CORRESPONDENCE

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 34, 30 August 1851, Page 5

CORRESPONDENCE

To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times. Sir, I shall be obliged if you will tell your readers, my good friends here, that Sir George Grey has by his Legislative Council voted 800Z. of the revenue of this settlement towards building a new gaol at Wellington. Sir, I am certain the inhabitants of Wellington will join us to a man in protesting against this spoliation. The Wellington settlers, as far as I know them, are generous and consistent men. They know too well how they complained of their own money having been sent to Auckland not to sympathise with us when we object to our money being expended at Wellington. If Sir Geo. Grey will get ten responsible and respectable settlers at Wellington to say that this is a just appropriation of our revenues, I will hold my tongue —till then I will call it a robbery. But Sir George Grey has said that the Canterbury Association owes the Government 800Z. I know nothing about this arrangement: but I conclude that 800Z. has been expended upon public objects. I see by an advertisement that the accounts of the Association are open to public inspection ;so that matter can k be soon ascertained. If this settlement •be indebted to the Government, let it pay its debts. Let our surplus revenue be employed to pay for a debt contracted in public works. Let us pay interest for the debt if need be ; but let us understand that the money is to be taken, in re-payment of that debt. But it is not fair nor just, that our revenues should go to build a gaol at Wellington. Mr. Editor, I speak on behalf of the poor men in this place. They have paid in the price of the articles of their daily consumption.—they have paid this money. lam told some of them are out of employment here. It would i.ot have been very unwise in a paternal government to have expended a few hundred pounds of the surplus revenue of this place in giving employment here. All other new colonies have enjoyed a super-abundance of this sort of assistance. We don't want any extravagant government expenditure—we don't want all the relations between private employers and labourers to be disturbed by an enormous outlay of public money ;—but, I repeat, it would have been but wise to have assisted the young colony by expending in it a few hundred pounds during the winter months, even had funds been advanced for the purpose from the general revenues of the colony. It wonld have been - politic to do so. But it is not only impolitic, but grossly unjust, to take revenue derived from the settlement—from a new settlement, requiring all the fostering help which Government can afford, — and to spend it in a settlement many years old, and which could very well afford, as I am told by its inhabitants, to pay for its own gaol, if its own revenues were properly husbanded, and not uselessly squandered. I am, Sir, Your obedient Servant, £. s. d. [In explanation of the letter appearing above, it may be stated that at a later sitting than those we have reported in this week's issue, viz., on the 26th July, Sir G. Grey stated that the sum devoted to the erection of a gaol at Wellington, was only partly belonging to the Wellington revenue, 800/. thereof being from the revenue of Port Cooper. The use of this sum for the purpose referred to was voted without any discussion. Ed.]