THE NELSON EXAMINER. Wednesday, December 2, 1857.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVI, 2 December 1857, Page 2

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Wednesday, December 2, 1857.

Journals become moienecesnarj as men become more equa «nd indiviilunlinm more to be feared. It would be to underrate their importance to suppose that they serve only to tecurp liberty: they maintain civilization. De Tocqcevilli, Of Democracy in America, to]. Y.,p. 330.

In one of the amusing and thoughtful little tales of Jane Taylor, who, under the signature of Q. Q., has earned for hersplf an enduring name in English educational literature, a Lunarian, or gentleman from the moon, is represented as suddenly placed in the midst of a large city upon this our earth ; and the difficulty he finds in understanding the state of affairs, socially, morally, and politically, and the contradictions he discovers to exist between our professed rules of action and our actions themselves, are brought out in a very quaint, amusing, and forcible manner.

It is entitled "How it strikes a Stranger." Now, although during our late political contests to find out who should be placed at our head for the next three or four years, we had no bond fide Lunarians amongst us, we had some strangers, who found it as hard to understand the nature of our quarrels and their object, as if they had arrived from a different planet ; and even among those who had resided some years in Nelson, many of the allusions and witty gibes over which there was much internal chuckling from those in the secret, were equally unintelligible.

Before the irruption of newcomers takes place with which we are now threatened, before — under the stimulus of a new excitement, under the influence of a new order of ideas — we finally bid farewell, as we most assuredly shall do, to many of our pet prejudices and pettier causes of disagreement, it would not perhaps be out of place to take such a retrospect of past years as might complete the view of which our correspondent, the " Old Colonist," some time back, gave us a graphic sketch.

This, however, is not our present intention ; which is simply to record the impression produced upon' one of our jwasi-lunarian visitors by the proceedings of which he was the witness. And first, he arrived at the conclusion that there was very little real cause for grumbling, or ground for complaint of any kind. " For," said he, " if there were any such real or crying grievance, you would find one party denouncing it as the fault of the people in power, and the other «ide a« Btrcpuously de-

daring it was none of their doing, but that it ought rather to be laid to their opponents or predecessors in office ; and in the same breath promising that, as soon as they were reinstated in place, it should cease to exist, if only they were not thwarted and their good intentions nullified by the ill-will and factious opposition of their antagonists. Instead of which, the proposer of your Superintendent for re-election rests his defence upon the ground, that he has done nothing to signify, because he is so prudent ; and that he has kept in all the officials of his predecessor, and pursued his policy, although the said predecessor seems to be run down as having disappointed the expectations of his supporters. It is evident from his speech that he thinks it popular to attack the owners of sheepruns, and the gentleman class,, as such. On the other side, the argument, not taking into account the sharp hits at various errors of detail, runs thus: 'Like master, like man;' to a blueshirt Superintendent a blueshirt Executive, or you do not fairly carry out your own principles. So that the workingclass party boast that their man employs none but gentlemen under him, and their opponents twit them with putting an incapable in the seat of honour, who will be nothing but a tool in the hands of his subordinates. You thus have this queer contradiction in your politics : Either your Superintendent has brought forward party measures or he has not ; if he has, then his Executive of gentlemen must have agreed with him to do so; and, unless you assume that they did this in opposition to their principles for the mere love of place and its emoluments, they did it conscientiously; so the working-class argument about the gen-tleman-class combination against them falls to the ground. Or, if he has not brought forward party measures, then he is not the class man his followers expect him and wish him to be, and so ought to be welcome to the opposite party. In fact," he concluded, " you are a very happy set of people, if you could only think so ; with old quarrels of eight or ten years' date, only because you have had nothing of any consequence to differ upon since ; and those quarrels nothing but the dispute, old as the hills, between gentle and simple, rich and poor, the many and the few, which have the less significance and virulence among you, as the distinguishing marks and characteristics of these various classes in the colonies become more faint, the limits more undefinable, and the boundary line of demarcation between them almost obliterated, by the frequent passing and repassing of those who, by their talents, good conduct, or success in life, raise themselves in the social scale on the one hand ; and those who, by the opposites to these qualities, by folly, vice, or improvident extravagance, gradually lose caste, upon the other."

So far did our good-humoured observer and censor proceed ; and, we felt ourselves forced to allow, with some show of truth ; although we stood up, as in duty bound, for the right of our disputes to be looked upon as much more important and dignified than they were thus made out to be. We spoke of the land question, the gold question, the administration of justice question, and some others, the importance of which ought not to be estimated with reference to the numbers of the community concerned in their settlement, but upon their own merits, independently of the inquiry as to how many might be affected by putting them upon a solid basis. All which he granted might be very true ; but, as nothing had been said upon them, he concluded that no such questions existed, or that, at all events, the principles which they involved had been already agreed upon, definitively laid down, and settled.

Finding that we were getting upon dangerous ground, and having some suspicion that the "chiel" might be " amang us takin' notes," some day to be printed, we thought it best to leave matters as they stood, and expect some day to see Nelson described as a place where, for want of all other subjects for disagreement, the election of Superintendent had turned upon the question whether a blue shirt or a longtailed coat was the most becoming wear for a gentleman.

HOW ABOUT THE COUNCIL ? " Poculdtum est, conclamatum est" said the Abbot of Jorvaulx. We have eaten, have drunken, have shouted, and must think it time to go about our business. A quarter of a year is surely time enough to allow for our recovery from the saturnalia of an election, and yet we have entered upon the last month of the financial year without any intimation of an intention on the part of our Government to call the Council together, to provide for the wants of that which is fast approaching. And yet there seems more than ordinary need for its assembling:, and that early. For, first, we have no Speaker of the Provincial Council ; and yet upon that officer, in case of any unforeseen accident to the Superintendent — his death, illness, or absence — would devolve the whole of his duties ; and those, considering the present state of inter-provincial communication, for a considerable space of time. Then again, the question of the Gold-fields and their regulations, already too long deferred, calls urgently for some legislation, which will become more and more difficult from month to month, and which, if dallied with much

longer, may grow too big for our handling. Our unsold l.ti.ds are the patrimony of the province : we do not allow a sheep to nibble a blade of grass upon them without calling upon its owner to account for it while we are waiting for a purchaser; and the general impression seems to be that the sheep do not pay half as much for their board as they ought to do. And yet here we have other lands, where, without waiting for the roundabout process of turning grass into wool, and wool into gold, the glittering mischief is picked up readymade, aud thousands upon thousands of pounds are extracted from the soil, not one of which comes to the public chest ; whilst those engaged in the work call loudly, and with justice, for additional facilities in their search, and additional protection for their persons and property. " Oh ! but we benefit indirectly from them," say some. Yes ! and so do our friends at Wellington, Wanganui, New Plymouth, and Auckland, who all send down their people to the work, and supply them with food and goods into the bargain ; and duty-paid, too. And as to the benefit, we only know that at present it has not been such as to enable the Government to meet the payments authorized by the estimates passed in the last session of Council.

Then as to the sales of land. When is the land scrip to be exhausted? That scrip, which still hangs like a dead-weight round our necks, and which was placed there by those who must now at all events look upon their work with anything but satisfaction or complacency. Then, again, we have the lost bills — the overlaid children of our last Council. Who smothered them, the parent or the nurse ? our own Executive, or the Colonial Secretary, once our Superintendent? They were fine babes, too. Their names were, "Education Amendment," "Education Loan," "Debenture Bill." The good acts they were to have done still remain unperformed ; and the money, thirsting to be employed, cries, "Come, take me, take me," from " the cradle where it lies," the strong box of the Union Bank of Australia. These, and many other such fruitful questions, ripe for the gathering, hang invitingly over our heads ; and we shall have many opportunities for plucking them one by one, and discussing their merits at our leisure. At present we shall content ourselves with repeating the question with which we began, and which meets us at every turn, " How about the Council?"

[We may shortly expect some additional European news, which seems already to have reached Wellington ; as a private letter which crossed the Straits to the Wairau speaks of intelligence that the Emperor of the French had been shot at during his visit to our Queen at Osborne.]