Hawke's Bay Herald SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1869.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1016, 23 January 1869, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1869.

Industrial pursuits are fearfully on the decline during the continuance of Native disturbances, and the effect is experienced by all classes of the community, save those who find a chronic state of war to be a "paying game," and don't really care how long it may last. There is something very attractive in the mystical words " pay and allowances." But the people generally groan under the depression which is caused in part by that want of confidence which is inseparable from the circumstances, and which, abuts out capital and crushes energy. No commissariat expenditure would ever compensate a community for the losses it sustains through war being in its vicinity. Were peace restored, and had the public faith in its being permanent, the busy hum of industry would soon be again heard in our rural districts. Properties at present too large for the means of the occupants would become subdivided and improved, and a condition of comfort and plenty, if not of very large means, would become general. Many subjects, to which we have in a measure directed the attention of our readers by means of extracts from other papers, might then be brought forward prominently, with some chance of something j being done. Such, for instance, as ostrich farming, recommended by the Australasian ; meat preserving, the experiments in which promise that our surplus mutton shall no longer be a drug in the colonial market ; woollen manufacture, it being manifestly absurd that we should continue to export the raw material to so great an extent, and import manufactured cloth when we have every facility for doing the work in the colony; and, what, indeed, many are already turning their attention to — improved sheep washing. All these, ond many more subjects of equal practical importance, will, in course of time, force themselves upon the attention of the settlers.