THE NELSON EXAMINER. NELSON, JANUARY 11, 1845.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 149, 11 January 1845, Page 178

THE NELSON EXAMINER. NELSON, JANUARY 11, 1845.

Journal* become more necessary as men become more equal, and individualism more to be feared. It would be to underrate their importance to suppose that they senre only to secure liberty : they maintain civilization. Db Tocqubvilli. Of Democracy in America, vol . 4, p. SOS.

We discussed last week our Government's mode of legislating for dogs, and the formal course of proceedings by constabulary arrest, imprisonment, trial, and condemnation, it has established to secure the constitutional destruction of the four-footed culprits. And indeed the exceeding care with which that ordinance is drawn, seems to justify a suspicion that Government, conscious of its having so often laid itself open to the charge of treating men (Englishmen, that is) like dogs, has been endeavouring, by this introduction of kennels of correction and canine courts-martial, to make amends, on an original principle of compensation, by treating dogs like men. But, having seen the wisdom of their enactments for the destruction of useless quadrupeds, let U3 observe what steps they take for the protection of the useful ones on which they exercise their legislative ability.

Three years ago an ordinance was passed for the summary recovery of compensation for damages done by cattle trespassing on the land of any person which should he substantially fenced. Last year an ordinance (called, by an odd misnomer, an amendment of the first) was passed to extend the provisions of said ordinance to land whether substantially fenced or not.

Now this ordinance we venture to declare is unjust, impolitic, uncalled-for, and ineffectual even for its own professed purpose.

It is unjust, first, to the farmers. Farm* ing, the most necessary pursuit in new settlements like those of New Zealand, was and is far from being the most lucrative. It is the most necessary, because having no immediate and sufficiently profitable export to exchange for the necessaries of life, we must depend upon it for very existence. Even supposing food could long be imported more cheaply than raised here, having nothing to give for it, we must raise it ourselves or abandon the country. True, at first there was capital enough to buy foreign food ; and this very circumstance made farming so unpromising of adequate return for some time. Then the great expense of clearing and cultivating lands which, from their nature, return less the first year than afterwards, much aggravates the impediments to farming in the middle of countries thus pouring in supplies. And yet farming, for the reason above given, and because grain certainly will in very few years be cheaplier raised here than anywhere around us, mutt be persevered in, if the country is to be retained and peopled. Under these circumstances, every protection should be given to cultivators of the soil ; and if in any case the policy of protective duties could be justified, we believe it would be decidedly and solely in this case. But surely these difficulties should not be increased by legislative enactments, unless these latter were absolutely necessary and of the highest utility in other respects. This Trespass Ordinance, while it increases the expense of farming, is neither the one nor the other. It removes the obligation to fence previously existing, and renders the farmer, pursuing under such disadvantages his absolutely necessary occupation, liable to continual expenses for the trespasses of cattle he can only feed on public land and common runs. Either this,

or he .must keep herdsmen and shepherds continually with his cattle and sheep, by night and day. We call this unjust to men who have embarked capital in an undertaking on which our very existence depends, at a time when almost every other pursuit, though of little or no public benefit, brought far ampler returns and was full of better promise.

Whatever is unjust, is therefore impolitic. In the long run, and to a seeing eye, this is ever demonstrable. But a thing is particularly to be called impolitic when its evil effects are undoubted and immediate, and not even apparently overbalanced by good ones. This measure is impolitic, because it discourages farming and raises the price of flour ; also because it discourages the keeping and breeding of cattle and raises the price of wheat. Any one may pitch himself down in the middle of a wide tract of pasture land, cultivate an acre or two, and by continual claims for damages either drive cattleowners from using it, or subject them to a continually-recurring tax, or permanent expense for herdsmen and shepherds. Of course the expense of keeping them is added to the price they are sold for ; so the price of meat to the whole community is raised for the benefit of this tiller of an unfenced acre or two. Then it is impolitic as encouraging squatting, restlessness, and carelessness of cultivation. The outlay in fencing is a pledge that the settler will endeavour to render the land valuable — a great hindrance to his removing from it. And this consciousness of being fixed to a spot is the greatest possible inducement to wrestle with and overcome the difficulties its cultivation may present. Anything that increases this feeling of absolute and necessary permanence is, as a general rule, of the highest benefit in a new settlement. But this ordinance holds up a direct temptation to restlessness, disgust, and want of perseverance, by increasing the facilities of wandering and tending to keep the mind in an unsettled state of vague and deceptive hope of improvement by change. But the rolling stone, we know, gathers no moss.

Again, it facilitates squatting, and adds inducement to labourers to turn cottierfarmers, and begin farming too soon and with too little capital — the very evil most to be dreaded in young colonies, the very evil the Wakefield or any other real system of colonisation was so much intended to prevent. It is the opening of a door to all the old evils of dispersion. True, our wise Government having denounced the system adopted by the anxious care of Parliament as a necessary induction from long and varied experiments, it is a proof of consistency in it to pass acts furthering the establishment of the old vicious system or no- system it has undertaken to patronise. But we, who happen to think the English Parliament right, must protest against all such aids and furtherances of what it rejected. This act would have been more properly denominated " An Act for the greater Encouragement of Squatting," "An Act to facilitate Dispersion," or " An Ordinance for the more effectual Stoppage of the Supplies of the Labour Market."

But we say further, that with all this injustice and impolicy about it, it Was altogether uncalled for. No labourer or small gardener of ordinary foresight would have dreamt of demanding it. The industrious, who alone succeed, will find time enough to fence. And, after all, as most of them have, and all probably hope to and may soon have, a cow or cows, and pigs and goats, they must fence, were it but to protect themselves from their own animals, grazing on the outside of their bits of cultivation* Unless, indeed, a man can trespass upon his own ground, and recover compensation for damage done by his own cattle ; which may have appeared not so absurd an idea to a Government, the head of which declared to the Nelson settlers that they were " trespassers " upon the very lands which had been better bought than any other in New

Zealand. But, as this doctrine of trespas s may not be found to hold, men must fence or give up keeping any four-footed beasts. So the act will operate as a " heavy blow and great discouragement " to cottage pigfanciers and others for whose sole benefit it was apparently intended. We wonder it never occurred to our practical law-makers that, while they were so anxious to patronise farming without fencing, it might possibly be within their power to introduce farming without ploughing, or digging, or other usual expenditure of labour or capital.

Lastly, it is ineffectual for the purpose it seems to aim at — the protection of squatters and vagrant gardeners. For the cattleowners, generally farming, can retaliate upon any of these unfenced cabbage- cultivating prosecutors by pulling down a bit of their own fences, or leaving a gate open and suffering a poor man's cow, or pig, or goat to enter, and do more damage in a night than the poor man will be willing to pay for, or to earn money to pay for in a month. The thing is a two-edged sword, and may cut the fingers of those who take hold of it. We are far from recommending or approving of such a procedure, but those who concocted the ordinance ought to have foreseen that the natural consequence of putting it into practice would be some such mode of retaliation upon those who availed themselves of it. And the moral evils introduced by such a mode of warfare are perhaps more pernicious than the economical.

Why this act was passed we cannot say with any confidence. We know that from Nelson, and perhaps from Wellington, a petition was sent eighteen months or two years ago for a Cattle Trespass Act. But besides the indifference Government shows towards -us of the South i nd our memorials, our petition or petitions only asked for a Trespass Act confined in its operation to the towns. This, however,- extends its pernicious influence over all the country. The

Dog Tax, as we said, v. as wanted particularly in the country ; so was limited to the towns. Thus is the play of our sacred fount of law and legislation most like the running of some ill-conditioned teapot; when you want the weakly beverage to flow freely, by turning it topsy-turvy you can scarcely get a drop or a dribble j when you want a moderate supply it leaps out in an ample stream, all over your scalded fingers. This leads us to remark, too, upon an original and peculiar mode of legislating sometimes adopted by our Government, to which, if we had to give a name, we should suggest that of the Taliacotian method. You know how humorously the learned Taliacotius's mode of cutting noses for one patient out of the less honourable parts of the body of another is described in Hudibras. Just so you are often startled on looking at these ordinances, to descry, conspicuous upon the face of one of them, something that should be a fundamental feature of another and totally different one. Thus, a prominent feature of this bill, the extension, namely, of its operation to the country, must have been cut out of the ground-work of the Dog Tax Bill. Or the phrases restricting the operation of the latter bill to the town (its most striking peculiarity) must have originally formed part of the basis of this bill. But, unlike the renowned operator they are ambitious of imitating, instead of improving they ruin their patients by their botching and cobbling. Another instance of this Taliacotian method of legislating we noticed on a former occasion, in the Courts of Requests Bill.

Perhaps, after all, the Maories were the cause of this ordinance, as of most other doings of Government. They do not fence their country plantations, and were not perhaps to be made to do go. If so, surely by all rules of common sense, justice, and policy, the operation of the bill should have been limited to the North, or -where Maori cultivations are numerous. This is the least we had a right to expect. But, as it is, the present bill is a case directly in point to ilhfttrate the policy so happily compared by Mr. Fox, in s speech at the public dinner

reported last week, to the stoppage of th Fast Coach by the Heavy Wagon it come up to on the narrow road — the retarding o Civilization to the pace of Barbarism.

In the shipping notice of the Morning Herald of August 16, the Slams Castle ii stated to have cleared out for New Zea^ land on the preceding day. The Caledonii sailed on the Ist of August. Both vessel: are making a long passage. We hope th< next intelligence from Wellington will inform us of the arrival of both.