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Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 198, 5 January 1866, Page 2

Unquestionably out holiday season comes at the wrong period of the year. Christmas and midsummer do not agree well together. In the northern hemisphere the joyous week which ushers the old year out and the new year in, falls, not by an accidental coincidence, at the time when men have most leisure for enjoyment, when labour of all kinds is little required, if it be not absolutely forbidden by that inclemency of the weather which serves to heighten the sense of the domestic in-door pleasures. In the winter season too, the scattered members ol families seldom find their avocations so urgent as to prevent them from meeting to reknit the ties of old affection, about the cheerful hearth and the social board, to revel in the merry games and unfashionable dances in which all ages join, awakening a hearty pleasure unknown in the formal ball-room. The dwellers in this Southern region are for the most part deprived of these enjoyments — at least their enjoyment is diminished through the want of the surrounding circumstances which, in the old country lend the greatest charm to the situation. Here the time of year is most unfavourable for holiday making. Coming as it does when the farmer is busily en- j gaged with; his crops, and tho townsman as busy with his tradej it finds the people unable or indisposed to yield up their I valuable time to the claims of domestic j festivals. Neither Christmas nor the New Teal,' can be celebrated in this land vrith the fame hearty pleasure and care- ! forgetting sest with which they are wel- ' :■ corned m the homes we have left, to i people &g tilmti® of Ssw Bsta& It

is hardly necessary to speak of the contrast presented by the ordinary life of all classes in this colony as compared with the condition of many millions of people in Great Britain to whom Christmas is the only day of real enjoyment in the whole year. To these the easy toil and abundant food of the poorest here would j seem like a perpetual holiday — Christmas] the whole year round. The enjoyment, which we, owing to the difference of seasons, cannot well concentrate in a brief series of festal days, is diffused, in superabundant measure, over the whole circle of the year. And this, it will be admitted, is good substantial compensation for a misfortune which, after all, is chiefly imaginary. "We must remember, however, that this advantage is due in a great measure to the circumstance of our. settlement being somewhat recent, and ourpopulationbeing very scanty in proportion to the abundant resources of the soil. As the number of inhabitants increases, this proportion will be gradually altered for the worse; until at length, even here, pauperism with all its attendant miseries, will make its appearance to diminish the general sum of happiness, and perplex our law-givers with evils more real, and more dangerous than those temporary grievances (the natural result of the present superfluity) which now occupy their attention. This subject is deserving of our most careful consideration, in order, if possible, to discover how these anticipated evils may be, at least in part avoided. Now is the time, in the early age of the colony, when its condition is yet plastic, and its destinies may be moulded by good laws — this is the the time when our legislators should make it their especial care so to establish the frame of our society, and the distribution of property, as to preclude those unnecessary evils, and those painful contrasts, which are seen in many countries of Europe, but chiefly in Great Britain. By the laws of nature there will be in New Zealand as elsewhere great wealth and great poverty - wealth, the result of industry, temperance, and frugality ; poverty, the fruit of indolence and vice. But it will depend chiefly on . human laws whether there shall exist here also that fearful and unnatural inequality which bestows on one part of the community, superfluous riches and corrupting luxuries, while it dooms the toiling mass to perpetual want and almost hopeless misery. Already in our own province, cases have arisen in which whole families have been reduced to absolute want through unforeseen disasters, and although these emergencies have, for the most part, been met by the exertions o*' the more fortunate among us, still it would be vain always to rely upon voluntary assistance for the relief of the deserving poor. It is absolutely necessary that some ample means should at once be provided by the Legislature, (a task by no means difficult at the present time), to avert the evil effects of pauperism which inevitably attends advancement and prosperity, however anomalous this truism may appear ; and we jlook forward to the next meeting of our Colonial Parliament with the hope that the subject will receive its earnest attention. It would be simple enough, we should imagine, to set apart in each province certain portions of the Waste Lands of the Crown for the purpose of creating a property to De vested in trustees appointed to administer 5 it, with the view of avoiding the objectionable mode of providing for the relief of the indigent, which, under the poor laws of the mother country, have met with such universal disfavor. The early appropriation of Blocks of Land for such a purpose could have no reasonable opposition, and the value of the property thus created would necessarily increase with the occasion for it, ensuring a certain revenue, out of which to relieve the wants of those whom the circumstances attending the rapid increase of population in these islands will inevitably throw upon public charity.