OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE REV. MR. FOSTER'S LETTER.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1319, 15 November 1880, Page 2

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE REV. MR. FOSTER'S LETTER.

(Otago L>aily Times),

One of the most extraordinary contributions to current literature on the subject [the position of the Colony] wag the letter, lately quoted by our London correspondent, of the Rev. John Foster, Congregational minister, Oamaru, addressed by him to a Lincolnshire paper. He warns the Lincolnshire people, by anticipation, of the possibly too favorable account which might be given by the farmers' delegates, Messrs. Grant and Foster, because of the hero worship they endured in the Colony, and tells a woful tale of bankruptcy, piled-up grain stores with no outlet, the general dearness of commodities, and the high cost of la,boy, combined with moral reflections on the debaucheries, blasted lives, wretchedness, slipshod religion, &0., «&c, of the community among which he dwells. He calls it u a pandemonium," and says it would be better for young ladies of eduoatjon and culture to sink in the Bay of Biscay than to come to New Zealand. He also makes an error of a million sterling in quoting the deficiency in the land fund—but that is a mere trifle, as parsons have a soul above figures. The result of our inquiries about the Rev. John Foster is that there really is such a person, and that he has a certain number of followers in Oamaru, who admire him, We wish them joy of him. We <3o pot envy the state of mind of any Christian minister who can write thus concerning a district which, with some occasional drawbacks, is one of the very finest districts in the Colony, and at this moment a Bmiling garden. A corre-. spondent writing from Oamaru, very pro,-, perly suggests that Mr- might surely have felt some inspiration of thankfulness in riding aver- such a district for the beauty of the soene, and for the industry wliioh had transformed "tussock" land into a garden, and might have arrived at the conclusion that " there was room enough and to spare for ten times as many people as are at present in occupation to live easy and happy lives in a highlyvfavoracl land." These statements wjll be heartily echoed by many an honest settler, who, unlike men of the Foster class, have endured the heat and burden of the day. There are some men who are color-blind, and some who have the jaundiced eye— Eye to which all order All things here are Qut ef joint. To this latter class Mr. Foster evidently belongs, afld he is an object for pity. We suppose he has done some harm by his extraordinary letter—it is given to very small creatures to do harm—but the plain, unvarnished tale of Messrs, Grant and Foster, who were shrewd enough to use their own eyes, and not to be either dazzled by " hero worship" or frightened by croakers, and who gsve an eminently truthful as well as a highly favorable account of the Colony, will be the best antidote to such calumnies as these,

Timaw Herald. The fetter consists from beginning to end of downright, uncompromising abuse of the Colony, and is certainly calculated to deter people who are otherwise uninformed about it, from coming here. It contains a great many statements which appear on the face of them to be deliberate falsehoods, but our own impression is that they are more the result of ignorance and want of thought, than of any design to misrepresent

The letter is only one out of thousands that weak-minded, unobservant, illinformed people write Home on ijtrst finding themselves sourrounded by a state of affairs to which they avu unaccustomed. They begin by imagining New Zealand to be a ki:;d '■{ earthly paradise, where money is to be had for the picking up, and where none of the disagreeables of life pxist ; a Bort of country, in fact, which is not to be found jri any part of the world that we know of. Then, on arriving here, they frequently m.tke themselves so unpleasant to everybody that everybody and everythingseem 4 unpleasant to them; and having made a bad start, having come ashore, so to speak, surcharged with bile, they form the oddest prejudices against the Colony, and refuse to look on the bright side of things, or even to see things clearly as they are. They listen eagerly to ar>y scraps of information that seem to justify their prejudices, but take no pains to ascertain broad facts. In this happy frame of mind they sit down and scribble a pack of lies and nonsense to their friends in England, and perhaps sincerely resolve to get out of the Colony again as fast a§ possible. They soon get over their fit of the dumps, of course, if they are good for anything at all, and are heartily ashamed of having made such fools of themselves. Some of them, by-the-bye, are not good for anything, and would be nothing but idle grumblers wherever they might go. This class of people are greatly given to writing letter? for publication in England. luckily their character is generally pretty well known where they come fro in, and their letters do not go for much. Mr, John Foster, from Lincolnshire, may be one of these, and, if so, he is not worth bothering about.