MAJOR PITT'S POACHING.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1190, 30 January 1864, Page 5

MAJOR PITT'S POACHING.

The following is extracted from the ' Bendigo Advertiser,' and judging from the tone of the article, enlistment for the North Island war is not viewed in a favorable light among the Victorians.

" Victoria has barely recovered from the loss of much of her best blood before she is called upon to still further thin her adult male population. Those whom the New Zealand gold fields cannot attract are to be seduced by the cockade and the kettle drum. The recruiting sergeant is daily expected, and he wants any quantity of able-bodied men for Iler Majesty's service. The Auckland Government, utterly unable to quell the Maori rebellion by themselves, have long since appealed to the Imperial Government for aid in their hour of trouble. Nor did they appeal in vain. Some of the picked troops in the service have been dispatched in all haste to New Zealand by a paternal Government, who never fail to render substantial aid in time of need. So vigorously have General Cameron and the troops under his command wrought, that the New Zealand war may fairly be pronounced at an end. Nothing can be more gratifying to the white man than this. But we pacific Victorians are not to be allowed to slumber. The military settlement game is to be played out, and the players are to be Victorians. Armed with full powers from the New Zealand Government, of which we hear no good things as regards transmission of pay to volunteers' wives and families, Colonel Pitt comes over with the old stock advertisement, and maybe daily expected to canvass for " tall fellows" wherever throughout the colony they are to be found. When the invitation for military settlers in New Zealand first appeared in these columns, we took leave to question the advisability of giving up home and occupation for a problematical advantage. Although the war is said to be virtually at an end, we see no reason to alter our opinion. On the contrary, from an attentive perusal of the various reports upon the country to be occupied in the manner prescribed, we have arrived at the conclusion that far more than half the country would never pay for cultivation, while the remainder, if of value, would be constantly liable to floods and native incursions.

"Again, there are no roads, and consequently the cost of transport to market would be enormous, even supposing all things to be favourable to ample harvests. We would ask in all earnestness any sensible man who has had small experience of small farms m thinly populated districts in Victoria, whether he has not frequently cursed the day when he left his legitimate occupation to turn agriculturist. To farm successfully, capital, knowledge, good land, a genial climate, and a ready market, are nearly all indispensable. Sergeants, corporals, and privates are to have 80, 60, and 50 according to their relative positions. Although an old tale, it is not out of place to remind such of our readers as may fancy roughing it in New Zealand, even on these conditions, that as soon as they arrive, they become militiamen, and must, for three years after enrolment, stay in the settlement, not being allowed to absent themselves for more than a month in any year without the leave of the Governor. They are also liable to be called out at any time. After three years they will be entitled to a Crown Grant of the town allotment and farm section allotted to them. We cannot see why the thousands of unemployed in Otago should not be asked to take advantage of all this. Surely the Government would be at far smaller expense in transporting these men from comparative starvation to the Auckland paradise, than in chartering ships from Victoria. Can it be possible that the Otagonians know too much, and decline to be caught with chaff; that, being as it were, lookers-on, they know so much of the game that Colonel Pitt prefers relying upon the unsophisticated Victorians to take a short trip to a place where, if the inducements held out had any solid foundation, there would be hundreds only to eager to jump at the opportunity of bettering themselves? At present, we see no inducement whatever to the stalwart industrious man in Victoria to become possessor of fifty acres of impenetrable scrub or undrainable swamp. Let the dead bury their dead, and let the Auckland Government colonise their island out of their own population, or from some other part of New Zealand, where men are plentiful and gold is scarce."