THE SURVEY DEPARTMENT.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume I, Issue 10, 24 June 1843, Page 2

THE SURVEY DEPARTMENT.

Mr. Shortland, the Colonial Secretary, has been called by the New Zealand Journal " the Plague Spot" of this colony : but the effects of Mr. Shortlands measures, however injurious they may have been, are still, not permanent evils. Remove the head, and you get rid of the members too. Not so, however, with regard to the Survey Department ; the good or the evil in this case becomes fixed and permanent. A crooked street, a badly laid out road, will always continue so. They are evils now, and they may be so for the next hundred, or thousand years. The unnatural crescents, curves, circles, rhomboids and pentagons of Auckland, will always continue to be so. They are once, and for ever fixed. Of all the government departments, that of the Survey should, in a new colony, be the most efficient and the best managed. Mistakes may be made in the others, but the mistakes can be removed at any future period, not so however, with the survey ; a mistake once committed, becomes permanent and immoveable. The Surveyor's good or bad labours descend to posterity either in the shape of a valuable legacy, or a baneful curse. These thoughts have suggested themselves to us in consequence of the letter of Mr. Montefiore, which we published some time ago, this letter is in itself more than enough to convince any rational man of the lamentable and deeply reprehensible manner in which this department has been conducted, Mr. Montefiore's letter refers solely to the times of the late Surveyor General ; but we shall take this opportunity of connecting the History of this department under Mr. Ligar, the present Surveyor, with that of his predecessor, on which Mr. Montefiore so ably descants. In taking up this subject, we trust we need not assure Mr. Ligar and the public that we do so, not from any ill-feeling whatever towards Mr. Ligar, (for we do not J know this gentleman in his private capacity) but, because we have a duty to perform to our adopted country, and to the public ; and this duty we are determined at all times to discharge, at whatever sacrifice to our own private feelings. Let no person for one moment suppose, that it would not be much more congenial to our feelings, to speak well of every person, than to publish the I condemnation of certain persons in the manner in which we are at times compelled to do. We cannot help ourselves, we are pledged to the good of our country, and we must | crucify our feelings. Private character and worth must be lost sight of, where public good is concerned. The Spartan mother would sacrifice father, son, and husband, *>

fthe good of the state. We, unhappily, these degenerate days, can only sacrifice Hr feelings. These we do sacrifice, and at 1 S risks, we publish the truth, offend who it I iy . Our motto (to deal in vulgar Latin,) is 1 j iat justitia ruat coslum." To our task then. «The survey department has been, and is, \ the present time, the worst conducted in !is colony, where every public department Iso scandalously managed. It is not only tie most expensive, but it is also the most tgeless, and not only the most useless, but ite most fruitful in every species of misclief of any other in New Zealand. Not Sy is there no land ready for the location but there is scarcely any of Island surveyed, or sold by government, liich contains the exact quantity sold lotments have been surveyed, farms and vn lands have been bought, sold, and bought v and the .parties now begin to Uver that the titles they have given and feeived, are useless, inasmuch as the land fbou«Tit and sold, invariably contains more Wthanthe quantity specified; endless sputes and expensive litigation, are the cessavy consequence. Applications are y after day, made to the government for i redress of these grievances ; but all is >our lost, and time and money thrown ray. The present government has neither c inclination nor the judgement to rectify ese matters. .. we must come to facts, so as to enable the public .to judge for themselves, and :s£p that we do not complain without just "4&sons. Mr. Ligar, the present Surveyor ;«feneral, took charge on the first of January J|42 ; we trace the history of his public Jl&iduct from that period to the end of March jji§43. Mr. Ligar at that time found in the Ifwrvice 5 surveyors with 4 men each, HI this number he added 4 more surISyors, and 1 draughtsman whom he brought |Bong with him from England, so that |» commenced his operations with a most iJßfectiye staff, consisting of 10 surveyjfars with a proportionate number of men. jaEhe expense of this staff during this time, smiat is from the Ist of January 1842 to the Mist of March 1843, has been about £6800. |» he amount of land surveyed does not exMeed 6,400 acres, of which 5,600 acres are Ijountry lands, and the remainder town and Suburban allotments. Without making any ilistintion between the expense of laying out ||round in town and suburban, or in country J jections, the cost would therefore be £1 »j[s. 3d. per acre, or £680 per square mile. in. some instances however remeasurements ;|ave been found necessary, either in conseuence of errors committed previous to "'; 842, or of the. disappearance of the original „•; markings ; and several miles have also been * ut and measured for roads and other pur- '} oses through unsuryeyed districts. Allow- | lg for these measurements as if original f urveys, and for the measured lines at the .'i ate of 80 acres, or a section of country ; md for every lineal mile, the equivalent | umber of acres will then amount to 20,084, I nd the expense per acre to 6s. 9d., or £216 | er square mile. But as it is manifestly I lore expensive to mark out town or subI rban allotments than country lands, and as 1 lis additional outlay is no doubt at the p Dmmencement of a colony, it may be ar- | ued that some corresponding allowance \ lould be made. Without either affirming { r denying this proposition, we proceed to | lake the required allowance, at the rate f 80 acres country lands for every acre of p >wn allotments ; of 10 acres for every acre f suburban allotments ; and of 2 acres (we | ill even be thus particular) for every acre I f the small farms, — meaning thereby, as * le farms most people imagine are all small I nough— the 10, 20, and 50 acre paralleloI rams behind Mount Eden : and there reI ults as the representative of the entire work I erformed, 33,026 acres of land laid out in I Bctions of 80 acres each. Even in this very 1 beral point of view, which applies only to a I »untry where neither town nor suburban alI >tments are wanted, where each weary wan1 erer, as his foot touches the shore, trudges I ;raightway to his 80 acre rectangle in the I ilderness ; the expense per acre is no less jj iau 4s. Id, or £130 per square mile. | But in fairness, we must make another '\ Mission. No allowance is comprehended | any of fhe above statements for the exJ inse of replacing some part of the instru- ?« ents and documents destroyed by fire a { >ar ago • f or a sort of half sketch, half t l l^ . of several miles of coast to the north ' f Waitemata, and of part of a running l^v.ey of Manukau harbour ; nor for maintaining a gang of labourers to pillage and fjjf^^ ™>ods of the domali (no doubt for the benefit of the pubHc) as well gg for fencing and digging portions of the ||irvey experimental farm, and effecting Numerous other improvements on the same! grhe first of these items is both small and ■ncertain ; the second, if not quite so small, |s just as uncertain, and has been much Shore useless ; and the third, though by no BMans either small or uncertain, i% wUI be

time enough to make allowance for, when the amount is refunded to the Colonial Treasury. Nevertheless; to meet the expense of the two first items, we will strike off the odd £800 from the known expenditure, although there is a sum unreckoned, and unknown, for articles supplied from the government store, and for the wear and tear of equipment of field parties, which ought not to be overlooked, and there remain 33,026 acres of country lands against £0,000 of outlay. The cost therefore under the most ! favourable circumstances is 3s. 7d. per acre, or £110 a square mile. When not a single attempt has been made, nor a single farthing laid out to commence a trigonometrical survey, these sums are without doubt not a little curious ; and we shall merely remark, that as the cost of survey in Great Britain, which is infinitely more minute and tedious than any thing* that can occur in a new colony, and where much more accuracy is practised than here, seldom reaches one shilling an acre, — the above investigation furnishes quite an extraordinary exhibition of management, which is only not ludicrous because it is disgraceful. Mr. Ligar's patron, Captain Dawson of the Tithe Office, in his Report to Lord John Russell on the best mode and probable expense of laying out crown lands in New Zealand, estimates with great simplicity the cost of the method actually pursued here, after making as he thought the most liberal allowances, at four penco halfpenny per acre. That the eyes of the gallant Captain may be most thoroughly opened, we will send him a copy of our present number, and if it fail to make him look either on himself or on his protege without shame, the whole charge of Dr. Priestly's sixty -four jar Electrical Battery would certainly not discompose his nerves.