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Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 433, 17 December 1861, Page 3

Sir—As I learn from your late leading article?, as well as from some other sources, that my speech at the nomination has been very freely, fully, and fiercely commented upon by your contemporary, as well as by Mr. Barnicoat himself at hia various itinerant meetings, whilst all the other speeches have been allowed to pass without notice, your readers will perhaps think it only fair that I should now have my turn at commentation, and this 1 will endeavor to take without imitating my opponents in misrepresentation, or bitter personal feeling.

The speech of Mr. Barnicoat's proposer requires neither note or comment, and was certainly harmless enough except so far as ' the character of the province' can be supposed to be in any way implicated, in it. ' The character of the province' certainly cannot or ought not to Buffer from Mr. Elliott's Bpeech, as the audience took care (perhaps rather too much care) to wash their hands very clean of it as he went on. The speech that was afterwards made in the printing office is, of course, quiet a different thing, but there is still one thing left in it that I fchould'have thought Mr. Elliott would have considered it prudent to alter or omit. He even there charges Mr. Robinson with having too rapidly expended the landed estate of this province. If a ' blush of shame' did not mount to Mr. Elliott's 'forehead ' when he made this statement to the electors of this province it must be because he has become incapable of a blush. Did Mr. Elliott forget that be has held a seat in our Provincial Council as one of the elected guardians of our public purse during the whole time that Mr. Robinson has been Superintendent? Let him tell the electors what economy he has advocated in that seat. Let him tell them what unnecessary office he has tried to dispense with—what salaries he has endeavored to reduce. Whatis more, let him point to a. single session in which he has not increased or endeavored to increase both. Did Mr. Robinson or did Mr' Elliott propose to give a part of that ' landed estate f away to a lot of red coats to improve ' the tone o society?" Did Mr. Robinson or Mr. Elliott propose to sell that landed estate at one shilling per acre ? When Mr. Robinson proposed, did Mr. Elliott support, A system of deferred payments by which the produce of land now sold would have been extended over a period of at least 14 years? When Mr. Robinson first entered upon his present office and found nearly aW the surveyed land sold, and the treasury so empty that he could not even proceed with the surveys necessary to place more land in the market, he proposed to borrow £10,000 for that and other necessary purposes. Mr. Elliott said he-ought to 'go iv' for 420QiPOQ at on.cc; aucl Mv» Elliott and. bia f avty

rctiuily did succeed in increasing the loan to ( 23,000.' Does Mr. Elliott forget all those tilings, or had ho only forgotten that there is now a paper in Nelson besides his own—n p»per in which such tilings can be published, even about Mr. Charles Elliott himself, and that it is therefore little use for him now to act the spendthrift in the Provincial Council and the economist on the hustings.

Mr. Barnicoat's speech (like everything else that he writes) was pithy and elegant—precisely the same in the hall as it was in print. That part of it about promises &c., would make a capital' form of reply' to all future requisitions ; but I was rather sorry to hear Mr. Barnicoat say what lie did about the working man's compensation. It sounded so very much like a mere bid for popularity, as Mr. Barnicoat has never yet done anything to obtain it, and what now remains to be done, either by a Superintendent or a member of a Provincial Council, can be considered liLtle more than a form. What Mr. Barnicoat says about the ' just claim vpon the New Zealand Company, 1 is a mere evasion of the real question. No one ever doubted that: but let Mr. Barnicoat candidly own that the working men, when they get their compensation, will have nothing for which to thank him or any other public man except Mr Robinson—unless they thnnk Mr. Elliott and Dr. Monro for the obstacles and delays they have managed to throw in the way of its realisation in the Provincial Council and in the House of Representatives

Not long ago the editor o{ the Examiner, in a long string of mis-statements upon this question, endeavored to ridicule Mr. Robinson for having, as he stated, made promises about the working men's compensation, on the huntings; but Mr. Robinson, although he has finally succeeded in obtaining the consent of Council, Parliament, Governor, and Queen to that compensation, has never yet mentioned iton the hustings, having left that very easy part of the busness to be performed by Dr. Monro and Mr Barnicoat. But whilst Mr. Barnicoat goes out of his way to give us his opinion upon a subject, about which the Superintendent's opinion can no longer be a matter of much consequence, he carefully avoids giving even a hint of the policy he intends to pursue in matters which ho, if elected Superintendent, would certainly be called upon to act, and in which the kind of action he may think proper to pursue would have a yreat and immediate effect upon the interests and prosperity of this province. Those who remember the clamor that was raised at former elections, by the party who have now brougiit Mr. Barnicoat forward, about the non-declaration of policy on the part of Mr. Robinson, will look with astonishment at the total absence of anything approaching to a declaration of policy on the part of Mr. Barnicoat. There fe one subject in particular in which the Superintendent is almost daily called upon to act, upon which the views of the present Superintendent were from the first most fully and explicitly stated, and in which I believe them to be entirely opposed to those of Mr. Barnicoat.

By a resolution which Mr. Barnicoat and Dr. Monro managed to pass in the Provincial Council, we learn that they wish to see all the money derived from the sale of land spent either in the introduction of emigrants or in the very district in which the land has been sold, and that no portion of it should be available for the exploration or opening up of any new district, for the construction of any public works that may become necessary in a more populated district, or even to bear its share of the construction and maintainance of the great provincial trunk lines in which the whole province is necessarily interested.

So that when a speculator with large capital buys the first and best forty or fifty thousand acres in a new district, at a very low price, because it is then unavailable and unimproved, the greatest part of that low price is to be immediately spent in enhancing its value by making roads, bridges, and other improvements, that will enable him to immediately retail it out to his poorer neighbors at an enormously increased price. Mr. Robinson, on the otber hand, believes that money is better spent by the Government upon a district in which no portion of the land has been sold, so that the Government, or rather the public, would have their money returned for all improvements made in the shape of an increased price for the land, or otherwise not until a considerable population have become owners and settlers on the land, so that a large number of bona-fide settlers And not merely one or two speculators should be benefited by the public money expended in the district. Surely, upon such an important, practical, every day subject is this, the electors had a right to expect that Mr. Baraicoat would give then a plain and clear explanation of his opinions, and not leave those opinions to be found out from any propositions or amendments ho may happen to have made. in the Provincial Council; and the same remarks will apply to Mr. Barnicoat's opinions about the taxation of ' artificial or industrial improvements, in preference to the taxation of unimproved and unoccupied land. The six lines which Mr. Barnicoat's speech contains about the Waste Lands, are to me remarkably ambiguous, and I cannot for the life of me understand what he means when he says ' the present law appeared to admit to some extent of the benefit sought by those who contended for the selling land upon credit—the enabling of a man to obtain land in exchange for his labor.' If Mr. .Barmcoat can really see any analogy between obtaining land upon fourteen years credit and obtaining it for labor, after that labor has been duly performed, I can only say his ogan of comparison must be very much larger than mine. Mr. Baroicoat has, in fact, given us as yet so very little information as to his present opinions and future intentions, that he might very well employ his time at his local meetings in giving the electors some further information about them, rather than upon such a very unworthy subject as that of misrepresenting and mis-quoting everything that 1 have said or written about him; a course that is the more thoroughly inexcusable, as your paper has furnished him with a perfectly correct report of almost every thing I said at the day of nomination. I am, &c, ALFRED SAUNDERS.