THE FUTURE OF NEW ZEALAND.

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 93, 16 October 1852, Page 4

THE FUTURE OF NEW ZEALAND.

(From ihe Wellington T?idependent.)

The people who govern us and legislate for us, from the other side of the globe, have been good enough to carry the New Zealand Bill through the second reading. Having passed that pons asinorum, it remains now to be mauled and hacked, and dovetailed and tinkered, in Committee ; and it will be marvellous indeed, if it is neither mutilated nor botched, to say nothing of the danger of destruction, in its ulterior progress through the two houses. Our best chance is, probably, in the fever of anxiety which all parties experience oh the eve of a dissolution. The oldest and most profligate of parliamentary sinners cannot help thinking of the purgatory, or something worse, that awaits them, in a contested election, and they will perhaps be too busy, in the prospect of their own perdition—" the deep damnation of their taking off," when"they fall into the hands of their constituents, to trouble themselves about venting their spleen or their ignorance upon the unfortunate colonies. There may even be a show of death bed repentance, and the greedy and malicious old step-mother, who has been spunging upon the orphan children entrusted to her care, and then threatening to turn them adrift, to get their living how they can, may, perhaps, feel

some pangs of conscience and twitches of remorse, and affect to concede what the laws of nature are loosening from her grasp. The House of Commons will, very likely at the eleventh hour, pass the Bill, with little discussion, when compared with the jabber and rhodomontade that would have been elicited by it, at any former period, within the last four or five years. The chances are then, upon the whole, that the Bill will become a statute without any material alteration, and that by the time everybody is gone to the Diggings, New ! Zealand will enjoy the possibility (for we desire to put it cautiously) of working its six subordinate and two supreme legislative assemblies at the same moment. What a nation of politician-: and statesmen we shall become in a few years, if we avail ourselves of our privileges ! The Times expresses a great deal of humour out of this, and insinuates that the presumption will be, in future, in New Zealand, that every man you meet is a legislator, and the onus will lie upon himself to repudiate the calumny. What is to be done, when the bulk of our male population shalll have gone to the diggings, we are at a loss to conjecture; unless we do justice and let in the women to the enjoyment of the franchise and eligibility to sit in Parliament. Seriously, however, the departure of so many people, at this time, is unfavourable, not only to the immediate prosperity pf the colony, but to the development of representative institutions. The establishment of those institutions will, on the other hand, prove a powerful attraction to many persons disgusted with the neighbourinocolonies, as well as to those who may be seeking for a habitable country, in which they may realize the fortunes they have acquired in Australia. This process of realizing, by which we mean "turning money into-land," cannot he accomplished satisfactorily in Australia ; where the squatting interest lords it over the small agricultural settler ; where convictism has left the fcetor of its presence, in every corner of society ; and where the soil and climate are comparatively sterile and insalubrious, to one who has resided for any length of time in New Zealand. There will, after all, be sufficient employment for our local and central legislatures, if they only perform their duty in preparing this country for the reception of that surplus population, which must soon overflow the widest, boundaries of the Australian gold fields. That such a reaction is quite inevitable no one can doubt, who reads the accounts of what is going on at London and Liverpool alone ; to which must be added the contingent furnished by all the races under heaven, civilized and. barbarous. It reminds us of the breaking out of the crusades, when Europe is said to have "precipitated itself upon Asia" and when kingdoms were conquered, and dynasties founded, by the mere stragglers, who returned disappointed from the intended gaol of their adventures in the Holy Land. A small per centage of the myriads of people flocking to Australia would be sufficient to set up New Zealand, in almost fabulous prosperity ; and it will be the proper business of our future legislatures to do everything that is necessary to attract this class to our shores. Tens of thousands will find themselves unequal to the toil and privation of a gold digger's life, Many are returning impoverished, disappointed, and disgusted, from the diggings: and the state of the towns is perfectly revolting, to every one endowed with common morality, or common decency. Here is a vast immigration prepared to our hand, and we should be ungrateful to divine Providence itself, which takes care of the peoplingand governing the world in its own way, if we did not avail ourselves of the golden opportunity. The means are obvious, in the extended survey and ready sale of the waste lands; and '*• it will be an indelible disgrace to all parties, if such facilities for settlement are not speedily afforded, in New Zealand. At present the state of things is deplorable, scandalous, unpardonable, and worse than we care to describe, or hope to remedy, until the people have the management of their own affairs in their own hands.