To the Editor of the Colonist and Fellow-settler's of the Province of Nelson.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 434, 20 December 1861, Page 3

To the Editor of the Colonist and Fellow-settle r's of the Province of Nelson.

Instead of a meeting of the wise for the benefit of the whole people, our great palaver in the present day is a tiiocting ot'iinhittered pnrtizan.s, crotchety solfseukei'fl. ambitious ad ventures and place-hunters; wh'«<jc oil iet' ol'j'ict is e.it her to keep, or to get possession of the national'treasury for the benefit, of themselves and ihcir adherents, and whose greatest efforts are to di.-.-jMragtj their op: orients and dUe.reilit them before the public.— lllustrated News of the Wodd.

You will in a few days again he called upon to exercwe the high prerogative of electing a Superinten ient to preside over this province for the next four years. After what took place .it the Domination, you cannot, I am sure, hesitate as to the nmn your choice should fall on ; the straightforward and manly matinar in which Mr. Robinson gave an account of his stewardship, his statement respecting the troops he so wisejy declined bringing here from Wellington, which would have entailed an enormous debt on the province without any responding results, and the stinging reproof lie administered to those who were so anxious for their presence, must have satisfied every honest and intelligent man at that meeting of the purity of his motives in declining the offer. The sale, of the Government lands, which he piomised to proceed ( with for the purpose of creating a "evomnK wiil, no doubt, increase the enmity of the p ny opposed to him, but it will, I am sure, only eitdear him the more to those who have to toil for their daily bread. Mr. Elliott, the seconder oi Mr. Burnicoat, was on the occasion of the noininition most unfortunate in his reception by-tho meeting (the intensely selfish sayings of Mr. .B.ulnicoat's proposer, Mr. Fearon, are not worth recording), although Mr. Elliott employed all hi* acknowledged talent in the way of cajolery, Iw must have seen at a glance that he' and his candidate and party were at a discount; although he congratulated the meeting on their good humour, and told their, on such occasions he liked to see a little fun, he evidently saw by the serious (not brutal) looks and tone of the meeting, that the majority of the. men composing it, came there for a far different purpose than that of playing the part of Sam. son in making foola of themselves for his, Mr. Elliott's diversion, or the would-be lords of the Philistines, whose mouthpiece Jie was; they had more vespec' for themselves and their cause, to play Columbine to his Harlequin. He, Mr. Elliott, would not, he said, follow the practice of throwing mud set by Mr. Saunders in his hopes that some might stick, and who roundly abused all who differed with him in politics, and had imputed to them conduct and motives, which if such charges could be sustained would deprive them tbrsver of the confidence of the public. True 0, Daniel! It does so. Why, my fellow settlers, was that significant pnragiapli of Mr. Siiunders' speech omitted in the Nelson Examiner? viz., Tliat Mr. Robinson had proved that he possessed both honesty aud firmness enough to avoid all connection with that well-or-ganized party who had learned t<> pilfer the Nelson jiu,blic. so systematically, to create osv«Bi and'fill'

them with their own friends ftud relatives, to ndd our public roads to their own gardens, to ohtain rnonnous compensation for mistakes made hv their own sn»veyors, to under assess land which they intended to add to their own estates, and hundreds of other acts of dishpnegty. Why were ,these assertions allowed to pas.'i unquestioned? That mud, it seems, suck, and the pretended explanation given in the Nelson Examiner of the over sensitiveness of their reporter in omitting it in his report of the meeting, in my opinion, confirms it. For what purpose was the Wairau separated from this province think you, my fellow-settlers ? 1 will tell you,—They, the runholders, had two objects in view: the principal one was for the scramble for the waste lands of that district amon« themselves, and lo prevent the sale of any, portion of their runs, for the purpose of carrying on the Government of tin's province; the other, wan to create an additional expensive Provincial;' Council and Supoiintendency(the election of the latter office to be taken out of the peoples' hands), and the privilege of sending members to the General Assembly, thus creating for themselves cities of refuge, in which those candidates who had by their meanness, duplicity, or falsehood, been rejected by a justly incensed constituency in this province, could decamp to those they had created in Marlborough. lam sure, my fellow-settlers, you will never allow yourselves to be again the bond slaves of there southern masters, nor allow one of them or their nominees to lord it over you again ; they" cried for separation and obtained it by duplicity and false representations, at the same time they hud no notion of withdrawing their own isweet selves from us; they only wanted to remove the runs from the jurisdiction of the Nelson Executive. The comparative small amount of property they hold or rent in this province they dooifcmind paying a small tax on, as it qualities them for electors of the province.

What think you makes them cry out for immigration so lustily ? Not because they cannot get men; it is because they cannot get them at their own price ; they would eet them at your expense if the Superintendent would sanction an immigration hill, as thn hulk of their property lies in the Province of Marlborough. I well recollect in the early part of this settlement, the great cry out of the original land pur- [ chasers, now oiir principal runholders, for the I cheapening of labor; they complained most bit- ' telly to the Company's agent, of their utter ina- | bility to hire a working man at the current rare of wages; it was reduced more than once or twice to oblige them ; bus few would employ any, of the many, who would willingly have left the Com pany's service if they could have seen and obtained more suitable employment; those wo did employ them were certainly not those who raised the clamo<-, until they brought the Company's men into open rebellion with the Company's agent; Captain Wakefield. Some <ime efter that gentleman s death, Mr. Fox became agent for the Company, in which office he displayed so much wisdom and showed so much sympathy aud generosity to the unfortunate mechanics and laborers who had been tht. dupe of his employers (the New Zealaud Company),'astoearn for himself the lasting respect of the working men of this province, and the bitter hatred of the original land purchasers and run-holders of the settlement (with a few honorable exceptions), and which is otiU kept up by them in all its integrity. Some time after Mr. Fox's arrival in the settlement, the stoppage of the Co.'s works took pl»ce, which threw all their laborers out of employment. One would have thought labor would have been cheap enough then, and so it was. bid the land purchasers, think you, employ those unfortunate men ? A few of them did for a week or two: the remainder either would not or could not employ them. But I will tell you what they did: unable to eject them froni laud they had squatted on by Mr. Fox's advice to obtain a livelihood, in fact to keep them from starvation, and which they, the original laud purchasers and tlteir agents, had selected in exchange and compensation, one of their party, a land agent and nom:ne •of Sir George Grey's legislative body, brought in a Bill to empower the owner or agent of lands so .-occupied,, to eject them (without any allowance for improvements) ">y giving a month's notice. To the honor of Sir George Grey, ire-h-saiir, he refused to sanction so inicpfftous and cruel a proceeding. In consequence of that, decision the sale of lands on deferred .payments became cencral at many times in advance ot rs original cos% and the nge'nts and pretended agents for land reaped a golden harvest. !>y purchasing land ostensibly for the occupier from the absentee proprietor, but in reality through the intervention of a friend for themselves, and reselling it to the occupier at an enormous profit; in other cases charging and receiving rent for land, for which they had no earthly authority f oin any one to receive. Still, with all these drawbacks, the indomitable pluck of the Anglo-Saxon prevailed ; many of them became well-to-do in the world, a constitution was granted to the colony. Provincial Governments were to be established, which Sir George Grey in his wisdom would have rightly deferred for a few I years, but ambitious and selfish men, weaving the mask of Liberalism, got up a petition and induced many to sign it by misrepresentation for lv's removal, and succeeded in obtaining it. From that time to the present, a system of cbicauery, meanness, and unblushing duplicity has been carried on for the possesion of power in the General Assembly of the colony and its different Provincial Councils, that I am sure the heart of every right-minded man at home or in the colonies would sicken at the recital. Better days are, I believe, dawning ; you have now your old and tried Governor back'again, who will, I believe, do justice to the colony in spite of the interested assertions of men in'this province to the contrary. Auckland has again elected her workingman Superintendent,; follow her example—you cannot get a better at the present to do j'ou good. Hoping on the polling day you will neither allow yourselves to be bribed or cajoled, I beg to remain, Yours, &c. AN OLD SEITLER. Waiinea South, Dec. 17-