The New Zealand Herald SPECTEMUR AGENDO. AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1865.

New Zealand Herald, Volume II, Issue 444, 15 April 1865, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald SPECTEMUR AGENDO.

AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1865.

" Glvo overy mm thiiio e s -r, bit i'etv thy voico: TiUjo mrt nrei'i ■lOiiHiiro. tint rcsorvo thy JinlKmtnt. This ttbnve nil, —To thlno ownnclf 1)0 truo; Ami it imi.'t lul'.i.v.-, im tiio main ihfl day. Thou must not then bo fiil.JO to any 1r.11u."

Tt is felt l>y all of us that the lion-settlement of the immigrants brought' bore bv the General Government on the Waikato lands will bo both a great hardship to fhe people and a great loss to the province. h'or the increased security ibr peace that e\erv additional family settled in this province gives is in itself a great provincial and colonial advantage. At the same time it is also further a great provincial advantage, inasmuch as such a circumstance means an additional breadth of laud brought under cultivation, more agricultural produce of all sorts raised in the province, more labour emploved, more wages earned and spent, more Customs' income, more business for the merchants and shopkeepers and tradesmen of Auckland, less money sent: out of the colony to pay for Hour, cattle, and other food of a like character, and more, money spent among ourselves 1o increase the general trade and prosperity. Any system then that prevents persona from settling on the waste lands of the province, or that: drives them from their settlement, is one that lessens the general trade and commerce, the prosperity in short of both town and country. The city of Auckland itself is affected in its trade by the settlement on or removal of a single family from the waste lands of the Province. Her citizens, therefore, ought to take an enlarged view of the real condition of their success and prosperity. They are simply attending to their own interests and extending their own business by increasing the number of the up-country settlers, lor they are thereby most certainly increasing the number of their own customers. Hence it will be seen that the interests of town and 'country are so interwoven and intertwined one with the other that it is wholly impossible to separate them. They must, in all ordinary circumstances, act; and ro-act each on the other, if the country settlers are not prosperous there is less business for the commercial man, for they have less money to expend both for their own personal wants and also on labour, both of which causes will be felt in the general trady of the country. Every dweller, therefore, in the town, from the banker to the day labourer, the capitalist and the noncapitalist, is in reality deeply interested in this question of settlement ou country lands.

But do v.-o all net as ii this were the case ? Does the Provincial G-ovevnment (including Council, Executive, and the Superintendent) act :t:s it' it lull}" believed a.nd felt this. 1 f so, where arc the evidences of the tact ? The evidence. tliiit forces itself on the mind of every rand id observer is that they do not. Petty, *ei-iH)!i:il. narrow-minded. and apparently seilirfh too often usurp the place that ought to be occupied by tliosc tending .solely to the general good. Thus no country can be habitable when there are no roads and no means of internal communication. Trade and commerce cannot exist, in such a count ry. The land cannot be profitably cultivated. In a mountainous country like this all these drawbacks exist in their fullest force. The first and great duty

then of our Government, tho duty it owes to the trade and commerce of our seaport towns, as well as to those who go and settle on land, is to join the count ry and town and bring them into close connexion by various means n jcessary for that purpose. Common roads are evidently the very first link in this chain of intercommunication ; canals and railroads follow next. But an examination of the Estimates, and also of tho debates in tho Provincial Council, will show how very little money and how very little discussion has been devoted to this prime necessity of a new country. What forms the basis and groundwork of success and prosperity —viz., an accessible country—is put on one side with a passing word ; but personal squabbles, disputes on points of order, wordy quarrelling with the Superintendent on mere trifles, are things that are looked upon as of the most serious and momentous importance, and night after night is spent upon them.

The annual Estimates ought to show that road construction absorbs a, large portion of income, and then our prosperity would go on in a ten-fold ratio. For producers of food, which we now have to buy of the foreigner, would be multiplied, labour would be increased, our general income would bo constantly enlarged. A settler, therefore, settled upon his lot, should bo looked upon as a tree that will speedily bring forth fruit. Koad-making is the most profitable investment; we can as a province make ; for it is in the very best sense reproductive, and annually brings a constantly increasing return for tlie money expended upon it. To argue from the general to tho particular we will illustrate our remarks by a single district, viz., the Kaipara. Tt is a splendid estate that, with ordinary management, would rapidly increase in value. There is excellent land, abundance of wood and wafer, everything necessary as the basis of a thriving and prosperous district. But it has been most cruelly treated by the great neglect in the providing facile means of communication with the capital. Many of the settlers there are practically cut off from all profitable communication with the outer worl d.

A. settler Ims boon on his block of land twf> yours. Jie lias, as it' now is proved, literally sunk Itis capital and his two years' labour in the ground without a prospect of any return therefrom. The difficulty of communication with Auckland amounts to a positive impossibility of communication with bulky produce. It would take very nearly, if not quite, as much money to certain kinds of produce from that district to Auckland as the stuff would fetch when sold in the Auckland market. This is the case with potaioes. AVe therefore practically do this. We keep the means of intercommunication between the capital and a place not much more than a day's journey from it in so wretched a state, that we make it impossible for a settler to grow certain produce and briiifj; it: to Auckland. Wc compel him to up his attempt at farming ami drive him oIV his land and perhaps out ot the country, and instead of buying the produce of his land, raised by the labour of himself and servants perhaps, we send to Tlobart Town and other places for the articles lie couai have sold us. and the money that ou<j;ht and have been circulating in this Province is circulating the farmers, merchants, and storekeepers of Tasmania and other countries. We thus put a tax amounting to a prohibition on home produce and native labour, in favour of .foreign produce and foreign labour ! Are we not skilful legislators and financiers V How long shall the Kaipara and other districts be literally starved to death by our wi'ctchcd system, our gross inattention to the groundwork of progress, good passable roads and ready means of intercommunication between the settler in the town and the settler in the country ?