WELLINGTON.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 314, 22 December 1862, Page 5

WELLINGTON.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

, . Wellington, 16fch December, 1862. been I briefly intimated in my last that it had come to fall j that the reportwhich was in circulation serio l re a couple of months since relative to the Gover- f" : ' ' - hasi ir's resignation was not altogether without foun- Dosa ] ition. When the allusion to the report I first ditio adejknown to you came back to Wellington, a portion provi the,press here ridiculed it, and made use of it as been l illustration of how we had sometimes to go from nJ~ime.tohear the news. I have little doubt that it ? ™ ill find it has again to go from home to hear the con- .v* rmation of the news it then sneered at, for I think I *J ay safely say that the Governor's resignation will be # jws to' most folks here. I hear from authority, which ?^ r ould be deemed conclusive could I name it, that ; » hen Sir George Grey received the Duke of New- Thistle's despatches five montlis since, he placed his 3r?" ppointment in his Grace's hands. Ido not say that c didso officially. It may be that in a private letter men c remonstrated on the injustice ot expecting Mm m > make bricks without straw, and conditionally revested the D tike to relieve him from.the task he had, am° t the Duke's request, undertaken in the belief that ? . lorally and physically lie would be supported in his yUri emanda on the Home Government. It may be that rijOT iir George did so officially. I cannot tell you how it f, fas done ; bub I am led to believe that in some way • r other Sir George intimated how much he was dis- |fj n .ppointed at the tenor of those despatches, and how , eady he was to be relieved from the anomalous po- PrOi ition in which he was by tutm placed. lam led asc ilso to believe that by the next mail, seeing the atti- r™ ude assumed by the Assembly, Sir George volun- PJ. ci ieered.to withdraw or qualify wnat he had written the 7- vl nontli previously, and if bis Grace considered that the I ;emper of the Assembly required that he should stay, ie would be willing to do so. 1 think it probable ??? that this second intimation would have gone home " with, the first, iiad not the mail a second time missed £ reaching Melbourne. Be this as it may, be the exact °™ particulars more or less approaching " the outline I P+ have sketched, I think the one fact I have intimated may be taken as conclusive. In misty weather, the fact that there is a sail a-head may be pretty accurately'known, although not only the exact character of the vessel may be unrecognisable but even the yl course she is steering; fctil the fact of the sail being a-head is aconce reported by the look-out. I hive re- l" ported to you the " saila-head," and told all I know °p of its character and course ; in these latter particulars ?*. I may not be altogether right, but I think it will +?, eventually be found that the sail a-head is not alto- ;»' gether of the Flying Dutchman build. . yr. The Harrier sailed yesterday, and it is not impro- • bable that she will turn up your way. Apropos of UJ General Cameron there is a story told that soon after his arrival at Auckland, being very desirous to ascer- "_. tain for himself whether what he heard of theWaikato j country was correct, and to judge of its suitability * for a campaign, he disguised himself as a sort of t5 pedlar, having about him, amongst other things, a „ ' tiew canuters of powder. His merchandise procured him to the Native Villages, and though Q ± his back was considerably lightened when he returned, his information was very considerably en- j larged. My informant said the thing was hushed up, x and indeed only known to a few; but though I was uot J?. required to preserve the secret,! have never alluded to it until now, when there can be no object in pre- a i serving silence. It may be that there is just as Q i much truth in all this, as in that very pretty'episode in the seige of Lucknow, about the Scotch lass with +, her "dinnaye hear, the Campbell's are coming," _, that well known incident only existing in a newspaper f| correspondent's fancy; but as I invariably give, m chapter and verse when I state a fact, and always credit Dame Rumor with what she tells me, I trust I never wittingly or umvittiugly lead your readers „, astray. I do not belong, and carefully avoid every- ~ thing which should lead others to suppose I belong j to the class of whom a Curnhill writer state?, that they lay down authoritatively what Mr Cobden's S( political intentions are, on no better information than o what is obtained from the policeman who keeps com- jj pany with that gentleman's cook. The cold mutton, which I have hashed up so often lately, must come to table again. That wretched 0 . Marlborough case yields another paragraph now ; and s if you dont order it out of your sight, will have to be i served up once more in my next. On taking his seat s yesterday morning, his Honor intimated that he was j. obliged to take further time to consider; but that he s would endeavor to deliver his judgment before the \ next steamer sailed for Picton. As the mutton is not r all liashed, you perceive I must serve it up again—l j trust that t>uch of your readers as are family men, will J see the necessity of submitting to the infliction with ( > the same composure they have learned to practice on j such occasions in their individual homes. j It is not generally understood, I think, that Mr , Mantell is still in the iixecutive—a minister without | any particular ministerial office* but not an idle one , nevertheless ; the General Government officers having < received instructions to send all their local correspondence through him. } The " lucky contractor " for the building about to ] be erected for the N. Z. Bank, is likely to be an Ota- j gonian. The tenders are opened and decided upon in , Auckland, where they may possibly have been a . tender sent in lower than the one from Otago, but it ] is not very probable. The Otago tenderer is said to be about £800 lower than the lowest sent in by the ; builders here; or, that of Mr C. R. Carter, £4,240. : A disease has made its appearance among the sheep : on the West Coast, causing blindness. Something of the same kind was in Canterbury a year ago, but , whether it ha 3 continued or was merely epidemic, I I cau'tsay. Mr Jordan gives full particulars in the [ Whnganui Chronicle, of the 11th. instant, extract from which I enclose. L A refreshing shower is now falling, and which is I most heartily hoped may continue for the next j twenty-four hours, the country being much in want [ of it. Having reached " the weather and the crops," t it is a pretty sure sign that I have come to the end 3 of my tether, and having really nothing of any furt ther interest to communicate I shall best show my [ wisdom by leaving off—not always the easiest thing to a do when when you are in a gossiping vein. .The following is the extract from the Wanguni _ Chronicle, above alluded to by our correspondent, as q referring to the disease in sheep. Mr Jordan 3 writes :• — " The disease of which I speak affects the eye, and I will first of all state the circumstances under which it has appeared in my own flock, and then describe as acsurately as possible the disease itself as far as I have yet been able to observe its development. On the third of November I brought home some straggling sheep from an adjoining flock, and having previously finished shearing, I kept them in a separate ,j paddock, and washed them on the following morning, when I observed that one sheep was totally blind, and l" that several were suffering from a weakness in the eye. The sheep were shorn on the 11th and 12th, L" and I then carefully examined their eyes, and found [® eight more or less affected. I bled them freely at the j eye, and continued to keep them separate from the rest of the flock ; the total number of the sheep was i~ forty-seven. On the 19th, having the whole of the flock, with the exception of these sheep in the yard '' I carefully examined them, and found no appearance ' ® of the existence of the disease. On the 20th I yarded the diseased sheep, and again examined them, and ~ found twelve casesinstead of the original eight. Still, "i as I had a difficulty about keeping the whole number of sheep separate, and did not fear any very serious r consequences, I put the sheep wliieh were apparently free from the disease with the remaider of the flock. To-day, on yarding hardly six hundred shetp, I have found sixty affected with the disease—in fact in a space of eleven days. " " The disease appears to commence with inflamma[j' c tion of the eyelid, and a thin watery running caused er thereby. The eye itself appears then to become graist dually opaque from the edges towards the centre, (m generally commencing from the upper edge. This Jn opapueness spreads over the whole eye, and is of a kg milky color with a slight blue tint. As soon as the fr whole eye has become dimmed, the most acute in3I J flammauon sets in, the eye swells considerably, and 0 finally bursts from corner to corner, discharging a k e large quantity of thick milk-colored matter. The n . sheep, of course, totally losing the use of the eye. ■«,„. "In conclusion, as I have entirely failed to obtain ~ r from books, or the experience of others, any remedy at for, or any knowledge of, the disease in question, I en can only say, should thia meet the eye of any one ae- £ o quainted with the disease, they will confer a great QZ kindness on me by at onea communicating the result j s . of their experience : and should any one wish to in- ? " specb the diseased sheep, I shall be most happy to ey afford them an opportunity. It is, I fpar infectious ras °. r contagious; an epidemic it might be, but as yet my gk limited experience of it goes to show that it is not/ ice ' The following relates to the Nelson and Marlborough sst Steam Navigation Company, and is extracted from Is; the NehonExaminer ;—"Tne required number of er- shares to enable this company to commence opera* oc- tions having been taken, the shares have been lay allotted, and a call made of the first instalment of of £210s a share. It is intended, we believe, if a.suitLed able vessel for our coasfcicg trade can be procured in me the Australasian colonies, to purchase a vessel there per at once, and so far anticipate the arrival of the re- steamer from England, ordered by the Trustees of ie, the Trust Funds." jry A railway traveller was very properly fined by tbe self Stalybridge magistrates on Monday for jumping out ire of a railway carriage at Stalybridge station before ;le, the train stopped. It appears he had a narrow iry escape from death, and he was fined 10a and costs as tor a penalty for hiarashjae«

OTAGO LAND REGULATIONS. (From the Lyttdton Tinies.) Whatever nifty be the price'at winch' lands have i been sold, if they have o ice parsed unconditionally ' into private hands, it will no doubt be the interest of the proprietor to improve his property, nnd to render it it ati productive us possible. And if the first purchase"- resell without improving, although I we mayregiet that the profit made has not gone into the public chest for public purposes,- still we may be sure that no one can afford, long to leavr idle the capital expended in the purchase of the land whether at first or second hand. / The conditional (unconditional 1) sale, at a low price,.is better than such attempts at interfering with, economical laws as have j been seen elsewhere. Such attempts are certain to fail j the worst of them is that they inflict a very serious injury on the country in which they are made. At the present time the Provincial Council of Otago has under its consideration the whole system of disposal and sale of Waste Lands. The improvement conditions hitherto attached to the sale of land in that province have in most cases, as was to be expected, not been fulfilled. It is now evident that the title to the land cannot be withheld, and the results of the notable scheme for directing private enterprise have been the discouragement of "bona fide settlers and the enrichment of long-headed speculators, who could foresee the breakdown of the conditions, and who could afford to wait for their title. In Victoria, land regulations framed in a spirit of class legislation have just broken down signally. With this warning before them, and with the experience of tbeir own land law, it is marvellous that the Otago Provincial Government should have brought forward, at the commencement of the present session, proposals which embrace the worst faults of .any former, land act. They amount to a stupid attempt to exclude capital, and show a desire to create a class of pauper agriculturists, for some years entirely at the mercy ot the G-overnment. Inferior land only is to be sold in blocks of 320 acres ioi\ pastoral purposes ; this is for the capitalists. Superior land is to be kept for small agricultural settlers j to be sold in blocks of from 10 to 51) acres, on deferred payments, subject to certain improvements beins made within a given time. When such ascheme is gravely propounded by the Government, as a remedy lor existing evils,itisno wonder that the press and the public should take alarm. The Daily Times has denounced the whole scheme as shadowed forth in the Government resolutions in terms not less forcible than just. We confess ourselves at a loss to conceive how practical men who have learnt anything either by study or observation could have proposed so childish a scheme of interference with tbe simplest economical laws. We need not here dwell upon the field opened for jobbing and intrigue ; the utter hopelessness of attaining the object aimed at; and the mischievous tendency of the policy enunciated. "We believe that the Otago Government already see the hopelessness of carrying their proposed measure, and that the Council will legislate in a very different and more enlightened spirit. We are sincerely glad that this is likely to be the case ; for it would be but a narrow view of self-interest which coul.-i induce this province to rejoice in the blunders of its neighbors. It is true that at the present time we are reaping an immediate and temporary harvest from the unpopularity of the Otago Waste Land .Regulations, and that if they are judiciously amendpd, a great d<;al of money may be invested there, which would otherwise be spent in the purchase of laud within our boundaries. But it is equally true that a mistaken and blundering policy in the province affects the whole colony, and more especially. tbe country immediately adjacent to it. No doubt far more money leaves New Zealand altogether, in consequence of the obstructions put in the way of land purchasers at Otago, than is invested in other settlements of the colony, and the objections commonly made to the land policy of the g"ld-pro-ducing province, are elsewhere quoted as applicable to that of all the others. We cannot and ought not to wish to separate our interests ; every year draws our boundaries closer to each other, and we cannot afford to look on indifferently while there is any risk of suicidal policy on the part of our neighbors. If the Government of Otago would bear in mind two very simple propositions it would save them a great deal of trouble, and they might dispense with their attempts to devise all sorts of ingenious dodges. The first is. that all legislative attempts to direct and control the employment of capital are in the end futile, and if not at once futile are in the meantime exceedingly mischievous ; and the other is, that the great desire to purchase land, —the passion which has directly or indirectly brrught out a larger majority of the population, is really an instinctive wish to possess a spot in the woald which is absolutely and unconditionally one's own. To have a home and dwelling place, an estate however small with an v limpeacliable title, a fraction of the earth's surface on which he may reign supreme, this is the great ambition of almost every laboring man—and he will prefer to settle in a conn try where he can choose his land as he likes and can buy it unconditionally when he has saved enough money to do so. We heard a man who had recently come up from Ofcago to buy land here say that he did not care much what the price was, but that he did not like to be " humbugged abont." This is not a very elegant or a very clear definition of a grievance, but to men of his class it is quite intellible enough to deter them from incurring a similar danger. We can perfectly understand what he meant, and so can any one who looks, over the Land llegulations of Ofaß°* If after reading them over an adventurous man proceed further and effect a purchase he will thoroughly appreciate the force of our gold-diggers's expression, and will understand what " being humbugged about" means. We hope to see the Otago Land Regulations amended during this session; and although there are many faults in ours, such as the provision respecting pre-emptive rights, we can confidently recommend the leading feature in them, viz., free selection all over the Province at a fixed upset price, the payment of the purchase money entitling the purchaser to an unconditional Crown title. If Otago prefers her present system, we can only say that there is plenty of room here for intending purchasers, and that they will be welcomed in this Province.