THE REV. MR. FOSTER'S IGNORANT AND DAMAGING MISRE. PRESENTATIONS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1319, 10 November 1880, Page 2

THE REV. MR. FOSTER'S IGNORANT AND DAMAGING MISRE. PRESENTATIONS.

The London correspondent of the Otago Daily Times sends the following to that paper:—

One of the most startling indictments against New Zealand which has appeared in the English papers of late was published in a Lincolnshire paper last week. It is a letter signed "John Foster, Oamaru, July 6th, ISSO." The writer is said in another part of the paper to be a Congregational Minister from Lincolnshire, and I presume that he follows the same avocation in tlio Colony. That your readers may judge of the impressions being formed and spread by new arrivals, I give some extracts from this letter. The writer says:—"ln my judgment, that man is acting criminally who holds out any inducement to any other than large - oapitalled farmers to come to this country. ... I want to save what few shillings I can lay aside from paying the exorbitant prices of the necessaries of life, to enable me to plant my feet on the old shore again as soon as possible. Only two years ago the Government launched into expenditure, counting upon L 1,750,000 from the sale of lands. Judge of their chagrin when in that short time the land sales have fallen off to less than L2; 0,000 annually. This is a fair specimen of the financial foresight and political sagacity of the rulers of New Zealand. . . You have also to remember that almost everything that comes into the country is subject to a protective tariff of 15 pwp cent., and that there are scarcely any industries here to pi otect. What is the Vse of our abundance of corn ? Labor wakes the loaf dearer than at Home, Peaches aro thrown to the pigs in the country, but if a. poor fellow in town wants one he must pay 8d per lb. A certain gentleman has been instrumental in getting up an agitation in favor of single ladies of education and culture coming here. If these young ladies, started, and their vessel went to the bottom in the Bay of Biscay, it would be a greater mercy that sent them there than that which permitted them to come hero . . . into the same pandemonium. . , , . Every second tradesman in a town like this has in some shape or other made the acquaintance of the Bankruptcy Court of late, Pilcd-up grain stores find no outlet for their produoe, even at losing rates, Tell mo that the prosent depression could not have been predicted two years since? Any, the moßt ordinary judgment on the spot, might hay§ told 10 years ago that the reckless proced we of the Government would bring its reckoning, day. And it has come ! A "woful day it is ! Government and agents alike must have known that it was doming. [Yet the writer has jugt asserted that two years ago the Government launched on an expend*' ture calculating upon a land revenue of L 1,700,000, when it is now but LOOQ,OOO.j Am I sorry I paine 1 No > emphatically no 1 ■To have discovered the delusive trap into which my countrymen were being lured ia worth all the oost I have expended upon it. To ljaye the gratitude of one score of hearts saved from breaking up home and rushing into a moral wilderness, without even the golden sand to redeem it, is reward enough for me. I tell you, my old neighbors friends, stick to your land yet. .... Ah ! what a tale I could unfold of the evils, the debaucheries, the blasted lives, and the abject wretchedness of the voyage to mr.ity. What a heavy charge I could lay against tho low-toned morality, the slipshod religion, the substitution of honestiah-like for the stem old honesty of the hook better known at Home than here. But I will draw the veil over what must be to me a painful knowledge down to the very grave.,'' To much of the above I have no objection. These are the writer's views, and he is entitled to express them. A g ntleman, not a colonist, but who has been several times to New Zealand, and has known it for 20 years—brought the paper to me saying, " The man must be a fool." I replied, "No; he is an honest man, evidently, and knows no better." I cannot, howevor, so easily excuse the following paragraph from the same effusion. A man who brands the Colony for slipshod religion should not have penned this:—"Lincolnshire farmers be* ware ! Grant and Foster are among you ; and I know not how much the hero worship they endured here may have made their hnsf* and tenor harmonise with the alto and treble of the Agent-General and his wellpaid boys. Reckon with this fact before you move a peg towards a sale and a voyage. If small farmers here in the past, with all the prosperity behind and roun<l about them could not do, and havo, by the score, not only lost their farms, but ail that they have put into them, on tho deferred: payment system, how are you going to d(| better when the grain grown is next to useless for want of a market; when facilities for carriage are being curtailed j when competition will become keener, beoause of the desperation to which men are driven to undersell j when the railway tariff is to bo increased to pay the Colonial debt; and when you have to meet a condition of heavy taxation from your land down to your wife'q wedding ring and your baby's rattle V' At the time the above was written Messrs. Grant and Foster had neither, published their report nor uttered a public word in England on the subject of New Zealand. They aro reputed to be men of sound jiulg: ment and blameless integrity. What right had Mr. Foster to, warn the Lincolnshire public against their unuttered report ? Can nobody who even visits New Zealand tell the truth except the Rev. J. Foster ? If) is to be hoped, for hip own sake, that this Lot will have saved shillings enough to have sot safely out of Sodom before the report of his letter reaches Oamaru, or the " batik* rupt" shopkeepers of that town may demand an explanation. This is certainly the time that I have seen New Zealancj called a "pandemonium"—a place where all devils do congregate. I pity the Lincolnshire fathers [and mothers who. have children in your Colony \vhen they read this. The statement that educated young wome'Jtfhad better go to the bottom in the " Bay oflynisoay than go to New Zealand," reminds mo of a letter I saw in a London paper last week, to the effect that a lady who advertised for a lady help reoeived in a few days 121 letters in reply, many of them from educated women willing to do anything for bread, and that pome of their appeals were deeply touching. New Zealand must have changed since I knew it, - If willing and capable women have to seek in vain for employmant.