New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 1877.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5091, 18 July 1877, Page 2

New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 1877.

We have before us a pamphlet received by the mail which arrived yesterday afternoon, entitled “ Fragments from the Journal of J. Broomhall, Esq., J.P., the Manor House, Penge, Surrey, during a sojourn of 129 days and a journey of 3536 miles in the colony of New Zealand.” The pamphlet is in many respects a remarkable one. Its author, as we all know, has purchased a quantity of land in the colony for the purpose of founding a special settlement; and it was with the object of selecting this land that his journey through the colony was undertaken. But he differs from many travellers. His book contains much that is anecdotical, a little that is apocryphal, and a good deal that is funny, concerning present and bygone manners and customs of the people of New Zealand, both white, brown, and whitey brown. But these are largely the result of having in regard to many matters of the kind to rely on information received. Nor are they after all calculated to convey any very erroneous impression. Itis where Mr. Broomhall gives us the result of his personal observation of our colony and its resources that his writing is especially interesting. -He has tho reputation of being a shrewd English man of business of considerable mark, and that being so, his account of New Zealand as a country for the immigrant and the investor is particularly valuable. It is not too much to say that, from an essentially business point of view Mr. Broomhall considers the colony without an equal. After quoting the Hon. Mr. Fox’s remark—that had a tithe of the English money lost by investment in Turkish and South American bonds been invested in New Zealand commercial enterprises, the capital would be safe and tho interest certain—Mr. Broomhall, as the result of his own experience, says to Englishmen decisively, “New Zealand is a hungry country ; it ca.i take all your surplus capital and labor, and give a certain return. It is a bank in which your capital will increase, also your dividends.” Mr. Broomhall’s book, in the extent of the statistical and other information of a practical character which it contains, is really admirable, and should in this respect be a lesson to thoso literary gentlemen who have skipped over this colony and disposed of its present and its future in a supercilous and superficial maimer. He at once grasped the benefits derivable from tho Public Works policy, and has made not a few practical remarks on the good effect of our railways. His advice as to the class of people who should emigrate to this colony is eminently sensible. Ho says: —“Young, hardy, and unmarried men, prepared to work, and not frequent the ale-house, must fall on their feet, and tho temporary difficulties which will beset them will make them good and substantial colonists. Men who are too proud or too fooble to work, clerks and shopmen, worn-out tradesmen and drunkards, will find no homo in tho colony : their last rest will be worse than the first, and they

had better remain at Home. The agricultural laborer, with his careful wife and stalwart sons and industrious daughters, will enjoy life and rejoice in an independence which he never could expect, and much less realise, in England.” And again he tells ns : If anything more than another has made New Zealand great and prosperous it is a recognition of the fact that labor is honorable. There is no royal road to honor and distinction ; some of the richest residents have sprung from tho ranks; and it is a source of pride for them to dilate on their early trials. Dining one day with the late Superintendent of a province, “ I cut timber," said be, “ when I first came to the colony.” "When I came here,” said the proprietor of a very valuable newspaper property, 1 drove a team of bullocks.” "Yes,” said his wife, “and many is the night I sat up tor linn,“® would never come into the house until he had put up and fed the bullocks.” We were at supper, and in the hilarity produced by these statements my hosts elegant and accomplished daughters joined, showing their education had been as practical as polite, for they were well versed in all the minutiae of colonial and English life, even to the intricacies of Claphara Junction railway station. . „ In the course of my journey I called at a small farmhouse, and asked for food and permission to put up three horses, which was readily granted by two young men. These two young men I found to be sons of a distinguished officer, and cousins of a noble peer, educated at a public school. They did not hesitate to kill their own beef and mutton, make their own bread (before my eyes), milk the cow, and make the butter—to hedge, ditch, and do aU the work of a farm with their own hands. I felt they were the class of whom great men are made. They had purchased 650 acres of land, eighty of which only were reclaimed and in grass, the remaining 470 acres they were prepared to reclaim. They had paid an improved price for the farm, and such transactions, I believe, will render us a reasonable return on our capital. It was my duty to call on tho Governor, the most noble the Marquis of Normanby, whom I found to be a fine old English gentleman, representing the Queen with great dignity, and endearing himself to all her subjects, Maori and English. He waxed eloquent on the dignity of labor, and mentioned the name of the son of an English nobleman who has a farm in one of the Australian colonies who drove his own cattle to market, tints setting an example to the people in arts of peace, as the order to which his father is an ornament has often set in the art of war. Tile streets of Now Zealand are not paved with gold any more than the streets of London, and of course there are some blanks in the lottery.

During his travels in the province of Wellington, Mr. Broomhall had a pleasant adventure, which we will let him tell in his own words:—“The last township in this bush is Woodville, and here I will diverge from bush land to a personal matter. The stage drew up at a cottage to deliver a bag, and the first words which greeted my ear were, ‘ Why, Mr. Broomhall, who would have thought to see you here ? ’ Three years ago Mr. Stephen Hutchins, gardener, of Penge, had desired my certificate, as a magistrate for Surrey, to enable him, his wife, children, and brother James, to emigrate to New Zealand. Mr. Hutchins was the man who greeted me, and I need hardly say the meeting was agreeable to both. He pointed with pride to his twenty acres of land with the cottage on it, his own freehold, and to chickens and ducks in abundance ; and, if he have not now, he will soon have pigs, cows, and a good farmyard.” Mr. Broomhall does great justice to our manufactures, which must necessarily be limited in a new country, and especially notices that agricultural implements are made here quite as good as those of Ransome and Sims, Ipswich, and boilers and engines of all kinds up to the Home standard. He considers that nature designed Wellington for the capital of the colony, and thinks that its geographical position and magnificent harbor attest the wisdom of those who selected the spot ; as a distributing centre it stands pre-eminent for commercial purposes ; and cannot be equalled for the seat of Government. We trust that Mr. Broomhall’s book, which is really exhaustive in its information, and to which justice can scarcely be done in the present short article, may be widely read at Home; and we feftl sure lijiat it will repay the perusal of’.lvery colonist.