The Standard AND PEOPLE'S ADVOCATE. (PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SATURDAY.) SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1875.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 318, 23 October 1875, Page 2

The Standard AND PEOPLE'S ADVOCATE. (PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SATURDAY.)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1875.

We shall sell to no man justice Or right: We shall deny’to no man justice or right: We shall defer to no man justice or right.”

Thebe are few parts of New Zealand, if anv, where the soil is so fertile as it is in Poverty Bay; but where it is less cultivated. The mania for pastoral pursuits has caused the operations of the plough to be all but superseded,— except with a few—and agriculture is now regarded withthegreatest indifference. Although the district abounds with the richest lands, we scarcely grow anything that is required for domestic consumption ; and, in consequence, we are obliged to import, at high prices, what we ourselves should have produced. So long as the price of wool keeps up, there will, of course, be a strong tendency on the part of the settlers to rear sheep, and thus ignore the tilling of the soil ; but this is, after all, a questionable policy. Wool, like other commodities, is liable to fluctuation iu the market, and any considerable depreciation in its value might be attended with serious loss to, at least, small graziers ; so that the injudiciousness of totally abandoning agricultural pursuits is apparent. In Poverty Bay there is ample scope for both pursuits. There is abundance of land better adapted for grazing than it. is for cultivation, aud for cultivation than it is for pastoral purposes. Nature has richly endowed us with these gifts, and we ought to make the most of them. We are also favored with atemperate climate, where, unlike the sun-burnt plains of Australia, cereal crops could be raised in unlimited profusion. It must be admitted, indeed, that our present population are not, strictly speaking, an agricultural community, and that this circumstance, of itself, forms a serious obstacle in the way of further! ng agriculture. Granted, that it does; but we emphatically deny that we are left, as some seem to imagine, without an alternative to benefit ourselves in this respect. Poverty Bay is not hopelessly excluded from participating in the advantages accruing from the introduction of a suitable class of settlers, who could convert our fine alluvial plains into smiling fields of golden grain, and other luxuriant crops, which would form an important source of wealth amongst us, besides that of breeding cattle and sheep. The Nova Scotian settlement at Waipu, is an exemplification of what a band of industrious small farmers can accomplish in agriculture; for this is now one of the most prosperous settlements in the colony. The people—whose holdings, we believe, do not exceed a hundred acres eaph in the majority of instances —are comfortable and happy; and their exports to Auckland are very considerable. The North of Ireland immigrants at Kati Kati, near Tauranga, have already given proof of what they are likely to effect in farming, on the allotment principle ; and in a few years hence we shall probably hear of Kati Kati, being the model settlement on the East Coast. AV hat, then, is to prevent Poverty Bay - — which preseuts far greater facilities for farming than does either of the two settlements named — from having a special settlement of a similar discription formed in it? Could the Patutahi Block be possibly turned to better account than that of the location of forty or fifty small capitalists—like those at Kati Kati—thereon ? AVe unhesitatingly say no. And as this land will shortly be disposed of, we would suggest the propriety of a public meeting being held in Gisborne, without delay, to consider the advisability of inducing the Government to set a large portion of the Block apart for immigrants of the class alluded to ; and also to make the requisite arrangements for their speedy introduction. Mr. A esey Stewart is prepared to bring out more immigrants of the Kati Kati type, and we know of no locality where they would be likely to thrive better than here. They would be a valuable acquisition to the district, and we are decidedly of opinion that an effort should be made to import them. Whilst on the subject of agriculture we would call attention to a want which has been long felt here, and that is a flour mill ; which want, we have been repeatedly told, constitutes a formidable impediment to wheat growing. The settlers aver that it would be useless for them to set about the production of wheat, on a large scale, because there is no mill to grind it; and this is certainly one valid reason Cor their not doing so.

The desideratum manifests a woful lack of enterprise in a district where there is so much arable land, and where water power is so readily available everywhere. It has been often alleged, that a flour mill would not pay here ; but this we are disinclined to believe until the experiment has been made. Our own opinion is that it would pay ; and we, therefore, hope to see a mill erected in some central part of the Bay at no distant day.