THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. Tuesday, September 3, 1878.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2980, 3 September 1878, Page 2

THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. Tuesday, September 3, 1878.

Whenever a letter appears "in a Home. paper which at all disparages or underrates New Zealand, or the Colonies generally, as offering inducments to the overcrowded population of Great Britain to better their condition, or which attempts to refute the prevailing idea that the Australasian Colonies offer the best "field for emigration," some New Zealand paper is sure to seize upon it as a text on which to-castigate the writer. In another column we republiah from the New Zealand Herald a letter which first appeared in the Edinburgh Daily Review of the 18th of July. The Herald, in its introduction, speaks of "revilers," and attempts to throw discredit on the letter writer's statements, without offering any refutation of the same. The New Zealand Herald does not attempt to contradict the statements made in the letter it publishes, but in a few words dismisses it. Having read the letter we cannot see anything very untruthful about it. The writer's experience seems to have been of a hard and varied kind, and such as may have happened to many others to whom colonial experience was- very hard. As the writer .remarks, if he had been married he questions if he would ever have got home again. It may be that if he had been. married he would not have had the inclination to go home so soon. Who «can s blame a returned emigrant for publishing his experiences ? Cc rtainly, not we. It is not given to all men to I command success, and the correspondent whose letter we publish seems not to have achieved any success. He does not write in any bitter spirit. He says that capital is as much required as labor, and we agree, with him. New Zealand cannot any longer trust to the " unearned increment " of the land to tide over her financial difficulties. Encouragement must be given to capitalists as well as laborers, or the latter will very soon find they have to t compete on unfair terms. Large fortunes may be made by land speculations, but the. transactions in land, the constant transfers from one buyer to .another add nothing to the wealth of the country. They only increase the indebtedness of one class to the monetary institutions; and . unless capital is imported to the country and employed in the cultivation of the land, a crisis will come, when the last buyers will.be involved in ruin. Land is valuable only in proportion to what it will produce. If land in towns or cities is worth a certain sum, it should derive that worth from the progress of the country; and if the country land only derives its value from contiguity to cities or towns, and is constantly changing bands without improvements being effected, or cultivation being forwarded, a time, will' come when the price must overreach the actual value. Indeed we fear that land has already acquired quite a fictitious value in aome districts. The letter of the returned emigrant is moderate in tone, and does not appear to have been •written in a hostile spirit. It refers to the labor market, and the writer's experiences, which do not Sfem to have 1 been very happy. He says'that when he left Auckland some months ago (the letter

■■.is dated July 15, 1878), there were " hundreds of. good workmen doing nothing, or next to nothing, many of them glad to get 6s per.day at pick and shovel tfork, and that is not always to be had, &c." In this the writer may have written truthfully according to his experience. There are times in this Colony when men of his class —apparently that of an artizan —find a difficulty in getting employment. Just now we are compelled to acknowledge that here, and, by all accounts, in other places in the North Island, men do find it difficult to get employment in any capacity. Such circumstances are j only too common in the colonies, and we cannot be surprised if skilled artizans sometimes go home disappointed and dejected, and w rite in a strain that shows they have had bitter experiences. Instead of writing down, or attempting to»write down, men of this class, we conceive that, it would be more in the province ©f journalists to remove the causes which operate to bring about the state of things referred to. We want, as the writer points out, -to induce the introduction of capital to' encourage manufactures. We also require more liberal land laws, to encourage men of the laboring classes to go and subdue the wilderness, to induce small holders to till the soil, and reduce the supply of labor. As this comes to pass we shall hear less of disappointment from returned immigrants; less of an overv crowded labor market; and more of contentment amongst those who have weathered the first adversities of a colonial career. . When men are driven to stonebreaking as a last resource, at prices which will barely support existence for a single man (ride Auckland City Council reports lately) we cannot'be surprised at what appears in home papers; and the hardships of the proverbial " bushman," if faithfully depicted, would deter many an immigrant Irom ever leaving his home in the hopes of bettering himself. There have been many detractors of the) 'Cp'onies who have had no grounds for their complaints, but from a candid peru- j sal of the letter under notice, and judging by a long experience of the Colony, we J cannot agree* with, the Herald in characterising " A.F.B/s. •'■'. letter as that of a reviler. / ' ■■'■ ' .•■•■■' ■'■■■• ■•■■ ■ ..