The New Zealand Herald SPECTEMUR AGENDO. UCKLAND, MONDAY", APRIL 17, 1865.

New Zealand Herald, Volume II, Issue 445, 17 April 1865, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald SPECTEMUR AGENDO.

UCKLAND, MONDAY", APRIL 17, 1865.

" Glvo every m in thine ear, but few thy voico: Take each man'B consure, but reaorTo thy judjraont. Thin nbovo all, —To thine OTrnsolf be truo; And it must follow, as the niffbt the day, Thou canst not then bo false to any man."

THE IMMIGRATION SWINDLE. A in:ply wits received on Saturday, by the Superintendent: and the Provincial Executive to the letter dispatched by them to the Colonial Government in which they declined any longer to continue the further charge of the management of tho Waikato Emigration sclieine, in consequence of the refusal of tho Government to fulfil the conditions on which they had undertaken it. Its contents have not, of course, yet been inade public, nor will they be laid before the Provincial Councillor its consideration; but we are enabled in the meantime to present our readers with a resume of the communication which will be suflicient to put them into possession of iis general tenor, and to show more strikingly than ever the cunning and duplicity of the line of policy which the Colonial Government has adopted towards this province, and has hitherto so persistently carried out.

The letter is from Mr. Weld, and is a very verbose and craftily framed document, abounding in sophisms, perfectly transparent to us in Auckland, who are. well acquainted with the real facts, but so boldly put as to impose upon less well-informed persons an entire belief in their soundness. It does not even hesitate at direct mis-statements, where such can serve the purpose of the writer, and the whole epistle has manifestly been carefully concocted, with a view to frightening the Government and people of the Province of Auckland into the assumption of a burthen properly belonging to the colony, but which the stop-gap Ministry feels itself utterly incapable of dealing with.

It commences with a lew trilling concessions, such as extending the time during which rations are to be provided for the immigrants, from the :50th of April to tho 31st of May. This of course would have the effect of l browing over the period of the immigrants' discbarge, if tliev are to be discharged, to the middle of winter, when their necessities will be greater, and employment still more difficult to be found. An opening is left to the Provincial Executive to resume their functions, if they choosc; but the duty of the province to provide for the immigrants is at the same time strongly insisted upon. It isattemptedthroughouttoshiftthe blame of whatever delay has arisen in the arrangements for the reception and location of the immigrants from the General Government to the Auckland Provincial Executive, it being alleged that it was in great measure owing to the circumstance of plans, tracings, &c., not having been forwarded ; and it is insinuated that Major lleaphy and his staff were under the Superintendent's orders, and should have been pressed by him to more active exertions. This is altogether untrue, as Major Heaphy was appointed as Surveyor, and under the direct orders of the General Government in this matter, and the real cause of delay lias been the culpable neglect by the Ministry. An elaborate endeavour is made to prove that the Colonial Government has not been guilty of any breach of faith towards the immigrants ; but the question of breach of faith towards the Provincial Executive, which is tho point upon which the greatest stress was laid in their correspondence, is carefully ignored. The Government will do its best to arrange a change of management if the Provincial Executive persists in resigning it, but announces its determination, if the Province does not come forward to provide employment, <£c., to offer to the immigrants free passages to other provinces which will be quite willing to accept the charge, but still guaranteeing to the immigrants their grants in the conquered Waikato district. The agent of the Colonial Government, Dr. Knight, who is in town, will also, in such cases, order the emigrant ships now due to proceed to the South.

The letter concludes by sta.ti.ig that the Colonial Government is absolutely without funds to meet the necessary current expenditure, that the banks refuse advances on such security as it lias to oiler, and therefore that it cannot be cxpoctcd to bear the onus of a charge that properly belongs to the Province of Auckland, and which other Provinces will be only too ready to undertake. However, Dr. Knight is empowered to treat with the Provincial Executivo for tho resumption of its management, These are the main features of a document I that will ultimately form one of tho most interesting ot Xcw Zealand's political notabihn. It; was no doubt intended bv its J'ramoi'H as a species of shell that on bursting amongst us should " fright the isle from it's propriety.' But it will burst harmlessly. We believe we are correct in stating that the Provincial Executive will adhere to the resolution they have previously announced, and leave to the General Government the

onerous task of providing food and employment for the deluded immigrants whom it has seduced hither, and the disgrace of the gross broach of the most solemn engagements that has been committed towards them.

When the members of tlic Government were in Auckland, and it was proposed to confide the management of tlie immigration scheme to tho Provincial Executiue, they took care to insist most pertinaciously, that the Provincial Council should not be made party to the arrangement. To this the Executive acceded, seeing clearly that by so doing the acceptance of the charge would be a mere matter of personal agency, and that the province would be in no way liable for the result of any action they might take. The General Government now seo this also, but too late, and we feel sure that their insidious attempt to baddle the Provincial Legislature with their governmental responsibilities will be ignominously foiled. The threat of the Government that the immigrants shall be drafted to other provinces is, as we have before told the Colonial Government, an empty one. TheJ" were specially engaged to settle in the Province of Auckland, and the title to any portion of the land of this province is made, by a statute superior to the caprice of any Ministry, conditionally on their remaining a certain time within the district where the land assigned to them shall have been situated. Were the plea of the Ministry, that they have no money to carry out this immigration scheme, to which the colony is pledged, a genuine one—they would resort to the obvious moans of enabling them to do so ; namely, the sale of confiscated lands — or would at once hand over to the -Wealthy and solvent Province of Auclcland the charge and management of settling and providing for these immigrants, and with this charge, that also of the disposal of the confiscated territory within the province. This done, there would bo an end to all difficulty.

On more than one occasion we have felt it to be our duty to take up the cudgels for the City Board, and we have always done so the more readily that when we have seen what we considered occasion for censure we have never failed to call the Board to account. We have no sympathy, however, with that spirit of fault-finding which can never see good in any particular man or body of men against whom it has once had occasion to complain, and, therefore, we take the present opportunity of placing the action of the Board in a somewhat fairer light than it was put by a cotemporary on Saturday.

We are told there that the city has very little to show for the £34,214 Ss. Gd. expended by the Board during the past twentyone months. We scarcely think that an impartial review of the works performed during that time will bear out this accusation. There are several large items to be taken out of that sum. In addition to tho very heavy expenditure incurred in tho very necessary work now being completed in Albert and Customhouse streets, the formation and metalling of Upper Queen-street, the embankment in Freeman's Bay which itself cost £1,700, and the ;£SOO expended in Welling-ton-street, the works alluded to by tho Cross, as though they were the only ones, there are many others. A sum of £2,000 has been expended in continuing the main sewer ; the lower half of Shortland-streot has been formed and metalled ; Elliot-street has been formed and metalled; so has Union-street in Free man's Bav, and so in great measure have Barrack-street, West Queen-street, and Victoria-street. Queen-street itself has been raised and made something like a permanent roadway. Some thousand feet of pathways in Queen-street, Yietoria-street, Shortlaud-strcet, Eden-crescent, and elsewhere, as any one would rind who looked impartially to sec what had been done, have been curbed with dressed stone", crossings laid, culverts built, and a variety of urgently required smaller works have been executed, before which was done particular streets were not passable at all. The work of tho City Board is like that of the improver of a farm or garden. No one looking on it can say what has been done unless he had before him a chart of what the spot was in its original state. Nor, as any one well knows, is it in lump sums, as they may be called, that an annual expenditure is wasted away. A. man may know that by the study of the expenditure of his own income. During the last twenty-one months the Board has been called upon to keep the streets passable as well as to execute certain permanent works. \\ r e are only surprised to (ind so large an amount of permanent worlcs executed at all, when wo consider the constant demand over a couple of winters for repairs hero and repairs there, metal in this place and in that. Do those who indiscriminately abuse the Board for alleged lavish expenditure, know that metal, which itself costs something, has to be carted to where it is required, and that the cartage of the thousands of loads that have been required comes of itself to a very large item in the amount expended—that the cartage has varied over these twenty-one months from a minimum sum of £150 monthly to a maximum of £SOO in one particular month ; and wo would ask those who censure the Board for not having executed more work that would leave a show for it, what they would have said if it had left nineteen twentieths of tho cityimpassable, while tho other twentieth was being permanently improved. There would have been, and very justly so, a perfect howl of indignation from the ratepayers of tho neglected portion, the more especially if tho smaller portion permanently completed, in any way benefitted the property of one or more of the members of the Board.

This leads us to the insinuation thrown out in the Cross of Saturday, as to the motives which dictiited the works now in progress in Albert and Customhouse-street, which will undoubtedly benefit property belonging to Mr. Jlacready and Sir. George, members of the Board. "Where, wo should like to ask the Cross, could improvements very well be carried out without improving the property of one or other of the Board r Are much and urgently required public works, then, to be laid 011 one side from a false feeling of delicacy, because certain members of the Board are fortunate enough to hold property which will, with that of others, be 'benefitted by them ? We only know of two alternatives to please our fastidious and immaculate cotemporary. E'ther the Board must seek out some portion of the town where its members hold little or 110 property, and spend the money there, whe-, thcr improvements are required or not. and irrespective of the urgent claim of the principal thoroughfares, or the citizens must return members who have 110 stake in the city at all. AVe think that tho people of Auckland will swallow neither of these

nostrums which the Gross indirectly recommends them to take.

But we liave in llie case of Albert-street positive reasons why the work should have been undertaken. First and foremost the Provincial Council whenit advanced the Cityißoard the loan of £12,000 made it an understood condition that this work originally coinmeuced by the Provincial Government in Mr. Williamson's time should be completed by the Board. Secondly, the work was one imperatively called for. The traffic from the Queen-street "Wharf has long pressed too heavily on Queen-street. Another outlet was required, and tlie western side of the city will find it ill the newly-formed Customhouse and Albert streets. Not only will Queen-street be relieved of a. considerable amount of traffic, but the gradual incline of the new street will be a great benefit to those taking heavy loads from the wharf into Hob sonstreet, and across Uobson-street to the western suburbs. So much for the Albertstreet bugaboo! We only wish the Board were able to carry out a few more such wellconceived and really useful and needed works as that which our cotemporary is so yery angjy witlithem for now doing. We now come to another error into which the Cross has fallen, and into which ho attempts to lead the public, namely, that respecting the statement of the City Board, on which the article of Saturday is fouuded. That statement, he thinks, should have gone info items, and should have been something more than a mere abstract of expenditure, and he rates the Board soundly and in no measured terms, almost amounting to charge of peculation, because the statement is less full than he thinks it should have been. Now, this is a very ad enptandum sort of argument or charge. It is pure claptrap, and unchallenged would, doubtless, be very successful in working the object bur cotemporary wishes to do, namely, to set the Board and the citizens by the ears together. But it so happens that the statement was simply intended to be an abstract statement, for the use of the members of the Board themselves, and nothing more. The Cross knew this, but did not choose to appear to do so. The Cross can or ought to remember, as well as we can, that a full and detailed statement of expenditure and receipts for the year ending 31st June, ISG4, was furnished by the Board for public information, and the Cross is bound to believe, until it has reason 1 o the contrary, that a similar full and detailed statement will in due course bo issued for the year ending June 31st, ISGS. It is mean and unfair to endeavour to mislead the public into taking a mere abstract of the expenditure of the past twenty-one months, drawn up by the Board, for the information of its own members and officers, for that fuller information which the public have a right to look for. A full balance sheet for the expenditure of the first twelve of those twenty-one months Juts already been published, and the public, despite the insinuations of the journal in question, will be quite content to wait until the completion of the next financial year for the Board's second annual statement.