The Invercargill Times MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1863.

Southland Times, Volume 2, Issue 97, 5 October 1863, Page 2

The Invercargill Times MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1863.

Our attention is again attracted to the measures adopted by the Government for enrolling men in the Auckland Militia. The recruiting officer has at length found his way into Southland, and calls for volunteers for a Highland Brigade. The terms offered are identical with those which have been the means of drawing together so many (jood men and true in the Province of Otago, namely, the gift, under certain conditions, of a block of land in the Waikato country to each volunteer. The conditions are by no means hard, when compared with the advantages to be gained. Each man, on his arrival at Auckland, will be enrolled in the Militia for service in the province, and "wi.l receive the ordinary pay, rations, and allowances until he is placed in possession of his land. The settlements will be surveyed at the Government expense, a stockade erected on each, and a township laid out iv close proximity. A town lot will be given to each settler, in addition to his block of agricultural laud ; and the Government undertake to supply him with a twelvemonth's rations, tree of cost, after he has taken possession. It will be the policy of the Government to found these military settlements as rapidly as possible, and make each of them the nucleus of a far more extended system of colonisation. It was impossible, in these conditions, to name any definite time after enrolment at which the recruits should be put. in possession of their land, and some have thought that the Government would be in no hurry to fulfil their part of the contract, but keep the men on active service until the end of the war. We can see no ground for such a supposition, but believe the plan will be carried out with all possible dispatch. The remainder of the conditions, to which we have not before alluded, J.re briefly that, after taking possession of his land, the militiaman will be entitled to receive rations free of cost, for twelve months, be allowed to retain his arms, and be supplied with ammunition. "After taking possession, no settler will be permitted, during the first three years after his enrolment in the Militia, to absent himself from his settlement for more than one calendar month in any one year, without the leave of the Governor first obtained." He will be liable to be trained and exercised as other militiamen, and be called out for active service when required. On the expiration of three years from his enrolment, he will be entitled to a Crown Grant of his town allotment and farm section. A large bounty-money the Colony was not in a position to give, but it has given what is, even now, of far greater value than the highest bounty-money ever giv^n by England when hardest pressed for men, and which will, in the course of a few years,, become of infinitely more value, than it is at present. Much of the land in the Waikato country is of the richest description, and presents no formidable obstacles to the agriculturalist, and, in making choice of spots on which to place the new settlements, it is to be supposed that the Government will select those which, from their position, seem to offer a fair chance of success in a commercial point of view. Of course, the principle thing will be to secure the permanent and peaceful occupation of the country; but good military positions, combined with good land for the farmer, will be found in numberless places. It is a difficult matter to foretel the amount of success the recruiting officer will meet with in Southland : if, as a correspondent in a recent Tasmanian paper asserts, there are hundreds of men out of work, — starving, in fact — in Invercargill ; if, as the writer says, the neighborhood of the post-office is daily, crowded by

men' wi£h nothing ftto do—" strong, stalwart fellows, who, like a besieging army, beset every avenue of approach to it" — we should think Mr Cameron wou!3 have an easy task before him. But we imagine the writer of the letter we have alluded to uttered deliberate falsehoods, arid recruits must be sought elsewhere than at the corner of l>eestreet. Mr Cameron need not, however, despair of his mission, because he fiads h mself amongst a community who are "full of work.'' There are arguments, independently of the offer of employment, supplemented by the gift of fifty or sixty acres of land, which have always had, and will continue to the end of time to have, weight in inducisa j the young and strong to exchange the implements of peace for the weapons of war. A love of adventure, and oftentimes a deliberate fondness for fighting, has turned many a peaceful citizen into a soldier ; and, even in this busy part of the world, restless spirits will not be found wanting to take the chance of being shot, or becoming in the future thriving farmers in the Waikato.