealand, little thought was bestowed on the claims of posterity. It was then universally assumed that no measures were more deserving of favor than those which tended to increase the area of cultivation. In 1710 the first Inclosure Act was passed; this was rapidly followed by others' until some eight million acres of the publie estate were enclosed under the authority of private acts of Parliament. The nation was thus for ever deprived of its proprietary rights this vast extent of territory, equal to on e half of the then cultivated area of the whole country, without any equivalent being given in return. "In these days," the writer observes, " when an outcry is raised if it is proposed to deprive a publican of an annual license, to the renewal of which he has no claim at. law ; nay more, when officers in the army receive millions of the public money in compensation for the over-regulation prices they have given for commissions, ia direct contravention of the law, this statement may be deemed incredible." He consequently proceeds to show that it is too true ; and that a whole class of men, the largest in the kingdom, was, by a succession of private act, deprived of valuable privileges, which they and their predecessors had enjoyed from the earliest times, without receiving the slightest compensation. There are still 8,000,000 acres of unenclosed or waste land in England, and the writer holds that it is the bounden duty of Pai'liament, as the trustee of the rights of the nation, not to allow the hold it; actually possesses upon such lands to be lightly given up. This question of the preservation of waste lands is one well deserving the attention of the Parliament of New Zealand. It possesses more interest than many of those which they are never tired in debating. The movement in England for the establishment of schools for practical knowledge and technical skill is extending itself to Victoria — always the first in all movements of tho kindIt is justly felt that the ordinary elements of education will not of themselves qualify boys and girls to fulfil the duties of citizenship hereafter. They must be taught in the first place the value and necessity of industry ; and in the second place thev must be taught how to apply that industry with the greatest benefit to themselves and society. "To educate," says tho " Argus," " the whole of the rising generation so as to qualify our boys and girls to become industrious as well as intelligent citizens, ought %o be one of the primary aims of statesmanship, in so far as the 'state can with propriety take into its own hands the control of such matters ; and this is the direction which public opinion should give to the next reform in our systems of public instruction."