WAIAPU.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 193, 5 August 1874, Page 2

WAIAPU.

(FROM OUR OWN COBBBSEONDBNT.)

July 25. The weather has been unmercifully cold during the past fortnight, and the uncomfortable effects thereof are being keenly felt both in and out of doors. Ploughing is making little progress, aud the natives are beginning to entertain fears that they will be behind with their tillage operations when the time for sowing the wheat arrives.. The soil, from the late rains, is in a sufficiently moist state for the plough, and all that is needed is dry weather to use it.

The assembling of the guests for Iharia’s feast, is to commence on Saturday the Ist proximo, and the great est -number is expected to be present on Tuesday the 4th, when the demonstration will probably be at its height. A considerable number of natives are already engaged at the chief’s residence, in making the necessary preparations for the banquet: and from what I hear it will be a grand affair, not only as regards proper arrangements, but also as regards profusion and variety of viands. The whole proceedings are, I understand, to be conducted with due order and decorum —Iharia being averse to anything savouring of boisterousness or rowdyism. The erection of Mr. Thomas Fox’s inn at Waipero, is now in a forward state, notwithstanding the unfavorable state of the weather of late. It will, however, take three or four weeks to complete it. The edifice is to contain seven or eight rooms —an accommodation which few of the East Coast public houses can boast of at. present. The builder is Mr. Flynn of Gisborne, who has been somewhat extensively employed in the district during the past eighteen months. Our Agent-General, it would appear, is again in hot water about immigration, and is likely to be re-called in consequence of his indiscretion in the selection of the people whom he sends out. to us. Men of discernment clearly fore-saw the impropriety of committing the sole management of the immigration affairs to Dr. Featherston, or, indeed, to any one functionary resident in London, on- the ground that such an arrangement could not work well. The Government being, however, partial to the Doctor for his long service to the colony, it was deemed undesirable to abridge his power until further opportunity should be afforded him of exhibiting his eligibility or otherwise in carrying out the instructions of the Cabinet under the new immigration regulations. He has had that opportunity, and the result is still unsatisfactory, as was anticipated. Something, therefore, must be speedily done to appease the anger of the colonists for the injustice done to them in being inundated with the inmates of English and Irish workhouses and reformitories—the cost of whose introduction the public revenue has to meet. To secure the importation of a really suitable class of immigrants the itinerant system of agency must be resorted to, as had been done in the early colonisation of South Australia and Queensland. Both these colonics sent home active, energetic, aud persevering agents, who visited all parts of the United Kingdom, and judged for themselves as to the fitness or unfitness of parties willing to emigrate — rejecting many applicants and approving only of such as they deemed to be an acquisition to the colonies they respectively repre.

sented. Exceptional persons were thus excluded from participating in the benefit s which eligible people were alone entitled to, and consequently prevented from expat ria ting the useless to distant lands where they would have to endure those privations and discomforts which invariably await incapables everywhere. Some fancy that, the antipodean settlements of the British Empire afford a comfortable home for everybody — even the most useless, —but this is an unqualified delusion ; for the individual who is not able to earn a livelihood in the mother country need not imagine that he will he provided for in these climes without an equivalent in labor of some kind or another, as the community here, with few exceptions, live upon their exertions just as they do at home. Our free immigration scheme is an admirable one in the present circumstances of the colony, and every possible care should be taken to obviate its being abused, by a defective agency. -