N.Z. MAIL PUBLISHED WEEKLY. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1888.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 867, 12 October 1888, Page 16

N.Z. MAIL PUBLISHED WEEKLY. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1888.

Under the heading “ New Zealand,” there appears in the Glasgow Weekly Herald, a leading newspaper, having a very large circulation in Glasgow and its country district, the following letter, dated from Auckland, New Zealand, June 18th last : Sir,— Although I have been a reader of your daily issue at home, and your weekly here for more than 30 years, I have never till now addressed you ; but as I see numerous inquiries in your Weekly Herald regarding the colonies as a field for emigration; kindly allow me a few lines respecting New Zealand. 1 have grown grey in the £solony, and have resided in all parts of it, so can speak from some experience. At the present time we are suffering a keen depression, the. result of former extravagant borrowing, combined with foolish expenditure and lavish jobbery. Skilled tradesmen cannot get work, and are flocking to Australia ; even labouring men cannot get employment, for the simple reason that j.armers get so little for their produce they cannot afford to pay wages, but must do their own work. The people of the South Island, and particularly the southern portion of it. are by far the most respectable and active. In the North—especially around Auckland and in the city there are a great number of escaped, convicts and their descendants, who are a vicious criminal and lazy class, The colony swarms with land agents, who, with a few exceptions, are thorough scoundrels. They have legally robbed scores of unsuspecting newcomers, and sent many to a suicide’s grave. We have State education, but it is a miserable failure, all who pan afford to do so sending their children to private schools. Many members of our Dailiament do not own any. property, so make laws which drive capitalists away from the place, and these are the very people we require. In conclusion, let me warn no working man to come here in the meantime. We want only capitalists and farmers with some money to take up the land and make an opening tor labour. I have invested £BOOO in property, here and could not now realise one-half of it, I am, &c., Semes. We Lave been compelled to omit two sentences which shave the edges of the libel law a little too closely, but the sense of the letter ia not affected. Now this letter is a favourable specimen of the damaging attacks that are made on the Colony by its own colonists. Such attacks are unfair as well as injurious, because they embody that most mischievous form of backbiting the “ half-tru'h.” There is much in the letter which we have quoted that nobody would dream of challenging. That “ we are suffering a keen depression,” and that this is “ the result of former extravagant borrowing, combined with foolish expenditure and lavish jobbery,’ are facts wholly beyond dispute. Nor can it be denied that there has been an exodus of skilled tradesmen, or that farmers are stinted in their ability to employ labour by reason of the low price of produce. Neither can it be said to be untrue that Parliament

has made laws tending to drive away capitalists, the very class most urgently needed. But the assertion that the bulk of the North Island settlers are “escaped convicts and their descendants,” and that they are “ a vicious, criminal, and lazy class ” is utterly unwarrantable; it is, indeed, a gross libel on a community as honest, as respectable, and as law-abiding as any in the civilized world. Nor can the sweeping statement be justified that “with few exceptions ” the land agents of New Zealand are “ thorough scoundrels,” who have “ legally robbed scores of unsuspecting new comers,” and have “ sent many to a suicide’s grave.” That there are black sheep among land agents, as there are in every trade and profession, nobody will question, but it is most unjust to brand the whole class thus. Again, while we are not such enthusiastic and unqualified admirers of the New Zealand system of education as are some people, while indeed we regard it as faulty in nrnny respects and as requiring radical reform, we cannot for one moment admit that it is “ a miserable failure.” We should rather term it “a qualified success.” Nor is it (rue that “ all who can afford to do so send their children to private schools.” On the contrary, the State schools are used by large numbers of wealthy persons, who deliberately prefer them to private establishments, although it may be with questionable wisdom. “ Senex’s ” letter is, in fact, a tissue of ingeniously interwoven truths, untruths, and misrepresentations, and consequently is just the sort of production to do a great deal of harm. People on the other side of the world are very unlikely to be either able to winnow the truth from the untruth, or disposed to take that trouble, and so it will all be taken as gospel to the Colony’s obvious detriment. An article of a still more injurious character appeared in a recent number of The Field (July 7th, 1S88), under the title “ The North Island of New Zealand as a Field for Settlement,” by “ One who has been there.” The title is a complete misnomer. It ought to have been “ The North Island of New Zealand as not a Field for Settlement,” for the purport of the entire article, three columns long, is to inculcate the view that if people want to settle somewhere they had better settle in Gehenna than in New Zealand. The article swarms with misrepresentations, suppressions and half truths, skilfully mingled with a sprinkling of hard and unpalatable truths. We have the usual stale hash of the well-worn figures showing the magnitude of New Zealand’s debt in proportion to population, but the other side of the case is dishonestlv withheld, namely, that against this debt New Zealand has to show 1800 miles of railway, which could easily be made to pay the entire interest on their cost if one-third of the revenue, were nob virtually given back to the public in the shape of cheapened rates as an aid to industries, so that the railways and the fourteen millions they have cost can- j not justly be deemed any burden at all. This investment in reality pays its way. That at once brings down the debt to twenty millions, but of this a large part has been well invested in telegraphs, roads, bridges, goldfield waterworks, and other reproductive works, which in most other countries have been provided by private enterprise. Deduct the special assets which New Zealand has against the public debt, and it will be found that the per head of her population is by no means excessive. The writer then deals with the land question, and in a manner still more unfair. Ho states, for example, that although in the past year the Government had sold 215,000 acres of land for £190,000, “the cost of departmental expenses, surveys, &c., left an available surplus of £15,000 : the balance of that large sum has gone to swell the Civil Service in the shape of the Land Survey Board and Land Commissioners.” The unfairness of this way of putting the case will be self-evident to every intelligent reader iu New Zealand, but how are .English readers to get at the truth ? How are they to know that so much land has been disposed of on-deferred-payment, perpetual lease, &c., so that the actual cash receipts must be comparatively small, and the cost of administration large, but tbe public derive full benefit in the shape of easily acquired land. We need not continue our illustrations of the character of this article. The question is : —What steps are being taken by the Government to counteract the evil effects which these effusionß printed in influential and widely-circulated papers can hardly

fail to produce ? We refer elsewhere to the benefits which might accrue from the efforts of the State Colonisation Association, but a few letters and articles like those from which we have been quoting would effectually neutralise any endeavour to direct the stream of emigration tcwai'd New Zealand, and would infallibly tend to divert it elsewhere. What is being done to place the other side of tbe case before the eyes of possible colonists 1 For there is a very strong “ other side.” Against such of the drawbacks upon which such stress is laid as do really exist, New Zealand may surely set her unrivalled climate, her mild winters, during which the grass never ceases to grow in the greater part of the country, her exceptionally favourable conditions for stock-breeding, dairy farming, and corn-growing, her now-liberal, varied and optional land tenure — freehold, ordinary leasehold, de-ferred-payment. and perpetual leases —And other advantages. But these require to be made known throughout the length and breadth of the Mother Country; not to be loft to chance to be picked up or not as the case may be. We have more than once advocated the establishment of local agencies in the chief towns of the United Kingdom, the remuneration to bo by way of commission on the suitable emigrants sent out to this Colony. Capable and trustworthy lecturers, too. could do the Colony good service, Whether in this way, or in any other that may be devised, some steps ought most certainly to be taken, and that without delay, to counteract the mischief which is being constantly done, for unless adequate remedial measures are promptly adopted, we shall assuredly find to our cost that the increasing flow of British migration will fail to reach New Zealand.