“The Press” In 1864

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30542, 10 September 1964, Page 16

“The Press” In 1864

SEPTEMBER 10. AUCKLAND IMMIGRATION “Credat Judaeus!” We have before us Mr Reader Wood’s proposals for the military settlement of the Provinces of the Northern Island. To provide for the tranquillisation and future defence of those provinces, Auckland in particular, the General Assembly sanctioned a loan of three millions of money, exhausting the resources. and imperilling the progress of the whole colony We in Canterbury are on the point of submitting to the suspension of public works, and the stoppage of immigration, for the sake of rendering chivalrous assistance to our northern fellow settlers in their supposed extremity. The plan proposed was. after the war was ended, to plant along the frontiers of the disturbed districts a series of military outposts, to be defended ay a class of

semi-military settlers. The idea was borrowed, no doubt, partly from the old scheme of pensioner settlements, and partly from Sir George Grey’s experiences at the Gape. To work it out with any chance of success required singular skill In planning the settlements, and singular care and discrimination in the selection of the proposed immigrants. It was necessary to find men fulfilling the conditions of good settlers; respectable men, able and willing to earn their livelihood by the spade and the plough, but also able, in case of need, to handle the sword and the rifle The common immigrant—shopman or farm laborer, would be, as a general rule, unsuited for this special sort of service. We confess we never believed in the scheme. We though it from the beginning a sham As Mr Cardwell the other day told Sir George Grey, there is scarcely an instance on

record of the success of this sort of hybrid immigration. The pensioner class afforded perhaps the best materials with which to attempt it, for these men were habituated to military discipline, and could in time of war be turned into a serviceable corps. Not that our experience in New Zealand affords much encouragement to us to repeat the experiment That however, is nothing to our present purpose. The General Assembly sanctioned the idea. In that exuberance of confidence with which it overflowed towards the present Ministers last session, it placed at their command, say two millions of money (reckoning one million for the suppression of the war) for the specific purpose of introducing this semi-military settler. . . . Blindly, and with inexplicable carelessness, trusting to the good faith and discretition of Ministers, it placed this huge sum at their absolute disposal.