THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, November 2, 1844.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 139, 2 November 1844, Page 2

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, November 2, 1844.

Journals become more necessary as men become more •qual, and individualism more to be feared. It would be to underrate their importance to suppose that they sore only to secure liberty : they maintain civilisation. Da TocauxviLLi. Of Democracy in America, to! • 4, p. 903.

Has the modification of the Wakefield system adopted in this settlement succeeded or not? This was the question we left for discussion last week. The answer involves some general considerations, which we must make with as much clearness and brevity as possible.

First, it should be recollected that " system " is nothing more than an arrangement or reduction to order and regular dependence of many things not so arranged or reduced previously. The things themselves are neither created nor changed by this process. So the Wakefield system of colonisation is only a scheme to apply the superfluous labour of one country to the objects and field for its employment already existing in another, in such manner as to secure to the community so created in the latter country the most rapid advance in civilization and prosperity possible under the natural circumstances of that country. It does net create the valuable objects to work $p<m ; it only supplies some of the means of taking advantage of those objects. W\ten objects and labour both exist, pros- - perity must follow, and in a degree corresponding exactly to the value of the objects and intelligence and energy witb which the labour is applied to them. It does not make a fertile soil, a favourable atmosphere, rare fruits and spices, useful plants, rich austral veins, Mas swarming with valuable

fish, safe and desirable havens, or any other natural production or advantage; it only enables you to 1 make the most of these, by supplying combinable labour. But the existence of these, or something like these, is that on which the success of a colony depends as much as or more than on any possible systematic regulation of the supply of labour or distribution of land.

Again, the success of a colony or settlement is a relative term, and depends upon the time it has been founded. What is the standard by which to test its progress ? The circumstances of most colonies have been so different that none can be found applicable to all. The North American colonies succeeded; but for the first hundred years of their existence what were they? New South Wales, with all its Government expenditure, went on slowly enough the first thirty years of its existence. The Australian colonies, offshoots of New South Wales, shot up rapidly enough, but are not yet through their probation time. All these and many more may be declared successful, but do not furnish any fixed period within which alone success may be correctly said to be attainable by any colony, or at which it actually attained it. - The first are examples of slow success, the last of a rapid one. But one thing is clear, whether this or any settlement has succeeded or not, a much longer time than two or three years is requisite before success or failure can be truly predicated of a system, the object of which was first to produce a certain state of things necessarily gradual in its production here, and the knowledge of which state of things in England was to have other results there, equally gradual and slow in their development. The effect of cheapness of labour in attracting capital is an instance of one of these yet undecided processes. So that in talking of the success of an experiment which is still going on, we must be understood only as implying that it has so far produced such favourable results as ought to have been anticipated, and promises to produce the rest.

Before we can decide whether a colony founded according to a certain system has succeeded or not, we must consider what is the natural mode of a colony's progress left to itself, uninfluenced by the operation of any system. Now it is clear that unlimited capital will produce almost any degree of success. It is clear that labour may be procured from without, or, when existing in a colony, may be bought and combined at some price or other. Therefore, if capital were unrestricted in amount, land might be left without restriction also. jCapital actively employed is jnerely the power of appropriating the labour of others to oneself; in other words, the power of combining labour.

When capital, then, from any cause, is introduced largely into a colony, its progress to a certain point will generally be rapid. Into any colony that has a known export, or known capability of immediately producing one, capital and labour will be at once introduced and continue to flow. The grassy plains of Australia offered an export in wool as soon as sheep were introduced. The sugar and coffee, rice and cocoa-nut oil, of Jamaica and Ceylon, drew capital thither in plenty. In such countries settlements are secure of a great degree of prosperity. But even where these ready exports exist, with all their inducements to the introduction of capital and labour, the greatest impediment to their progress has been found to be want of the latter. Private individuals have either been too deficient in energy or foresight, or willingness to take responsibility on themselves, to introduce labour enough for their community. They cannot or do not think of providing it till they are likely to be ruined for want of it. So kidnapping and slavery arose in countries where the climate or other circumstances frightened away free labourers. The convict system in some degree supplied the want in New South Wales. In Ceylon

again the labour of the natives is both plentiful and cheap. Otherwise the old difficulties would have been felt in all these cloonies, unless provided against by the adoption of the Wakefield system.

Wherever, then, labour can be immediately employed with great profit, a community will spring up, and probably advance with considerable rapidity. But the greatest hindrance to their advance even then will be remedied by the Wakefield system.

In colonies however which have not this immediate export, this ready-made inducement to the introduction of capital and; labour, what is likely to be the mode of progress if left to themselves ? A number of individuals are pitched down upon a wilderness, with skill in their brains and fingers to make the most of it, and say provisions enough to last till they get more from the ground. All must work then to raise food. At spare times some among them will exercise the absolutely necessary handicrafts. As their numbers increase, the pursuit of these occupations will procure food and necessaries enough for individuals to give all their time to them. Still no one will be inclined to work for hire, under a master, while he can settle himself on the skirts of the community on land of his own. Everything, then, that wants many hands under one head must be neglected ; so that few manufactures, even in the strict sense, will be produced. Each will raise food enough for himself. There will be a community of cottiers ; and, as industry is immeasurably less productive thus uncombined, there will be little or no surplus production, no such accumulation of produce or any good things (call it capital) in the hands of individuals as may enable them to apply the combined labour of others to the production of articles wanted abroad, but which require more time and pain and experiments to produce them than the growth of mere food ; which time and pains can only be given by those who have plenty to live on meanwhile, and can afford to lose something — that is, by those who have " capital " of whatever kind.

Well, when is this process of throwing off population to the outskirts as fast as it increases to cease ? Of course not until all the land is occupied. Then population increases faster than food — in Lord Glenelg's words, " presses upon the means of subsistence." The superfluous hands must be employed in other ways than raising food only for their owners. Then those whose superior industry or good luck has enabled them to accumulate some capital (that is good things, or what represents them, whether gold or paper or rare shells, matters not) will begin to employ combined labour to produce higher comforts and luxuries. By this time — as it may perhaps be taken for a law of nature that every country can produce something desirable in another country better than it can be produced in that country, — such a community as we have been imagining would probably have produced an export. Then all foreign " good things " hitherto unattainable by that community would be at its command, and it would have reached the height of prosperity. Or if we are to suppose them still without an export, Ihen the abundance of the simpler necessaries and comforts of life produced there would enable foreigners to obtain more of these latter for the capital they possessed than they could in their own over-populated countries. These foreigners would then become settlers, bringing, instead of money capital, the particular " good things " our community desired — and the same result would be brought about. Now if^thii be at all the natural mode of the growth of a community in a favourable country, left entirely to itself, it is clear from it, first, that the growth wili be exceedingly slow — a long course of years will be wasted in the production of food only, scanty for the quantity of labour employed, because the labour will be employed in scattered fragments, not in combination; secondly, that nothing but the occupation

of all the territory settled upon will enforce that combination, and the period at which that territory will be exhausted depends upon its extent. If the latter be vast, the

period will be indefinite, and the maturity of the community indefinitely postponed.

The Wakefield system anticipates that time, with all its^rich results, and substitutes a sufficient price upon land for the *eacoasts or impassable chains of mountain! which alone limit the acquisition of land in countries colonised as we have been supposing. It substitutes for those natural limits an artificial, elastic boundary, expanding continually with the increasing quantity of land absolutely required for its real advantage by the growing community. This boundary forces the community to combine its labour at the earliest possible period, making its industry incomparably more productive, and adding comforts and luxuries to the mere necessaries that industry would otherwise be exclusively employed upon.

But the actual working of the system in a country without exports must form a subject for consideration another time.

We have seen a New Zealand Journal of the 25th of May. It contains but little of immediate interest to the colony. The cargo of the Glenarm, just arrived from Wellington, was highly spoken of. The latest date from Nelson was December 9. An advertisement appears in the Journal calling on all the friends of New Zealand to come forward and sign a petition to the House of Commons for a redress of the grievances under which the colony labours. No ship is advertised to sail for the colony, but Mr. Earp was about to lay on one immediately.

We are indebted to the Australian, a Sydney daily paper, for the following complimentary twaddle : —

Port Nelson.— Colonel Wakefield arrived at Port Nicholson, from Nelson, in the, schooner Sisters, having, prior to her leaving, dwnissed the whole of the New Zealand Company's men, about 300 in number, in consequence of instructions from the Home Government to reduce the Company's establishment to the lowest ebb. In order to provide for the people in the meantime, Mr. Duppa, and several of the principal settlers there* had called a meeting, and resolved to employ at many of them aa they could find work for, at the rate of 10s. per week ; but it was afterwards understood they were dissatisfied, and assembled in numbers, killing the cattle of the settlers, when they were consequently taken into custody. It would seem, indeed, that unless a change of affairs takes place soon at Nelson— the pet settlement of the New Zealand Company — that all the advantages derived from the capital of dissatisfied settlers* would become again the property of the aborigines.