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Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 64, 27 March 1852, Page 2

To the Editor of the " New Zealand Journal." Balloter, Aberdeenshiro, July 22, 1851. Sib, —The following communication is the substance of a reply made to a certain correspondent of mine, who, from the debate on New Zealand affairs on the I lth instant, and from various sources of incorrect information, has arrived to the conclusion that New Zealand is a kind of Tasmania—a penal colony in full bloom, now suffering all the evils of convictism. It is not probable that any of your readers will fall so deep into a similar error, but as a Premier's speech is certainly calculated to convey erroneous impressions as to the present state and condition of Society in New Zealand, I shall feel extremely obliged by your giving insertion to my reply.—Your obedient servant, Charles Hubthocse, Jun. Sir, —Your communication of the 16th is not exactly couched in the terms which a person employs when seeking gratuitous information on an important subject; but as lam always desirous of contributing my humble aid in disseminating correct ideas of New Zealand, I pass over the more personal parts of your letter, and gladly undertake the task of attempting to disembarrass you from the singular misconception | under which you appear to labour. The Times is forwarded to me here ; and I also read the Premier's remarks on New Zealand. On the vital question of supplies, Lord John, in his impromptu reply to provoking, non-colonizing Mr. Cobden, was right in the main, but he exaggerated a little and generalised too tnucb.. JDolus versatur in generalibus. Years before the regular European colonization of New Zealand commenced, the Bay of Islands (a magnificent harbour in the extreme north of the Northern Island) was the favourite haunt for the English, American, French, and other whalers, resorting thither for wood and water, pigs and potatoes, and divers other shore delights. Sydney traders and land sharks, grog sellers by the gross, Jew slopsellers, vagabond rovers, idgenus*omne, were thus soon attracted over from the neigliboivring colonies. The place was a kind of no-man's land—the soil was rich, rum was cheap, the climate sunny, the native girls by no means cruel. Altogether it "was a perfect convict's heaven ; and undoubtedly several notorious scoundrels of this accomplished order did escape from New South Wales to join the motley sympathetic herd, squatting at the Bay. The rude and lawless crews of the whalers^ banded on these white savages on shore, rioted in a continual saturnalia. The population might have been divided into those who sold rum and those who drank it. Robberies, drunken fights, ferocious violence, manslaughter and murder, were of constant occurrence ; the weaker natives were shamefully maltreated ; and a more intensely-wicked little potful of people than these few hundreds of bay squatters never, probably, existed at any period, in any spot, since the creation of the win-Id. At last, such a climax was reached, that at the earnest entreaty of the missionaries, our Government sent out a kind of paper governor, or half consul, to protect British interest, and to act as a sort of moral check on these evil doers and viola/tors of the law. Some years after this the New Zealand company commenced their operations by planting the settlement of Wellington—many hundred miles away from the B;iy in actual distance, and many thousands in point of actual intercourse and communication. Coeval with this the Crown assumed the sovereignty of the country, and New Zealand became a regular British colony. Now, as regards our friends at the Bay, the effect of introducing the law as well as the gospel into New Zealand was just this: the whalers deserted it and sought their supplies in various parts of the Polynesian islands to the north, where there was no custom house flag, creating, yet obstructing smuggling, and where they could still revel in the wild license of barbarism. For the same reasons our convict blossoms skulked off to happier lands, still free from those only stumbling blocks to their mundane felicity- the police, the gaol, and the whipping post. The third estate, the slop selling and tavern keeping class, thus deprived of their only customers, began to dwindle away ; and the Bay, from boasting a hundred vessels in harbour at one time, could now scarce reckon a dozen in the year. Kororarika (the bay town) became as a rank weed of the past, and so o-rei.t was the change that the notorious chief Heki actually justified himself iv taking up arms because the British

flags had driven away the ships and the people, I and he should no longer baiter his pigs and potatoes, and women, for the equivalent rum, gunpowder and red blankets. To the great affliction, and despite the sugared words of his weak friend, Governor Fitzroy, he cut the flagstaff down three times, admitted that he was a bad man, and then repented, by sacking and burning down what was left of the town. The effect of the English systematic colonization of the Bay of Islands was the effect of a regiment of carbineers on a handful of Italian brigands ; the effect of a British seventy-four on some pirates' petty stronghold, the effect of annihilation ; and the former existence of such a wicked little Gomorrah as was Kororarika some fifteen or twenty years ago, has no more actual effector bearing on the present state and tone of society in New Zealand, than has the Trojan 'war or the sack of Rome on the present condition of your Northamptonshire peasantry. With respect to your allegation that the Governor of New Zealand declared that the large amount of crime in New Zealand was committed by " Expirees," or persons who have been convicts, there is evidently a mistake somewhere. In this remote highland village, I have not the means of referring to the New Zealand '' Public Statistical Returns for 1850," which I imagine are now procurable in London ; but I venture t» assert that these returns will shew not only that the per centage of crime is low in New Zealand, but that it is lower than in most colonies of the empire. Some six years ago the Colonial Office, in one of those freaks of policy peculiar to itself, ventured to send to Auckland about seventy, I think, of certain juvenile prigs, (termed Parkhurst boys,) who, it was supposed, had undergone a kind of reformatory process in England. Their colonial career, however, did anything but justify this supposition. With a course of honest industry open to them, and in the midst of plenty, they relapsed into picking and stealing with such rapidity, that, parodying the veni, vidi, vici, we may almost say of their— they came, saw, stole, and were transported. This was the solitary attempt to introduce convictism in its mildest form into New Zealand ; and such was the indignation it excited, such was the deplorable result of the experiment—so bitter, so unanimous are the New Zealand settlers against the introduction of convictism in any guise, so powerful is the Parliamentary influence of New Zealand (see the names-oil the Canterbury Committee), so significant, has been the warning since given by the Cape colonists—that I fancy the Colonial Office will repeat the experiment about the same time that you discover perpetual motion or the philosopher's stone. In fact, no stronger proof could be adduced of the high state and tone of society in New Zealand—no more practical denial given to the truth of the assertion that any " taint of convictism is lurking there," than is to be found in the fact of the emigration of such members of first-rate families to Canterbury. People of capital, and refinement, and education, who go to create a home in the new land, to plant out their children, and who with ample means of information at command, would certainly not so violate every rule of human action, as to make choice of a colony which actually contained the one particular thing whicu of all others they wished to avoid. The extraordinary natural advantages of New Zealand, the great per centage of wealthy emigrants who make choice of it, will undoubtedly give it charms for that class of our fellow citizens who "left their country for their country's good." The antipodean burglar or transported thief, like ourselves.'would, undoubtedly appreciate the delicious climate, sparkling witer {mixed though, perhaps), the robust health, the rich rising towns and settlements, aad the abundance of specie in New Zealand. And we may rely upon it, that from time to time, some slippery wight of this genus will successfully elude the vigilance of his Tasmanian keepers, and naturally come to disport himself in the garden of the Pacific—where, as the fit takes him, he may pick a pocket, commit a burglary, or steal a horse. But as one swallow does not make, a summer, and as a drop of water is not the sea, so will such casual occurrence not derogate from the high state and tone of society existing j u New Zealand. Pockets are picked ami horses stolen even in Northaniptonshire, but we don't talk of the penal bloom or convictism of your beautiful county. Allow me now to give my own " experience"

as to the question of amount of crime. I will confine myself to New Plymouth ; for as you, Sir, may be laudably conversant with the history and peculiarities of your own parish, without having a very accurate or extensive acquaintance with the world beyond its bounds, so may I be well up in all New Plymouth matters, and yet comparatively in the dark respecting the other settlements. I resided in New Plymouth five years. The mixed population, natives and Europeans, was about 3,000. In this period I never saw a drunken broil or fight among the labouring population. For some years, two prisoners at one time could not have been confined in the gaol for it was a wooden box, with a roof about four feet by seven. In the five years I recollect but four " State criminals:"—one, a girl, for stealing some shirts ; another, a deserter; the third, a suspicious-looking stranger, who turned out to be somebody else, and who had fallen a victim to the law's mistake ; the 4th, another ctraia^ ger, for having-burglariously taken possession of a cheese. There may have been some others, but certainly not many ; for the capture and incarceration of a prisoner was an " event" likely to be remembered. In fact, the variety of having a criminal tenant for the box was only equalled by the uncertainty of keeping him in it. The cheese-man was confined a week and broke out every second day, throwing the whole settlement into confusion to catch him again. Not being a man of trade in New Plymouth, having no banking account or ledger, my money transactions were not of Rothschild calibre. Still I had some business transactions with all classes of the community. I trusted . every one who asked me, and I have made just one bad debt of the exact amount of half-a---crown. I question whether half the doors in the settlement were locked at night. Certainly the feeling of security from thief and burglar was much greater in our little settlement than it is in Cheapside, surrounded by police and within, cry of the Lord Mayor. As a further indication of the social condition of New Plymouth, permit me to conclude by offering you this quotation from a recent work on that settlement :—"There is ajso another church in rustic style on the banks'to" the Henui, and a third lately erected in the Donata hamlet; together with a Wesley an, an Independent, a Primitive Methodist, and^wo or three native chapels; six day schools, two evening schools, and five Sunday schools, built mainly by the people, supported mainly by the people." And if you are still sceptical, pray procure a little publication called the " Bishop's Journal ;" turn to page thirty-eight, and see what the good bishop Dr. Selwyn, said of us even four years ago. If you will neither believe the Bishop, nor accept the alternative of remaining a martyr to your own unbelief, I can only say—Go and judge for yourself; you will be'quite safe. If the fastidious, the timid, the " unprotected female" style of person, should ever emigrate at all, he should certainly.have make choice of New Zealand —a colony which your favourite authority, Sir George Grey, the Governor-in-Chief, has thus aptly described:—" At the present moment there is probably no portion of the world in which life and property are more secure than in New Zealand, nor is there any country which holds out greater promise of prosperity and happiness to intending emigrants." Your trenchant critique on Mr. Earp's excellent work and on my own humble little production, I regard as quite unanswerable ; but if it were not so, and I attempted an answer it might perhaps be urged against me by certain censorious pundits deep in New Zealand lore, that I was indulging in the argumentiun cd' ignorantiam. I will, therefore, maintain a discreet silence, only begging you to observ&vthat to err is human, and suggesting that for the ■future it would be wise not so hastily to-ignpute dishonest motives to those who rnj^y have the misfortune to differ from you. Mr. Earp and myself must endeavour to seek some consolation under your attack in Earl Scarborough's motto, "Murus oeueus conscientia sana." I have to apologise for the afflicting length of this poor reply to your complimentary favour of the 16th. A Scotch wet day keeping nic indoors, has, I fear, tempted me to write more than you will care to read or profit by.—l have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, Chaiu.es Huesthouse, Jun>