AUCKLAND IMPORTS IN EXCESS OF EXPORTS—£1,322 529.

Auckland Examiner, Volume IV, Issue 230, 18 January 1860, Page 3

AUCKLAND IMPORTS IN EXCESS OF EXPORTS—£1,322 529.

(To Editor of Auckland Examiner.') Sir —Seeing the first seven years of so-called "Responsible Government" have produced such disastrous results, we shall not waste time m prognosticating the future, but at once attempt to detect its bane and prescribe its antidote. It is generally believed that the so-called religions bodies are large importers of merchandize—that they pay Natives for their labor in tobacco and pipes, in soap, blankets, European clothing, &c.; that in proximity to Mission Stations are stores for the storeage and sale of merchandize. Now, if this be a fact, I ask, how is it possible for individual I'zr-fcepers to compete with a company of wholesal?SSd retail dealers?—religious influences apart. Kis further believed that so-called religious bodies, during years past, have counted their flocks and herd by thousands, and their fee-simple lands by square miles. They also hold in trust Government Grants of lands, amounting to some square miles, ostensibly for “ educational” purposes, also an annual grant of 70001 cash, which, in the parliamentary parlance of 1856, “had been squandered, being neither reproductive nor effecting any tangibMienefit, except finding its way into the pockets of teachers and matrons in a way wholly subversive ofthe intentions of Parliament. * • The way in which some was squandered was really a scandal to the whole system and unsatisfactory to the Natives themselves. Still it was pleaded that, under the existing circumstances of the Colony, it was not expedient that the aid hitherto afforded to the religious bodies in their educational institutions should be suddenly withdrawn.” The circumstances alluded to were that, “ His Excellency’s advisers deemed.it necessary to bring in the Natives Offenders Bill; and for the order of good government of the country to deal with the disturbed Native Districts as with Foreign States.” The dreaded evils soon vanished, but the religious lovers of state money still chink it in their pockets. In the session of 1858 the 7000/ formerly placed on the “Civil List” for religious bodies by Sir G. Grey was reserved for other Native purposes, as Hospitals, Resident Magistrates, Presents for Native Chiefs, &c. A new fund was created for religions bodies by a vote of 7000/ for seven years continuance. Here I ask—-in the name of common sense—how it is possible for Colonial producers successfully to compete with such a phalanx of state patronage? Hence the “ forty-acre” delusion ; to keep the state-paid clergy in position to over-ride the country —to debar its denizens from the free exercise of their civil and religious rights—to grind the faces ofthe poor, and squeeze them as oranges ere squeezed. Responsible Government is excellent in principle, but wherever the details are administered by socalled religious bodies they corrupt the state at its ipring-head, and, by consequonce, pollute all its streams down to its smallest rills. Yours, &c. G. Vaile. Jan. 11, 1860.