THE Otago Daily Times. "Inveniam viam out Faciam." DUNEDIN, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 267, 28 October 1862, Page 4

THE Otago Daily Times. "Inveniam viam out Faciam." DUNEDIN, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23.

Thb special Albert Land settlement, from all i accounts, is a partial, if not an entire failure. Many of the. emigrants have refused to go on further than Auckland, whilst some have come on to Otago. It would be interesting to ascertain the exact causes .of the noaBuecess. We are not of those who attribute it to religious causes. Some persons are" very much like the Spaniard, who was accustomed to appeal to Providence for help on every occasion. He was mounting a horse/ and looking upwards, made the customary supplication, then taking rather too active a spring, he overshot the saddle, and alighted on the other side. His immediate exclamation was—" O Lord, not so much!" In the same way, the founders of the Non-conformist settlement having induced many of its members to join by appeals to their religious sympathies, naturally the fault of the failure is asi cribed' to a deficient religious organization. We cannot help thinking there is something irreverent in the attempt to make religious considerations subservient to, mereYworldly policy. Allowing that in a young settlement a uriiformity in religious belief would be most calculated to preserve a mutual sympathy and attachment amongst its members, and leaving on one side the danger of cultivating a too exclusive sectarianism; it still cannot be held that the religious organization should have been allowed to muke up for the shortcomings in a sound commercial point of view. Persons are not to look to worldly rewards for the cultivation of religious sentiments ; and faith, to be earnest, strong, and enduring, must rest its Jiopes of results on a future more than oil a present life. We believe too much was.hoped from the religious organization of the Settlement, or, in other words, that theT cloak of religion was thrown over, a multitude of plain, worldly defects.

Two very grave faults were evidently committed ; first, the allowing the settlers to touch At any settled place before reaching their destination ; secondly, the deficiency of capital amongst the members of the settlement. Persons in an ordinary frame of mind are noj inclined to undergo the perils and the hardships, and to submit to the long years of patient endurance, incidental to the ordinary founding of new settlements. They, require, so to speak, to be strung up to a highly Wrought state 5 to be strong in the conviction that they have embarked on. an enterprise from which there is no retiring. Ir was a souiuCknowledge of human nature that made Cortez bum the ships in which he and his followers landed at Mexico, and but for his doing so, it is highly unlikely he would have effected a conquest of which history scarcely furnishes a parallel. The early Pilgrim Fathers, in like manner, felt themselves "in" for an enterprise from which there was no withdrawal; otherwise, with even their singleness of purpose and sternly disciplined minds; it is doubtful whether they would have so clung to their mission, and been so fortunate in their efforts to colonise the* great Transatlantic Continent. 3ven in Otago, the settlement of which has proved so successful, the early' settlers were mostly so embarked in the enterprise that the opportunity df abandoning it was almost out of their power, and they thus endured with fortitude a career which, during the first fewyears, wasby no means unchequered with reverses. ; But these, Non-Conformist settlers, deficient, as we will presently show, in the bone and sinew of such an enterprise—capital, embarked from England in probably a sufficiently highly, wrought condition of determination and -endurance, but were allowed to ~, land at Auckland to have all their romance dissipated.' Instead of finding themselves , very , interesting and peculiar personages, they found themselves extremely common-place individuals in very common-place situations. Fancy the Spanish cavaliers under Cortez landing in Mexico to find>£here the cafes and gaming houses, rthe mantillas and gay dresses of the country' they had left. Instead of. fighting and conquering, -they would have been i drinking, gaming, and flirting,* and the Mexican Empire would never have met its destruction at their hands. Just so these Non-Conformist settlers—self-., elected and: much-elated pilgrim .fathers, —" lauded at! Auckland, to find instead- of the .wilderness fromTwhich they were/ to hew! out their Eden, a'vefy ordinary town; faitHfully^ •:•« i • '■">: '? .J .L

though feebly reproducing-the scenes they had I^-y^^r^were tlwh^ls, the inns, tiae ; boarding-houses,; the shops, an<£ -jn fine, yall; the industries which they had been accustomed to see carried oh; There were the artisans,;the labourers, the mechamcs,!just such as" were composed amongst their own numbers. What call did they feel to proceed to establish a new settlement, when they were already in one quite sufficiently new to offer every encouragement to young settlers, butold enough to have worn off the first .difficulties and hardships of the early ordeal of settle aient ?. The report issued by the association mentions that the settlers included a sprinkling of the followers of all kinds of occupations. They found themselves in a colony, the settled districts of which just reqmred emigrants of the ; kind ; what inducements hadythey to go to experiment in the wilderness ? Suppose a laborer, a hair-cutter, a doctor, ah architect, a professor of' music, a plumber, a painter, or a printer—and such were all included in the expedition — met a brother member of the same occupation at Auckland, his enquiry would naturally be, " I wonder you stay in this settled town, when we have been led to look for such wonderful results in the unsettled districts." And the person so interrogated would naturally grin back a reply ; "go into the wilderness young enthusiast, but for my part I fancy I shall get, (as the case might be), more patients, more pupils for music, more houses to plan and to paint, in the settlement.""

Who can wonder at the wholesale falling away of the emigrants when once they found themselves at Auckland, and learnt that the settled districts were not overcrammed with population iike the country they had left behind them? And quite proper and legitimate was the conclusion. These n^n, with their little capital and less experience, vvere only acting rightly and prudently iri throwing their fates in with the settlements already formed instead of experimenting upon new settlements. They left their homes, probably, because they found there was over much competition in the several callings they pursued; but it did not follow because they found a crowd too dense for them that they would be satisfied with nothing less than a desert. Between, the two, a young settlement was a happy medium ; and for the rest, man is a gregarious animal, and " loves to hunt in couples." Only one thing could have justified the further prosecution of the experiment, ahd that would have been the ample mean9 of those embarked iu it. From the "third periodical report" of the Association, issued on the 6th February of the present year, we have the following analysis of the first 555 members of the settlement :— Ist. —Headsof families of.the small capitalist clas3 38 2nd.—Ditto intermediate ditto (that i3 persons landing with sums under £50 to £70, and requiring '' occasional employment) ... ... .. ... 31 Brd.—Ditto of the labourer class (persons requiring employment on landing) ... 22 j 4th.—Single young men landing with small funds ... ... ... 23 sth.— Ditto without funds ... L '".'.'. ... 30 The number of persons of all ages belonging to the above cla-ses is.as follows:— , Ist class (men, women,' and children) ...232 2nd ditto ... ditto V.. ... ...135 ■ 3rd ditto ... ditto .... ... ... 85 4th ditto ... ditta ... S3 '■'•'• sthdi-fto ... ditto ... .... ... SO 555 Thus we have thirty-eight of the small capitalist class, but who are blessed with families amounting, in the aggregate, including their heads, to 282; thirty-one of what we may call the infinitessimal capitalist; class, whose means amount from "under fifty to seventy pounds," which we presume is another way of expressing from ten pounds upwards; and the remaining one >hundred and thirtyeight are persons without larger means than probably they managed to expend on' the voyage out. "What' possible inducement could the latter have, to follow their small capitalist companions into the new settlement. They required employment, instant employe ment; and from whom were they most likely to obtain it , remuneratively—from- • the comparatively wealthy employers of the settled districts;- or from, the capitalists from ten pounds upwards ? We are not able to arrive at an exact conclusion of ' the wealth of the "small capitalists'f comprised under the ; first heading. But judging from the tohe of the reports, we fancy even they, the richest men of the lot, have only very small means. For instan?e, a joint-stock enterpise is mentioned in one of the circulars with a capital ol a thousand pounds, to purchase implements. Many other references show" that -their■ wealth is I very ;meagre. Supposing the thirty-eight capitalist, families had five hundred pounds each, and then fancy what length this would go in employing the laborof the non-capital settlers, takingintb consideration that the thirty-eight families absolutely number in meti, women, and children, 282 souls. The only labor they would be in a position to employ would be themselves, and, -.probably, the true secret of - their emigration was the desire to escape froin: L the artificial restrictions of the. middle class ?-.. gentil ity oi* the old world, and without dis- ! paraging- comparisons with their neighbors,; thatl each | member of the family should pei^rm*,his or her share of work. Families /of &e* small c^ j--7£ members; .may':i well emgrat'e ''to' ' ~thr'"colonies, but they are hardly at the i outset -"ape tomndertake the responsibility ( of pro\ad[uig forjothers^ _ Yet we find that on,. ','., the thirty-feight sigdlj/japitalists > the .whole ß-6 burden of providing for the 555 wastofali. Even j Class ISfo. 2is stated to require occasional < employment. The result 1 could easily-'be' | foreseeirTeven by the enthusiastic" Pilgrim 1 Fathers who had worn off the first effects of l the inspiriting parting addresses, and the mild' f ieteingw of Harper Twelvetrees of Washing, t Ptfwder* celebrity. The thirty-eight capi* e talists would-have-as branch* as they , could".'* manage—to keep their" two hundred/land, eighty-two mouthed family in br;ead: m&. t meat, and the rate of wages the'utfeztfployed'*' might look forwould have tieeh something of t a verjrmoderate description-for many years to* .t come.'. f iNro doubt, if compelled to it. ,the 555 t

might have managed to endure all the hard.ships,Taad"tiltiinately have attained to a prosperous_condition, but^individually the same result was more likely to he attained in the settled districts ; and however fond the settlers might be of each; pther, the .close packing on board ship no doubt rather inclined them to a little temporary separation than to continued isolation. In fine, the landing at Auckland might have been calculated on as a deathblow to the expedition, even had it been formed on a basis in itself sound, instead of being an Association the ruling principle of which seems to be that the halt are expected to help the lame.