NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. Wednesday, September 28, 1853.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 851, 28 September 1853, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. Wednesday, September 28, 1853.

We have received by recent arrivals files of the Nelson, Lyttelton, and Otago newspapers. Those from Nelson and Lyttelton are for the most pare filled with details of the elections under the new Constitution of the members for the Provincial Councils and General Assembly, the g-eneral result of which lias previously been published in this journal. The election of the Superintendent for Otago took place on the 6th inst., when, there being no opposition, Captain Cargill was elected to that office. The proceedings appear to have been very flat, and to have passed off without exciting much observation. The day of nomination of members to repiesent the Town of Dunedin in the Provincial Council was fixed for the 19th inst. and the election on the following day ; the nomination for the Country district was fixed for the 21st, the day of election on the 28th inst. For the General Assembly the day of nomination for the Town •district was fixed for the 29th, the day of election on the following day ; for the Country district the day of nomination is the Ist, the clay of election the 7th October ; so that by the first week in October all the elections under the new Constitution in the Southern Provinces will beover. That nondescript body, theOtago Settlers' Association, had put forward a house list of candidates, including Mr. Cargill's sons and sons-in-law and other members of the family compact, but at a very numerous meeting of the electors? held for the purpose of discussing the price of land, a resolution was unanimously passed to the effect that, with the exception of two persons, the meeting had no confidence in those so named, and a committee was appointed to bring forward candidates who would really represent the constituency. A very hot discussion had arisen as to the price of land ; which included the consideration of the propriety of abandoning the class character of the settlement. A meeting had been held on the subject, of which Captain Bellairs was chairman, followed by an interminable correspondence in which Capt. Cargill, as lan upholder of the present state of things takes a chief p£rt, and his communications, for prolix verbosity and want of meaning, defy competition. Capt. Cargill asks "Are the Otago settlers to hav^ British labour and roads, and go a-head ? or to have neither and fall away ?" — His question is conclusively answered by the advocates of cheap land, as now conferred upon New Zealand by the Governor's Land Regulations, by shewing that in five years the total quantity of land sold by the Agent of the Association in the colony at £2 an acre was 360 acres and 2 town allotments. The high price system therefore had completely failed in making the settlement go-a-head. It was also as conclusively shewn that while it was pretended the high price of land was to secure a provision for roads, for religious and educational purposes ; for all these objects there were no funds whatever, and to promote them it was necessary to resort to subscription. The conviction is now forcing itself on the minds of the Otago settlers, that the system of class settlements is a sham and delusion in : which the religious element has been

used as a bait to entrap the unwary, and at Otago the majority of purchasers, not belonging to the Free Church, have been heavily • taxed to support the Church of the minority. These truths we proclaimed long ago, they have at last become too obvious to be neglected, while the evils resulting from so vicious a system are too injurious to the community to be any longer tolerated.

The lecture on " Vocal Part Singing," which was unavoidably postponed last week, will be delivered to-morrow evening at the Mechanics' Institute.

The Steamer Ann returned on Monday from Port Cooper, having made a good passage there and back. At Lyttelton an entertainment was given to Captain Gibbs on the occasion of his first visit to that Port, to celebrate the commencement of steam communication between the Provinces of New Zealand. The Ann leaves Wellington to-morrow for Sydney calling on her way at Nelson.

The Superintendent of the Province of Canterbury has lost no time m .calling his Council together, having fixed the 27th instant for the first meeting thereof, just a month before the meeting of the Wellington Council, the Superintendent of which appears disposed " to take it coolly." The sittings of the Canterbury Council are to be held at Christchurch. An amusing bit of vanity and pretension appears in a notice in which, by " order of his Honor," the settlers are informed that tickets of admission " to the strangers' gallery" may be obtained by application to the proper quarter. In the Resident Magistrate's Court, on 23d inst, Mr. Swinbourne was summoned for smuggling gunpowder from the Despatch. Mr. Swinbourne, by his solicitor, pleaded guilty to the charge, and was fined £100.