THE AUCKLAND 'STAR' ON DR FEATHERSTON.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 19, 6 September 1873, Page 9

THE AUCKLAND 'STAR' ON DR FEATHERSTON.

The Auckland ' Star,' on the Agent-General writes as follows : — "Perhaps in all the history of colonial officialism there would! not be a parallel found to Dr Featherston in his conduct of the Immigration Agency of New Zealand. Nor do we know whether more to .admire his infinite impudence, or the extreme coolness 1 with' which the* Government tolerate his'continuarice in office, and his astounding effrontery. It is irritating in the extreme to glance back for a few months at this man's conduct. Everyone recollects how, when exorbitant charges were permitted to the friendly shippers for' the conveyance of immigrants to New Zealand, on an outcry being'raised tenders were called for, and only one was received by Featherston, and that one from his friends — Shaw Saville and Co., and even that was at a higher rate than the fares previously existing in theirjsecret arrangements. And again, but recently, when the New Zealand Shipping Company offered and obtained an arrangement for carrying immigrants at a lower rate, suddently the friends of Dr Featherston discovered that they could convey immigrants even lower still, or aS a rate exactly twenty per cent, less than they and Dr Featherston had s assured*the soloniats was the very lowest rate at which immigrants could be conveyed. That a man of complicity in such intrigue should be tolerated for one month in control of such a responsible position is one of those things the wherefore of which is past finding out on ordinary principles.