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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9104, 12 July 1888, Page 4

In another column appears a synopsis of the report on the Village Settlements in the North of this province, compiled by the Village Steward, and forwarded by the Assistant Surveyor-General to be laid on the table of the House at Wellington. We do not hesitate to say that no right-thinking colonist can look on that return without a feeling of sincere regret that a system of settlement which has done so much with* so unlikely materials, and in so short a time, has been abandoned. It is of the evils of our political system that any scheme, however wise, however benevolent, must come under condemnation whenever the turn of the political . wheel of fortune brings one party down ; and puts another to the top. We have " heard the changes rung so often on the vast and unwarrantable expenditure incurred in settling these people, chiefly of the unemployed, on the lands of the interior; we have been told so often that the system was doomed to failure, that in fact it had been a failure ;. the whole thing has been held up as such a warning and wicked example that there are doubtless hundreds of well-meaning men who regard it as a thing that at least should be forgiven as a blunder and then forgotten, with the proviso that it shall never be repeated. Yet, instead, of, the ,£70,000 thrown away without authority, as we have so often heard, the whole amount spent to the middle of May past, has been only £5801, and this has been only advanced 011 the security of the settlers' farms, on which £7551 worth of improvements have been effected. On this advance the settlers have been paying interest, and paid it fully, together with the rentals of their farms without default; and though their little stock of horses, cows, ana poultry may seem an insignificant thing to a man with ten times the number roaming Over his own wide acres, they are veritable wealth, and the nucleus of independence to : these, 1436 people who have been taken generally from idleness and destitution, and enabled to found happy little homes for themselves and their children. Of' the whole lot only ten have turned back; and of all the settlements of men and families founded in the colony with means and experience, was there ! ever another settlement in New Zeaj land that has shown such a result aj J this ? When we take into account th« | unpromising character of some of these settlers; many of them f without i farthing belonging to them; many without the smallest experience in rural pursuits ? and nearly all of them unprovided with what is considered to be the very humblest appliances or means for carving out a home in the wilderness, we declare that such results I should silence any man who would pronounce that any man, or any class of man, is . unfit for betaking himself to life in the country with the intention of making a support for himself and | his family. And when, as every steamer leaves our wharf carrying away hundreds of stalwart men, turning from our shores in despair and looking away to a distant land to find the home denied them here, his must be a strangely-consti-tuted mind that will not regret that some such system of practical settlement as this has not been continued, which might intercept the fugitives and give them facilities for finding homes among our limitless areas of fertile lands, and under a climate unsurpassed on earth. Verily the curse of ill-government is on our country, where such sights as these are seen. The happiness which Mr. Ballance has created by this most beneficent measure will never be forgotten by the settlers who have found homes i in the Village Settlements in the North. Their gratitude has been shown in frequent presents of the fruits of the earth, the product of their labour, transmitted to him from time to time; and we are informed that in a quainter but even more touching fashion the settlers have expressed their feelings, for it is an amusing but a positive fact that a large proportion of the children born in the settlementsand they are not a few have been christened in the. name of "John Ballance." A more expressive way of permanently _ recording their gratitude to the Minister could hardly be devised, and a stronger testimony to the success of the scheme could hardly be given. It is, indeed, to be regretted that a system of settlement which has done so much good to the settlers themselves, which has relieved Auckland ever since of the cry of the unemployed, and which is so universally popular among the people of Auckland, should have been suspended, and we do not hesitate to say that it would be the duty of the people of Auckland in public meeting assembled to ask the Government and Legislature to have the system of Village Settlements recommenced, as the best means of stopping that stream of bone and sinew, of the. best of colonists, now drifting away from our shores.