To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume II, Issue 82, 2 May 1846, Page 3

To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator.

Slit, —ln noticing the reduction in Mr. Grimstone's salary you might have added that he had been nine years in the service of Government, six of which had been spent in New Zealand. The offices of Secretary for the Southern Division (in which capacity he has to sign the debentures) and Registrar of Deeds, are of greater trust and responsibility than those of Private Secretary and Interpreter to his Honor, and deserve at least an equal remuneration, and it seems hardly fair that while Mr. Kemp on losing his office of Protector should be paid tothe end of the quarter, the salary of an efficient officer should after so long a period of service be reduced in one day one-fourth of its previous amount. I remain, Sir, Wellington, Your's, &c, April 29, 1846. Fair Play.

The following extract from Dr. Arnold's published correspondence seems to breathe the true spirit by which every colonist, whatever his occupation, ought to be animated. If each settler were to consider that his efforts materially influenced for good or for evil the general prosperity, there would be an earnestness and determination exhibited which could not fail to lead to important results.

SPIRIT OF GOOD SETTLERSHIP. Copy of a letter from the late Dr. Arnold, head master of Rugby School, and Regius Professor of Modern Histoiy in the University of Oxford, to the Rev. J. Tucker. Rugby, Oct. 26th, 1829. * • • If we are alive fifteen years hence, I think I would go with you gladly to Swan River, if they will make me schoolmaster there, and lay my bones in the land of kangaroos and opossums. I laugh about it ; yet, if my wife were alive and able to go, I should think it a very great benefit to the good cause to go out with all my family and become a Swan River man ; and I should try to get others of our friends to go out with us. iYfy notion is, that no mis-sionary-izing is half so beneficial, as to try^ to pour sound and healthy blood into a young civilized society; to make one colony, if possible, like the ancient colonies, or like New England — a living sucker from the mother country, bearing the same blossoms and the same fruits, not a reproduction of its vilest excrescences, its ignorance, and its wickedness, while all its good elements are left behind in the process. No words can tell the evil of such colonies as we have hitherto planted, where the best parts of the new society have been men too poor to carry with them or to gain much of the higher branches of knowledge j or else mere official functionaries from England, whose hearts and minds have been always half at home, and who have never identified themselves with the land in which they were working. But if you and your sisters were to go out, with half South borough after you — apothecary, lawyers, butchers, bakers, tailors, carpenters, and labourers— and if we were to join with a similar draught from Rugby and Laleham, I think we should deserve " to be written down benefactors" both here and in Swan River. Such are my notions about it, and I am not clear that I shall not devote my first £1,000 that I make here to the purchase ol land in Swan River, that I may have my estate and the school buildings got into due order before I shut up shop at Rugby* Meantime, I hope you will not think 1 ought to shut up shop forthwith, and adjourn to the next asylum for daft people, because I am thus wildly dreaming about Swan River, instead of talking soberly ab ut Rugby. But Rugby is a very nice place a.ll the same, and I wish you would come and form your own judgment of it. * * *