The New Zealand Herald. AUCKLAND, FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 1866.

New Zealand Herald, Volume III, Issue 687, 26 January 1866, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald.

AUCKLAND, FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 1866.

SPECTEirUK AGENDO. 11 Givo every man thine ear, hut few thy vo»cc : T»kc each man's censure, hut reserve thy judgment. Tills above all,—To thine ownself be true; And it inuit follow, us the nit,-lit the day, Thou canst not then be falso to any man."

To immigration we must; look for tlic chief means of developing tlio resources of this Province, and of advancing it in wealth and population. The waste lands of a voung colony arc its stock-in-trade, but while these are disposed of as freely as possible, due regard must also lie had that full value shall I lie received lor them in return. AVo do not of course mean a direct: payment in coin, but, what is far bettor, the guarantee that . when alienated from the Government they s will pass into immediate occupation and improvement. it behoves us then to turn a careful attention to the consideration of which are the best markets whither we can carry our i stock-in-trade—our waste lands. Within ; the last year or two, vast quantities of > Auckland territory have been parted with I for scarcely adequate returns. This, however, has occurred under exceptional circumstances, and is mainly attributable to the dishonest interference of the lat'' i Weld Government. \V r e allude to the ! Waikato Militia settlements and to the | settlements of tho Waikato immigrants. ' Thanks, however, to the result of . Mr. Whitaker's late visit: to Wellington, • these settlements may yet be made a source ot prosperity to the country instead of ending as they till now have bid fair to do, i in ruin and disappointment to all concerned. • The truth is, if we give our lands away ' in orders, as under the forty-acre system, or in return for guaranteed occupation, as pro- . posed, we shall not succeed unless we secure the right stain]) of men as immigrants. , We have seen in the case of the Waikato ! immigrants the folly of depending on an immigration drawn from the chance supply afforded by the (owns of Great Britain. We cannot afford to give men land which they 1 arc unwilling, and it it would almost seem unable, to put to profitable use, who arc so degraded in spirit and pluck as to turn more readily to the support afforded by Government; pay or rations than to the cultivation of their ground. The very best lands in the Province have been wasted on these men, lands which we do not hesitate to say would, in the hands of better men, have furnished, • not only employment, but food for their occupiers. The drought and partial ruin which has fallen on a large portion of Australia naturally suggests the idea that there must be hundreds of the small farmer class in those colonies, who, saving perhaps a portion ot their capital from the general wreck, would desire a safer field for the re-invest ment otit than a- country where periodical floods and droughts at frequent intervals entail certainty of disaster, if not absolute ruin, upon the agriculturist. We cannot sec why our Provincial Government should not oiler inducements to such men to settle down in the Province of Auckland, where- neither drought nor flood will interfere with their operations, and where the only drawback to settlement, that has ever existed, the fear of hostile natives, is now a thing of the past. The great bugbear, too, of being called upon to serve in the New Zealand Militia need no longer deter intending immigrants from proceeding to this portion of New Zealand. The Auckland Militia is now disbanded, its services being no longer required. There need be no squeamishness in throwing open the advantage of our Land regulations to Australia on the plea that it is unfair to oiler inducements to the settlers of one colony to leave it for another. The land order system was not extended to the Australias for this reason. The sense of honesty, or courtesy, or whatever wo may call it, was too line, wc think, in drawing this distinction. As well might the Melbourne or Sydney Governments have refused to issue mining licenses to New Zealand settlers lest the gold-fields should attract o-— agriculturists from New Zealand. As a matter of right to those Australian colonists desirous of leaving Australia we ere bound to offer them the same advantages a 5 wj offer the inhabitants of the mother country. We need not tout for immigrants in Australia, but at the same time we need not exclude them from participation in the benefits of our land regulations.

■We do nob hesitate to say that one suet immigrant from Australia would be worth three°from Great Britain, or from any other place, except Nova Scotia and the other North American Colonies. The bulk o our most succcssful colonists in tlie North are from Australia and the American colonies. They were colonised beforo they came here, and that was the best evidence of their worth as settlers. We do not want men who tails; of the impossibility of cultivating tlicir land, oven to the extent of a single acre, "because of the " denseness of the bush upon it.' Such men will starve, and deserve to starve ; but unfortunately in their process of starving the Province is injured as well as themselves. The Nova Seofcian or the Australian settler will be deterred by no fear ot work, no dread of comparative privation and hardship. Ho will turn to the work before him, and will, as thousands have done before him and are now doing, subdue the even of a New Zealand forest—no great difficulty after all—and will in time become, as the Nova Scotians at "Wangarei and AVaipu, comfortably independent. . "\V"e have had, too, a useful class of immigrants from the North of Ireland, but we feel no need at the present time advocating a continuance of drawing further supplies from that quarter. What we have now to advocate is the throwing open to Australia of the same advantages ottered to the inhabitants of other colonies and countries, a boon which has hitherto "been denied them, l'rom Great Britain we may draw very many most desirable settlors, we admit—men with capital and experience but we warn the Government that to secure freedom from disappointment, as the result of home immigration, a radical change must be effected in the appointment of immigration agents at home, a stop must be put to the loose way in which they have conducted their business, and new and more stringent regulations must be afforded for their guidance, and they must be held responsible for the due carrying out of those regulations.