A DIATRIBE ON NEW ZEALAND.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 312, 2 October 1875, Page 2

A DIATRIBE ON NEW ZEALAND.

An English correspondent writing to the-Veto Zealand Herald says A copy of the Banbury Guardian of the Ist iustant lies before me. Perhaps some of your readers may enquire of me,, first, where is Banbury and second, what ou earth has Banbury to do with them ? I will tell them. In the copy of the Banbury Guardian which is now lying on my desk, there is a letter dated May Bth, 1875, and signed, “ J; G- S. Grant, Yerk Place, Dunedin, New Zealand.” As I think that some of Mr. Grant’s statements in his letter to the Banbury Guardian, may have an interest (?) for youf readers; I will give you an extract: or two from the communication. “This,” says Mr. Grant, referring to New Zealand, “is a wonderful land for, politics. There are nine Provincial Legislatures, each of which has a Lieutenant-Governor, a Cabinet, and a House of Representatives, and'all the paraphernalia of a State. There is also a sort of (sic) Federal Government located, in the village (sic) of Wellington. This Assembly is composed of a Governor, a House of Representatives, and a quasi House of Lords. This Assembly is mainly filled by the sheep farmers, decayed lawyer® (sic), and merchants of the colony. .;. . . . Every year the head of the Colonial Ministry takes a pleasure trip (sic) to England, on some State business. Amidst groaning and hissing (sic) he took leave of his Auckland constituents in October last, and he has not yet returned from his trip to England, where he has negotiated another loan of £4,000,000 through a brother of the Hebrew persuasion, so that we are now saddled with a debt of £19,500,000

About a year ago Mr. Holloway addressed a public meeting in Dunedin. I was present on the platform on the occasion. I was so disgusted with tis fulsome adulation of the colonists, and his sweeping denunciations of the English farmersand his doleful picture of the English agricultural labourers, that I openly administered a severe castigation (sic) to him on that occasion. ;.. . . Men get demoralised in these solitudes of the deserts. They lose all manliness and self-respect and sell their votes as well as their souls for a mess of pottage or a pot of beer Men are glad to work here for ten shillings a-week, including what is vulgarity called ‘ tucker’ or food, and a bed like that of an English pig. ... On the Ist of May, when the winter begins here, the bad weather, also characteristical, commences. There will be much distress this season, and all the resources of the poor-house, euphonistically (sic) styled the Benevolent Institution, will not be adequate to meet the demands for bare subsis-

tence. As for lodgings, they are a luxury reserved for the few. Such, sir, is asuccinctaccount of the present state of New Zealand. I would it were different 1” After this tremendous diatribe of Mr. Grant’s, it will, perhaps, be re-assuring to your readers to learn that there has not asyet been a panic on the part of the holders in New Zealand bonds, but that the bonds in question—the Consolidated Bond's I mean—were sold yesterday at 105|, which is a higher price .than that at which they have been sold for some time past 1 :