The Globe. MONDAY, AUGUST 3, 1874.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 55, 3 August 1874, Page 2

The Globe. MONDAY, AUGUST 3, 1874.

Messes Beogden and Sons have presented a claim against the colony for no less than the .sum of £95,000. They consider that the country is indebted to them to that amount in consequence of the number of labourers they have imported to New Zealand, for the purpose of carrying out the

various works which they have contracted with the Government to construct in various parts of the islands. Their ideas are that as the colony has been largely carrying out the system of free immigration, they are placed at a disadvantage, as they themselves have had to pay the passages of the labourers they engaged in Great Britain, and these men, on their arrival here, have not been able to withstand the inducements of higher wages than were originally mentioned in their contract with the Messrs Brogden, and have consequently left the unhappy contractors in the lurch. The labourers imported also naturally s.iy, why should we be compelled to pay our passage money out here, at the rate the Messrs Brogden require ? We could have got passages from the Government, if we had known the state of the ease, and we will not pay for what we could have obtained for nothing, if we can help it. This may not be right to the gentlemen who have gone to the trouble of selecting these immigrants, and forwarding them to their destination, trusting to them to be recouped for the expense attending the transaction, but it is undeniably a very natural argument on the part of the " navvies", and so the Messrs Brogden turn in despair to the Government, that, in the present state of prosperity in New Zealand, must have proved a veritable milch cow to the numerous contractors employed by it. They state their case in their epistle to Dr Featherstone, and declare that out of 1300 immigrants assisted by them to come out to this colony, to help them in the formation of the various Hues of railway, and other important works that they are constructing for the country, only seventy-six have remained faithful to their bond. We may reasonably presume that the seventy-six here mentioned, are receiving higher wages from the Messrs Brogden than they could get from other employers or they would naturally betake themselves to the market in Avhich they could obtain the highest price for their labour. We should like to know the specific terms on which these men were engaged. If it can be proved that the men signed any agreement, before leaving England, in which it was stated that they were to receive wages at the average rates ruling throughout the colony, then our sympathies would be entirely with the gentlemen who engaged them; but if, on the other hand, it is a fact that a stipulation was made in the contract, to the effect that the immigrants after their arrival here, should work for a term of years at a rate of wages which, though it may seem liberal to people in England, does not fairly represent the average rate of wages here, then we cannot wonder at the " navvies " repudiating the contract so entered into, and in fact we can hardly blame them for so doing. The attempt to obtain labor more cheaply by the means of contracts made in England has been tried in various parts of the Australian colonies,and invariably with the same result; the men are indignant in these cases, at what they consider a fraud which has been practised on them, and they take the earliest opportunity of breaking the bonds which bind them to their employers, whilst we have never heard of the contractors being able to force their unwilling workmen to carry out the agreement so made. The Messrs Brogden also try to show a parallel between their case and that of Mr Webb, who attempted to run the Californian mail, but we not think the parallel holds good. Itisgenerally supposed in this colony that Mr Webb ivould not pay the penalties he had incurred, and it was a well known fact that Mr Hall could not, so the colony made the best of a bad job, and were magnanimous enough not to insist on a payment they could not enforce; besides the cases would be more alike if the Messrs Brogden were to fail in completing any of the contracts they have in hand, by the time specified in their different agreements; in that case they might reasonably point to the fact, that the cause of the delay was the desertion of the labourers that they had imported, by the wish of the Government, and at the instigation of the A gent-General, and in this instance they would have some chance of escaping the penalties, which the General Government would have the right to enforce, for nonfulfilment of their work ; but the case as it at present stands is not a parallel one to that of the unlucky Californian mail contracts. The remarks of the Messrs Brogden, at the conclusion of their letter, are no doubt very true, but we have yet to hear the answer that the Government will give to them, and this will most probably put the case before the country in a very different light to that which is shown in the letter containing the demands just made on the exchequer of Now Zealand.

Ihere wore no oases heard in the H, M. Court, Lyttcltoa to-day iu consequence o K the illueßS of Dr Donald,