THE COURSE which the CANTERBURY ASSOCIATION OUGHT TO PURSUE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 135, 6 August 1853, Page 8

THE COURSE which the CANTERBURY ASSOCIATION OUGHT TO PURSUE.

The " Australian and New Zealand Gazette," of the 12th Feb., has a long article under the above heading. We extract such portions as are immediately interesting to the Province. That portion which treats of how emigration may be renewed to Canterbury is particularly deserving of serious attention. In the matter of roads we will give the colonists a hint which Major Kennedy explained to us some time ago. In India, the system which lie originated there is now being- pursued vigorously, and with a rapidity formerly unknown in road-making. It is known as the " Kennedy principle." When Major Kennedy was aide-de-camp to Sir Charles Napier in India, the want of a road in the hills of the north-west was very much felt. He applied to the Government of India on the subject, and ! met with a prompt refusal on the score of expense ; it would cost £50,000. "No such thing," replied Major Kennedy ; " give me the prisoners out of the gaols, and I will make the roads at scarcely any expense whatever. 1' This was of course ridiculed, but was excited as to how so extraordinary a feat could be done. " Very simply," replied Major Kennedy ; " instead of pursuing your system of setting a body of men hacking and hewing in one spot, I will give every man a yard of road per day to make, and I will make him do it." The thing struck the authorities as somewhat resembling the egg of Columbus ; and they wondered that their own engineering wisdom had never hit on so simple a plan before. They gave Major Kennedy permission to set to work all the rogues he could find in the province. Every man's yard of road was staked.out for him, and 500 men were one morning placed on 500 successive yards of ground. As a matter of course, there were 500 yards of road made before night, and each day witnessed another 500 yards, till, in a short space of time, a magnificent road was stretching for miles in the direction of Thibet; the result is that India is getting covered with " Kennedy roads" Let the Canterbury colonists try this simple principle. Fifty Maories, each on his separate yard of ground, will make their fifty yards of good road a-day. Put them to work in one spot, and they will not make ten yards. Fifty yards a-day would be a mile a month, and this would speedily complete Captain Thomas's load from Lyttelton to Christenurch, with little more engineering than the brains of the workers would supply, and at a comparatively in--significant expense. Happily, the colonists have few of the rogue class to set to work as had Major Kennedy ; but whenever such do turn up, a yard or two of road-making would be more productive of benefit both to the colony and the delinquent, than any other punishment that could be devised. The question now is, what can be done at home for the embryo colony, in order to support it till it can walk alone ? An infant coioiiy can no more be put out of leading strings ' too soon, than can an infant man. Both would be in imminent danger of becoming bandylegged. J : Many friends of the Canterbury settlement entertain an opinion that nothing can save that settlement from subsiding into the waters of -Port Cooper but the formation of a road from J.yuelton to Christchurch. Let us examine tins theory f or a . moment, for we scarcely consider v tenable; which may or may not be owing to our own want of shrewdness. V\e have recently been favoured with the perusal of a letter from a gentleman long connected vyuh tae Nelson settlement., who has recently visited Canterbury, and he writes that the road already existing—for no great space it is true—is, thanks to the efficient engineering or Captain J homas, superior to any in Nelson. JNow when %ye consider that the "distance between Lyttelton and Chris tehurch is that between one extremity of London and another, and that the greater portion of this road is already well made, we cannot but arrive at the conclusion,, that If the colonists themselves have not a Sufficient estimation of their own interests to finish such a paltry piece of work they deserve to have it left unfinished. To call such a matter the safety-valve of the settlement is simply ridiculous. We were amongst the founders "of the first

colony in New Zealand. We had neither roads nor funds set aside wherewith to make them. Whichever way the eye turned an apparently impenetrable and interminable mass of forest met its gaze. We found we could not do without roads, and set about making them accordingly, and the result was, that a good road speedily extended fvom Wellington to Porirua, a distance of seventeen miles through such a continuation of forest as would have appalled a professional road-maker. In Canterbury there is not a tree in the way, and unless the colonists are the most helpless beings imaginable, it would much better become them to finish their road themselves, than to forego other advantages which their friends in England may do for them, if they are so disposed. There is, however, a more valid reason why other aid is more necessary to the rising settlement than are roads at the present moment. From accounts which have reached us, many of the labouring population are attracted to the New South Wales gold fields, and this attractiou will increase, till the restoration of the balance of labour from indiscriminating emigration to Victoria shall have taught men the value of quiet industry, in preference to the hazards of gold mining. At the moment we are writing, or if not shortly, Canterbury will in all probability be suffering severely from this cause, and the capitalists of the settlement will be unable to apply their capital to any advantage to themselves or the colony; whilst the high prices of commodities will only add to the general disorganization. It may be said by the mere English reader that this is looking ahead for contingencies—but the contingencies are such as our own colonial experience has taught us to look for, and we are rarely false prophets, when events depend on colonial contingencies. If we are right, and time will show that, it is plain that the settlement wants small but continuous streams of emigration—before roads ; these latter being of little avail without people to use them. We propounded this view of the case the other day to a distinguished leader of the Association. .His inquiry was, " where is the money to come from ? We have suffered so severely in pocket from what we have already done, that, though personally we would strain every nerve to benefit the colony, we cannot in justice to ourselves disburse more money." Both these assertions are strictly true, yet there should be little difficulty about the means for a moderate assisted emigration ; for to no other do we allude. We will point out one or two legitimate sources of raising sufficient means to keep up a moderate stream of emigration, which has now for the most part ceased; and be it borne in mind, that with even moderate emigration of this kind, moderate capital would also flow into the settlement, and would go far to maintain it in a healthy condition till it had got over its first struggles. In the first place, the Government of this country ought to aid the Association by a small sum ; for this would be sufficient, if judiciously expended. And of this, now that the moneywasters of that body are gone from amongst them, there would be little reason to doubt. The Government flung its hundreds of thousands to the jobberies of the New Zealand Company, almost without question. The Canterbury settlement has not cost the Government a sixpence. Whatever may have been the shortcomings of the Association, the Government of this country has no right to expect colonies to be founded by private enterprise, for the benefit of the country, without contributing pecuniary aid if wanted. It permits them to be so founded, and therefore participates in their foundation. If it do not retain sufficient powers of supervision as to the expenditure, it ought to make good the mischief caused by its neglect. But we will put the matter on another ground, viz., the uniform meanness of the British Government towards its colonies, unless, as in the case of the New Zealand Company, parliamentary influence is to be bought by generosity. We spend heaps of money, it is true, upon all sorts of trumpery locations called colonies, from the Cape colony down to Heligoland, but to our Pacific colonies, with the exception of the New Zealand Company's settlements, our course is extremely uncreditable as a nation. Tn place of aiding them, we tax them unreasonably for the purpose of getting rid of our pauper population at thejr expense, giving nothing whatever in return but a few

used-up governors and a host of discreditable place-hunters. If (he Government could throw away a quarter of a million of money on the New Zealand Company, which it well knew would never be repaid, it ought not to grudge £20,000 to save a new colony on an emergency which no onel could foresee ; viz., the abstraction of its labour by the gold mines. It is an established fact that parliament never refuses money for colonial purposes, be they as Quixotic as they may. Eveu the sums voted on account of the New Zealand Company were at once compiled with. We are confident that parliament would not refuse the above sum to save a young colony,' which has barely progressed a step beyond its starting point, from being brought to a complete stand-still. But if the Government of this country be too parsimonious to do, for once, an act of colonial generosity, it need not do so. Au advance of a small sum for the purpose may be charged against the future land revenue of the colony.' The colonists will not be likely to object to this, since without emigration they cannot sell land when they have fixed its value; and this sale of land to raise an emigration fund is the first desideratum. We trust that the Government will not in its benevolence and ignorance listen to any absurb crotchet to serve the interests of roadmongers; at any rate, till it has created something like a constant, though- ever sosmall a stream of road-users, in the. shape of emigrants to supply the place of .those leaving the colony for the diggings. If the Government will not do this, and we confess we see an obstacle in the Duke oF Newcastle, who was one of the most conspicuous leaders of the Canterbury Association, and is now the Colonial Minister. His Grace may not consider it seemly that he should be the first to aid by a parliamentary vote, a mistake of his own creation when out of office. Such a view of things would be mere official squeanv* ishness. The colony is there, and ought to be both aided and protected. The boon is not asked so much to benefit the colony, as to prevent 3,000 enterprising men from being ruined from circumstances over which they had no controul. But if, as we said, the Duke of Newcastle will not aid his own handiwork, the remainder of the gentlemen, his coadjutors in its formation, might do so. The effort needs not be a very expensive one. Any New Zealand shipbroker will carry out for them at any time fifty emigrants at £16 a head, or for j£Boo. They would get abundance of emigrants to pay onehalf, or £400, of their passage-money ; and surely they could trust to the honesty and good sense of their colonists to repay them when they have the power, as they will shortly have, over their lands, which will then sell to the new comers as fast as they arrive. Say that only three such consignments of emigrants should be sent till it was known how far the Provincial Council of Canterbury would cooperate with the Association, the amount would be only £1,200, and amongst so large a body of the elite of England's aristocracy, this sum would be nothing, even if it should be eventually lost, which we do not believe it would be r unless the colonists have taken leave of their senses in preferring roads, which they may make themselves, to emigration, without which they must remain, not in statu quo, for that is impossible, but in a state of constantly increasing deterioration, We believe that the colonists, the moment they have it in their power, would only be too glad to reimburse the Association for helping them not only to labour, but to land purchasers under the new order of things. They may be certain that in no other way will they get land-purchasers, and the Association may yet repair all its disasters, in which we should be happy to aid in any way but that of roadr-making, which the colonists had better set about making for themselves. In doing this the Association would have a manifest advantage. If the colonists would not co-operate with them, the Association would at once shift blame from its own shoulders to those of the colonists ; for whose welfare no one would afterwards care, if they were so blind to their own interests as not to aid those who were aiding them. We again repeat that, if the colony do not sell land, it must retrograde ; it cannot sell land without purchasers ; it cannot find purchasers without emigrants; and it cannot have these without aid from some quarter at home. To effect this, the Association would require

no establishment, not even a clerk. It would simply hiive to say to the shipbroker, " For how much will you carry for us fifty emigrants occasionally—receiving half the passage-money from us, and the other half from the emigrants themselves—transacting also the whole matter with tlie emigrants, so that we have neither trouble nor expense beyond paying the moiety of the passage ?" If the Association will do this, we will give the thing the requisite publicity, without charge of any kind ; i.e., if the economy of our plan wete carried out, but not otherwise. We are so thoroughly initiated into the way in which the money of the Association has been squandered, without the slightest idea oil the part of Lord Lyttelton and the other 4 gentlemen of the Association as to the waste going on, that we would stop the thing at once by exposing the former waste without compunction, if a loan or subscription on the part of the Association should be again exposed to such malpractices.