The New Zealand Herald AUCKLAND, TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1864.

New Zealand Herald, Volume I, Issue 250, 31 August 1864, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald

AUCKLAND, TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1864.

SPF.CTEjnnt AGENDO. " Give ovory man thin© car, but fcvr thy voico: Trlco cnch mmi's censure, but respire tli.v judgment. Tliia uhove nil,—To third ownpelf ho truo; And it nuiKt follow, as the liiglit tlio liny, Tliou canst not tlion ho fiilso to liny man."

"We have only justreceived the Parliamentary Papers relating to a proposal that Parliament should guarantee a loan to !Ncw Zealand, to meet tlie expenses of the .Native war. These papers were presented to both IJonses of Parliament, by command of her Ma jesty, in Juno last, but to reproduce them in full ■would be of little interest to our renders, as they abound I*ll repetition, and contain much that has little or no interest to anyone -whatever. The first item of any importance that we come upon is, the opinion of the Ln-vv Officers of the Crown on the right of the General Assembly of New Zealand to pass the " Suppression of [Rebellion Act," and the "New Zealand Settlements Act." Mr. Card well, in a despatch dated the 20th of May last, and written to Sir George Grey, says:—

I infoimed von in my despatch No. 43, of 26th of April last, tliat I should rawest tlie Law Officers of tlio Crown 1o furnish mo with their opinion respecting the competency of tho New Zealand Legrislafuro to pass the two Acts, No. 7, the Suppression of U( hellion, Act, IFGS, and No. 8, tho New Zealand Settlements Art, 1863.

This I have done, and T tim advised that thero is in their judgment, no reason lo douht. Iho legality of the fojnier of the (wo Acts, and that tho only reason for questioning the lepality of the latter arises from its repuenancv to tho third sect ion of tho Imperial Lobii Guarantee Act, 20 and 21 Yiet., e. 51. I intend io submit to Parliament, in connection with the contemplated loan, n provision calculated to n move this doubt.

Further on we find a long correspondence between Mr. Keader Wood and the Under Secretaries, respecting the loan. The Colonial Treasurer applied to the Imperial Government for a guarantee upon ilie whole three millions, accompanying his application ■with a schedule of the colonial revenue and expenditure of the past and present financial years, and showing that the surplus revenue of the Colony was more than sufficient to meet the proposed liability. The Home Government, with Ihe liberality of a harsh stepmother, agrees to give a guarantee for little more of the whole loan than will repnv tlie debt due to itself. To use the words of Sir P. Rogers, in reply to Mr. Wood, the whole arrangement, therefore, may be t hits summed up : —

1. That the original guarantees 1)0 extended from half a million to one million, of which probably rather less than one half will bo paid into the Imperial Treasury, and the remainder will be applicable to tho purposes of the colony. 2. That after allowing for one regiment, Kew Zealand shall pay to the Imperial Treasury the same contribution as that which it is proposed that the Australian colonies slmll pay.

3. That inasmuch ns the mother country furnishes one regiment, in consideration of tho many circumstances connected with the presence in New Zealand of a large native population, tho sum now paid out of colonial funds for the especial benefit of that population, viz., £50,000, shall continue undiminished.

4. That New Zealand shall not pay upon more than 4,000 men in the year 18Go.

What will our readers think of the representative of the Colonial Ministry, when they find him replying tints to such terms. The italics are our own :—

In the concluding part of your letter you state the views of Iler Majesty's Government with respect to the future relations between the mother country and the colony in respect of military expenditure. On my own part I state, unreservedly, that the proposals which are made liave my full concurrence ; and that with respect to the charges for the expenses of the present war, they are made by Her Majesty's Government in mch a spirit of liberality as cannot fail to command the gratitude of the people of Xetr Zealand.

Liberality, gratitude, indeed! In what has the Imperial Government shown liberality? "J'or what have the colonists to be grateful ? The war is purely one of tho Imperial Government's own making, and does it therefore show any liberality in doing what it has done towards putting down the insurrection it has itself caused'? It is lor the assertion of the Queen's supremacy, not to preserve the lives and property of the settlers of New Zealand that the troops have been sent to the Colony. It is rather the Colony than the Hwme country which has shown liberality in the matter. The war, simply an Imperial one, originating with the policy of Governor Browne, and reproduced by the miserable failure of that of Sir George Grey, has been borne in great measure by the colony, not: only with money but with men. If either party has to be grateful, it is Britain, for the readiness with which the settlers espoused her quarrel. But how have they been j treated. The Home Government, with the J studied intention of misleading the British tax-pavers has endeavoured to make a scapegoat of the Colony. It had not the manliness and the honesty at once to declare, that tho threepence in the pound on the income-tax which is the result of the New Zealand war, had been rendered necessary by the failure of tho policy which independently of the Colonial Government, they, the Imperial Government were endeavouring to carry out among the Natives in New Zealand. That they had sent Sir Gebrge Grey to New Zealand for the purpose of carrying out certain experiments on the Native race, and had invested him with a power superior to, and unshackled by the Colonial Parliament, (but which experiments tho latter though having very little or no faith in them, nevertheless most liberally assisted by large grants of money)—that Sir George Grey failed miserably and utterly in his attempt, and in his failure brought down a second war upon tho Colony. The Home Government have hot told the tax-payers of Gx'eat Britain this —but. men in office, and others have risen m their places in Parliament and accused tho settlers of land-greed and covetousness, of a desire to oppress the Natives, and as Ear! Grey stated, of having destroyed the confidence that jn-eviously subsisted between the Home Government and the Natives." Not

only this, "but the Ministerial journals at home have openly taxed tlie settlers of this Colony and Province with having caused the war. and have raised sm outcrv against us that has thrown dust into the eyes'of the bulk of the people at Home. "Wo, are more than inclined to think that the New Zealand Government will act wisely in treating the action of Mr. "Wood as they did that of Mr. AVard in relation to the Panama contract —that it will be 1o the interest of the Colony to refuse the oiler of the Imperial guarantee for one million sterling only—and to say. as we think Mr. "Wood should have said—"" the guarantee to the whole loan or to none." In giving the Imperial Government this first mortgage on the revenue, \vc are injuring our chances of raising a second, and must certainly expect, if we do raise it, to do so at a disadvantage in consequence of the existing lien to the Imperial Government which will take precedence of any other. The halfmillion loan must of course, he met out of the £3,000,000 loan ; — this was the expressed intention of the Assembly, but we think that the money advanced to the Colony hitherto for the prosecution of the. war, by the Imperial Government, should not be' repaid until a 11101 c convenient time. It has been expended by the Colony in doing the work of the Home Government in (luelling the rebellion which they have provoked by the incompetence of their Governor —and is properly, and in all fairness, no charge upon us, further than as British subjects we may be expected to pay o\itJair proportion of the expenses ot the war. This we have done over and over again ; in service as well as money—and little thanks have we got for it. * And now for the " liberality" in regard to the military arrangements, for which Mr. "Wood thinks the people of this colony ought to be so very grateful. We are to have one regiment for nothing. There will be no direct chaige, only we arc to vote £f>o,ooo a year for native purposes in consideration of this free gifl. Of all the most imiquitoufimposifions ever attempted to be practised, this is certainly one of the most; glaring. "We are to spend £50,000 a year on whom — on the wealthy land owners of New Zealand, on a people who hold in their hands lands the fee simple of which is worth at the present moment not less than eight or ten millions sterling. Will the Assembly agree to any such an arrangement ; we trust on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayer that they will not. The British taxpayer is very sensitive, but our Imperial taskmasters have very little regard for the sensitiveness ot the New Zealand taxpayer when they propose such an arrangement as this. AVhatevcr special charges may arise from the government of the natives must in some toim or other be met bv the Maori himself, and if this regiment is to be retained in (lie colony to keep him in order, surely this charge is a special one upon the native, not upon the colonist. "We trust that the Assembly will say, that even this regiment, which wo believe is rather intended as a check upon the colonists than upon the Maoris, is not needed, as indeed it is not. and that they .vill pay no such sum indirectly for it. If we are freed from Iniperhl interference, and its consequent mismanagement, we have little fear of provoking Maori hostilities in our management of tlie Native race—should we however unfortunately do so, we are quite equal to the task -of holding our own ; and all that we require at most, is a Guard of Honor for si ate occasions, a duty by the bye, which has more often been performed of late by our own Auckland Volunteers than by any other corps.

Ciumk is evidently on the increase among us. The heavy calendar of prisoners, and the serious nature of the offences with which they are charged, that will have- to come before the jury at the coming sittings of (lie Supreme Court, very plainly prove (his. The Hesidont Magistrate has especially noticed it, and seems disposed to try the effect of rigour on a certain class of offences. ]S T ow it is quite true that we can never expect to "make men moral by Act of Parliament;" lnit neither should we make men immoral by Act of Parliament. And we fear very much that the acts of our rulers do in eifect tend greatly to prevent; men once tainted with crime, and confined in gaol, firm becoming honest men, and in fact are much more likely to make many prisoners more immoral when they come out of prison than they were when they went into il. We have long ago called the very serious attention of tiie authorities to the state of our prisons. They are simply a disgrace to all concerned. The Chief Justice has given utterance to words from the Bench respecting these prisons. which merit the deepest attention of the Provincial Government. Such a. functionary as a Chief Justice talks not light ly when he calls attention to the wretched places called gaols, and shows how they are schools of vice, in consequence of oven' class of prisoners being all thrown together in one herd. The youth sent to gaol for his first offence, —perhaps some trifling error—is bound by our gaol regulations to have as a companion it may he the foulest villain in the Province. Classification is utterly out of the question, and it would frequently be a benefitro society, an well as to him who is for the first time convicted of some petty crime, if, instead of being sent io gaol to mix with t lie hardened criminals there to.be found, he were at once discharged with :i reprimand. As such an one stands in the dock before the Judge, ho may be free from all desire to Je.id a criminal life ; sudden temptation of various kinds may have been too much for him, and he unfortunately may : have yielded ; but to class him as a regular [ criminal would be totally unjust. But convict him of crime and commit him to prison, and you commit him to be the daily associate of men devoid of shame for their position, of men who do really belong to the criminal classes, and who make the worse appear the better reason, and glory in their . shame. Such men caunoL but, have ;in evil .influence on the mind -of- those young in crime. Our prisons, as erected and managed, do'nolliing ' •whatever-to prevent such a sad state ofi things, and our Provincial Government being ! responsible for those prisous, are verily responsible for the evil iniluence they exercise, and their total uselessness as places where nny sort of reforming -process is going oil with"the prisoners. This is a most serious state of things, and as crime increases it will every day become-more serious. Our gaols ought not to be, what they are at this present moment j nurseries- for crime rather thai'./ powerful detcrrers from crime. j

We must manifestly not sit quietly by with folded arms while crime is rapidly increasing, and do nothing to make the prison a terror to the evil doer, and a place in which , reformatory measures may he carried-on-; and as we have before pointed out, while 1 lie gaols are arranged and conducted as at present, they foster crime rather than check it. There is neither classification during day or night. The youth who is put in for a street brawl, is thereby put under the tuition of the worst and lowest of his species. The moral poison is constantly distilled into his ear; and those who might, and whose hounden duty it is to protect him from this, pass by on the side, and leave him to be stripped of all his moral worth by the thieves among whom he is fallen, ami among -whom he is compelled by the Provincial Government to live during his incarceration. And he is also worked upon by another set of feelings. Prison is not the place of hard work and scanty food he imagined, neither is it the place of confinement and restriction in speech and action he had fancied. lie can be there exceedingly well fed : he can have, as we pointed out, his pound of beef or mutton a day among other things, and his regular quantity of tobacco ; his tongue is never forbidden to speak ; he can have his chat and chatl' with his companions, and the song can pass around the jovial circle. ITe has exercise to the extent he finds agreeable to him, and so the criminally inclined find it a very comfortable placc to lay up in during winter, or when there is not an abundance of very easy work suited to his mind at wages which he will condescend to take. It ia quite evident to the veriest tyro c"mong us that the apology for a prison which we have, fails in every qualification of a prison, and docs an infinity of harm. The increase of crime will never be checked by any terrors which that snug retreat for criminals —Mount Eden Stockade — can hold forth, but just the reverse. And now that our criminal population is so much on the increase, and will naturally increase as the number of inhabitants increases, we must cast our oves about, us, and see what arc. the best systems adopted for the manage-1 ment of prisoners in the mother country, and the best forms of gaol construction for combining the principles of deterring and reforming, to enable the young in crime to he kept apart frcm the old and hardened offender. There is some slight addition to be made to the prison accommodation, necessary by the increased number of prisoners—and there is some Utile altcnipt made since we last wrote upon the subject to get more work out of the men. But these are only half measures: they do not go to the root of the matter. They are palliatives, not remedies; clumsy makeshif'ts —perpetuating, not removing the evil. In well conducted gaols in England there are certain kinds of machinery so constructed as to test accurately the amount of work done ; and in some workhouses the same system is in force as regards tramps and able-bodied men. Mills for grinding grain arc erected, and a certain amount of work must be done daily. There is no shirking this. The given quantity of grain is put into the mill, and it must be changed into Hour. If this be not done the ration is stopped. In the case of persons of the class mentioned above applying for relief, they are shown the mill, and told the amount: of grinding the}' must perform before they obtain any assistance. There is also an apparatus, virtually on fhe same principle, for lifting water i'rom the well and pumping it into cisterns, and, as a punishment to idle and incorrigible offenders, there is the crank which lias to be turned so many times as ar. allotted task. The machine is self-register-ing, and the gentleman who is locked up in a room bv himself performing the allotted task of heavy crankwork, finds it a rather different pastime to lolling about in the open sweet fresh air that is to be met with at Mount Eden. By means of Ihese band-mills for grinding, the sentence of bard labour may be m:\de_ in reality what: it is in name, and then it will not be quite such a farce to hear a man sentenced 1o so many .months or years hard labour, when he knows very well lie will not be required to do one day's hard labour during the whole time he is in prison. As a change of employment, as being one the results of which can be very accurately known, and at the same time a veiy useful mode of working, we beg to suggest these hand-mills to the Provincial Government. A very large amount of work could be performed in this manner, but even if no remunerative work at all'were done by this labour, the system would be an excellent means of employment for certain classes to whom ihe spur and the lash in the shape of real punishment in some form or other is absolutely necessary % These are only some out of many improvements that might be most advantageously made in our gaol, but the whole system is rotten to the core ; and the buildings are. no better than the system. It is a great pity that; money should be so constantly spent in cobbling and patching in this Province, and that .there is not more evidence of fhe exist once of any ability and a will to grapple thoroughly with recognised evils, and take effective means for abolishing them

Again, it is a well recognised systom.il iotne that there shall bo a regularly ap>ointed chaplain, and also teachers, to each Nidi, hut this highly .necessary provision is lot made here. So far a;; Ihe rules of the );-isoji,- and the Provincial Government .is nnicerned, wo believe there is not the ilighieat provision for the moral and reii;ious instruction of the jjrisonors. It is rue that religious services are held in the Mount Eden Stockade, but this is duo to the energy and good l'coling of those who conduet them, without any fee or reward, we beiieve, and not to any foresight or management of the Government. To go 011 cataloguing evils, that loudly cry for a remedy, is really not necessary, "Wo have particularised en<sugh already, and a word to the wise is suilieient.