THE CANTERBURY SETTLEMENT.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 637, 10 September 1851, Page 3

THE CANTERBURY SETTLEMENT.

[From the Timet, May 9,1851.] To a mind capable of. seizing abstract principles with firmness, apprehending them with clearness, and enforcing them with vigour, nothing is more discouraging than the inert resistance which an old and thoroughly organized state of society offers to their introduction. Vast plans of practical improvement lose the name of action nnder the blighting influence of inveterate /and obstinate abuses which we can neither bear nor eradicate. The children. are„ come to the birth, but there is not strength to bring forth. Men become weary of waiting to see their principles developed by lucky accidents and fortuitous coincidences, and they naturally seek for more untrodden paths in which their will may convert its aspirations into reality. This tendency is more peculiarly remarkable in those whose minds lead them naturally back to the principles and feelings of other days, and who, instead of joining the onward and daring march of the present, are (or ever seeking and making opportunities of recreating the past. It is n«t, therefore, to be wondered at that the more conservative of our statesmen should have been precisely those who have taken the greatest interest in the regeneration of old and the planting of new colonies. To found a community in which everything should be formed on the model of rustic life in England in the days of the Stuarts, to make available the resources of a virgin soil and a temperate climate, together with such aid as modern physical science, affords, iu order to produce a society not rude, wild, and scattered, but combined, ebneentrated, civilized, and religious, .if. which piety and education should afford the truest bond of union and the best guarar

of success, is indeed a noble scheme and an error, if it be one, of generous and exalted minds. The spectacle of a bishop going forth at the head of the inhabitants of bis future diocese, and of a colony professing to found itself on religion, is, in these worldly days, rare and remarkable. To be sure the peculiar form of religion which the Canter-bury-colony proposes to itself is not one which finds favour at this moment with the English people, but we must not the less do justice to the zeal, piety, and self-denial of the originators of this project; and if we feel called upon to point out the causes which will only too probably conduce to its failure, we do so in no hostile spirit. The project of forming a colony on the basis of religious belief, and that the belief of a small portion of a single persuasion, however captivating to the enthusiastic imagination, must tend materially, if successful, to narrow the basis and check the development of its prosperity. The government of such a settlement will be too apt to degenerate into a theocracy, and must necessarily be carried od in a narrow and illiberal spirit. But the attempt to confine the colony to one religious persuasion must, in the event of the settlement succeeding, utterly fail. In this, as in many other respects, sufficient allowance has not been made for the vicinity of the other colonies, which possess as miscellaneous a

jumble of creeds as can be found in any chris- ' tian country in the world. If money is to be made at Canterbury, a mixed multitude of men of the most heterogeneous beliefs will infallibly rush in and elbow their orthodox predecessors from their stools ; nor do we see how this deluge of heresy and miscreancy is to be dammed out unless the custom-house officers are doctors of divinity, and the theological tenets of every new arrival be submitted to the same inquisitorial scrutiny as bis sea-chest and portmanteau. But the orthodox of the colony will have to meet as great difficulty from within as from without. The bishop, the archdeacon, the clergy, the schoolmasters, are all amply provided for out of the future funds of a community which has its first tree to cut down, its first road to make, and its first house to build. While everybody else is engaged in a breathless struggle for existence, these persons will be comfortably provided for, and exempt from the necessity of toil, which will fall so heavily on their flocks and pupils. This slate of things will infallibly produce a re-action. The clergy and teachers will be looked on as drones in this hive of industry, and a feeling hostile to church establishments and clerical influences

is sure to arise. No plan could have been hit upon so certain to produce a re-action * most unfavourable to the very objects of the colony as that of mortgaging the resources of an infant community in order to provide for its spiritual wants. We look upon this danger from within as much more formidable than that from without, because we are not sanguine as to the settlement attaining a success sufficient to cause a re-emigration from - the neighbouring colonies, and are more disposed to fear for it the temptations of want than those of superfluity. The price of land in the Australian colonies is XI per acre—an amount which we have shown on former occasions to be ruinously high. No fact is better established in the political economy of colonies than that the manner in which the price of land is appronothing to do with its exebangeame value. If one acre of land be to be sold for 205., to be spent in immigration for the benefit of the purchaser, and another for 10 shillings, to be thrown away in any useless manner, the latter alone will be vendible, the former will remain unsold. In defiance io this well-known fact Canterbury demands three times as much for her land as Australia and the rest of New Zealand. The only compensation she offers for this is the manner in which the price is to be employed. The Australian pound is to be spent in immigration ; the Canterbury three pounds principally in religious and educational establishments. The first benefits the settler’s material interests, the second his spiritual welfare, and that only if he be a member of the High Church party of the Church of England. No compensation can be more unequal, and, without insisting on the indirect advantages of settling in a country which has already received much improvement, we may safely predict that the lands of Canterbury must remain unsold till the innumerable acres in Australia and New Zealand have been disposed of. The Land Fund, therefore, cannot be relied on, and the Colony must look for a system of squatting, which will ultimately, as in New South Wales, end in the acquisition of the virtual ownership by its occupants, and the consequent depra_ ciation to an almost nominal value of that already purchased. There is also some reason to fear that the site of the Colony has been hastily chosen upon a spot defective in natural drainage, and extremely difficult, owing to the iy e lj s nformation of the hills, to relieve from sur"e water by artificial means. Nor do we

know upon what commodity for export the Colony relies to provide itself with the necessary products for which it must for years to come be dependent on other countries. The Australian coloniesgrow wheat forthemselves. England will not always be foolish enough to keep 3,000 troops to consume the flour of New Zealand, and all other markets are too remote. When men and pigs have eaten all they can, the surplus will remain a drug. Such a state of things is not favourable to a competition in the labour market with the large Australian flockholders ; the high price of land will prevent the labourer from attaching himself to the colony by the ties of property, and the superior wages which large exports and high profits enable Australia to give will tempt him away from a colony which cannot give him money, and will not give him land. So long as the money which the emigrants bring out with them lasts, the colony will be well supplied by its neighbours with all the necessities and comforts of life, but the want of an export trade will render it impossible to replace the money thus expended, and an enormous and ruinous, because permanent, fall of price must be the result. This is the ordeal through which most new colonies have to passtill the lowness of the prices attractscapital, and the increase of their exports gives them the means of exchange and of profit. In such speculations those who sow seldom reap, and a second race of colonists raises itself on the ruins of the first ; but in Canterbury, without an export, with unsaleable land, scanty supply of labour, and a heavy encumbrance on its resources, which no other colony has undertaken, we know not from what quarter we are to expect this regenerating process. The crisis is certain —the recovery more than doubtful; and we cannot but fear that this magnificent project may end in the disappointment of its projectors, and the serious injury, if not total ruin, of those who have undertaken its execution. We have now discharged a painful duty to the public in drawing attention to this subject, and we leave it with the sincere hope that the result may be less unfavourable than we have been led to anticipate.