OUR HOME LETTER.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 814, 20 June 1879, Page 2

OUR HOME LETTER.

PHASES OF LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND.

[By "Snyder."]

Dear Bob, — I have promised to give you an account of the country I live in, but which I am not sure I shall be allowed to leave, unlesg some one underlakes to lind my passage money, which ia doubtful. New Zealand, my dear Bob, counting men, women and children, in both Islands, contains a population rather under the number of souls to be found in Oxford-street and the Seven Dials, and comprises three hundred and j forty-eight separate and djstinct Governments. These are the two central Governments at Wellington — being the Lords and Commons; sixty County Councils, as nearly as oan be ascertained ; one hundred and twenty Borough and City Councils ; two hundred and three Road and Highway District Boards, and thirty some odd Harbor Boards. The Borough Councils quarrel with the County ; the County Councils with the Road Boards ; the Road Boards with all the other governing bodies. All the Governments borrow as much money as the banks, or any one else will lend them. Every fourth man we meet in the street, or in bar-parlors, or billiard-rooms, holds an official appointment in the Civil Service, the County Council, the Borough Council service, or on Harbor or Highway Boards. Those who do not belong to one or other of these, is either a Justice of the Peace, or a Knight of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, or aland speculator, or in the Armed Constabulary force, or a bank clerk, or a tradwsman with a Bill of Sale ever his stock and premises, or men with expectatioiis These last are called " remittance " men. , They stop at hotels, and when ne landlord won't keep them any longer, ti ey leave and patronise others. We are, in this highly favored land, the most magnificently taxed people in. the world. Parliament taxes us ; County Councils tax us; Road Boards and Highway Boards tax us. There is .nothing we eat, drink, wear, or consume, that ia not taxed. The steel pen'l write with is taxed. So also the paper I write on, the ink I use, the kerosene which services me for a light, the chair I sit on, the table I write on — all, all, everything, dear Bob, is taxed, Which ranges from a needle to an anchor, both ineluded. The Ministry of the present day would, I am sure, willingly give a handsome bonus, to any one who can remember anything that has been forgotten to be taxed ; but no one can. This is a fine country, my dear Bob, to live in when one has got nothing to live upon. If 'you should come out, don't forget to get an introduction from some broken-down Lord, which I am told may be obtained at home for the matter of a couple of guineas. Buy a ream of note paper, and give five shillings for having a Coronet engraved on the top, with a latin motto underneath. Make it well understood that you are first cousin or nephew to a Lord j when you may live in clover upon tick for almost as long as you like, so long as you take care not to be found out. Landlords will humble themselves to you, and feel proud to lend you money until your next remittance arrives. You will get invitations to balls, and picnics, and dinner parties, and perhaps- marry a sheepfarmer's daughter, or the daughter of a lucky gold-digger, or 'land speculator. As the first cousin of a Lord, or an Earl, whose property and landed estate will fall to yon, failing his heirs male, you may luxuriate in the Colony for a couple of years before you find it necessary to clear out with an unpaid hotel bill, a carpet bag, and a couple of shirts. This sort of game hasbeen found to answer beautifully, my Bob, and is not half played out yet. As fast as one near relation of a Lord is discovered to be an impostor, another takes his place, and is received with ns much fervour, and adulation* as the last. There is another way I have known adopted with great success, whioh you may try. This is, bringing out with you letters, addressed to the editors of some of the newspapers, stating that you intend writing a book on the Colony. This is , I think even better than being a first cousin to a Lord., Everybody will ask you to their places upon the hope of getting their names printed in your book. I knew a fellow who came out this way, when I was on the West Coast of the other Island, who, after twelve months, went home with a draft upon a London Bank for £500. He did write — not a book — but a letter to a provincial newspaper, in'-, which" he described us Colonists as snobs and money grubbers, who would sell tlioir souls or their daughters to have a relative of a Lord at their house to dinner. This fellow also gave a lecture before a number of agricultural laborers in Yorkshire, in which he advised them not to think of Now Zealand as a Held of emigration, as there were thousands of men out of employment, and starving in the streets. But, Bob, my boy, in whatever manner you may come out, you must represent yourself as a man of expectations and Jiigh family, if you wish to prosper ; and be sure not to accept of any employment that is low. Accept as many 'invitations as you please ; borrow money, get a bill "done" whenever you are running short ; but don't degrade yourself by doing anything that calls for brains or hard work. * - . As you would like to know something more about ns than I have told you, I mayj3tate we are on the whole, "ft highly moral and a very religious people. We support our ministers by plates handed round aftev the services ; by gift auctions ; also by bazaars in which you are cajoled into paying ten shillings for something 'worth ninepence, or giving half-crowns fo lotteries got up by pretty girls dressed to the nines upon credit, which never turn up prizes ; or you are visited by two women in company- — generally good looking women—who with book in hand will ask you to put your name down for a church window, or the presentation of a purse of sovereigns to a clergyman's wife, which to me always seems so muoh like a presentation to the clergyman himself, that I have never been able to Bee the difference. Ido not think it is taken into account very much about you not going to church ; but a very good- deal when you refuse to subscribe. Do you know, my dear Bob, I, cannot help thinking that religion must have . lost muoh of its vitality when it can only main taiu its ministers by means of what

is dropped into wooden plates and little bazaar and fancy fair swindles. It is an idea at least that does not appear to have entered into the minds of the Apostles who existed aforetime. I cannot conceive a more humiliating position than that of educated gentlemen following the calling of a Minister of the Gospel in a colony, where lie has to depend for his living upon the threepenny and sixpenny bits which may be dropped into the Sunday plates, or may be coaxed out of people by giving them f ourpenny worth of tea and cake, which is called a soiree, in exchange for a half-crown ticket. I know dozens of fellows in New Zealand— line, clever, stalwart, hirsute men, with good abilities aiid unexceptional morals— who live this sort of life. Notwithstanding we do support our ministers very well. They all wear blaok cloth and clean linen. They, most of them, live in good quarters, and there are not many who cannot place a glass of sherry and a. biscuit on the table 'when you oall on them. I should be sorry to see our churches decrease; or the influence of Ministers weakened in any way ; but, upon my word, Bob, I do wish some method could be invented and patented by which the clergy would be cared for. otherwise than we care for the poor and destitute, — that is by the giving of alms. New Zealand is peculiarly a land of conflagrations and fire insurance companies. The more fires, and the greater the amount of property destroyed, so much the larger are the dividends and bonuses declared by the insurance offices. These institutions live by their losses, just as the drapers do who are always " Selling off at thirty three and a third per cent below costprice." Strange things really do occnr in respect of fire insurance offices and fire insurers. I go into a man's ' shop to-day, when I think it is noticeable that his lower shelves are very bare and the top ones filled with what look very like dummies. The shopkeeper says trade is very dull, and he intends selling off what stock he has left on hand, and leaving the place. A week or two afterwards a fire breaks out; the shopkeeper's premises and contents are destroyed, when you have only got to listen, to the terrible extent of that man's losses ! He is insured, he will tell yout but not to the extent of one quarter of: the value of his stock, which, at the time of the fire, was the largest he ever held. He stood a ruined man— literally and completely ruined. Then having secured his insurance money, he sails for England for a holiday ; or he goes to some other part of the Colony, where he builds himself a French-polished, glass-plated, doublefronted shop, which he opens with a splendid stock of goods, bought for cash. Thus, dear Bob, we see around us, day after day, men in this Colony who have been ruined by fires keeping a buggy, and doing the big in sundry and divers ways. Lately, it has become a little dangerous in large oities, like Wellington, or Dunedin <ir Christchurch, to have a fire upon one's own premises. So if a man really wants to clear out with a good lump of insurance money, the fire generally, somehow or other, commences next door but one to him ; and this, too, is a mystery yet unsolved. There are, besides the four great cities in New Zealand,' ninety-seven towns. In each town . there is at least one, but more often two, newspapers: A dweller in these, towns never fails to assert that his town is the most rising one in New Zealand. The local newspaper, in advocating its interests, always says the same thing. When there are two newspapers, the editors invariably blackguard each other. Many people like it ; just as they like to see a dog fight, or any exciting thing of the same kind. When a man buys a small town allotment, even if it be ever so far down a side street, which no one dreams of inhabiting, he always deludes himself into the belief that it will shortly come to be the best stand in the town, just in the same way that every mother thinks her child the handsomest and cleverest that was overborn. People in the colony will enter into the most varied and diverse occupations, speculations and enterprises, it is possible to imagine. A late master of mine held a number of shares in a bush saw mill, when he was always praying for rain that would cause a fresh in the river to float his logs to the mill. Afterwards — not thinking of the matter— he bought into a large alluvial gold claim, where, when it rained Ion? and heavily, the claim got swamped out. My master didn't know what to pray for then. The rain that went towai ds making his fortune in tho mill was ruin to his alluval claim. All excitement was gone, and the dear old gentldman died, worth £40,000, and broken heart. Women servants, my dear Bob, have a fine time of it in this country. Don't you recollect what hard lines poor drudges of girls had of it when we were boys ? How our mothers used to nag, nag at them all day long, and were always ringing the kitchen bell below for them to attend the parjor above, to put coals on the fire, or to do something which missuses could have as readily done for themselves. Its all altered here, Bob. The girls have command of the situation, and make the lives of some missusses a terror and a caution to them. Don't I laugh inside of me when I see how the girls give it 'em. How they ask to be paid their wages, and let 'em go. ■•■ ■ ■ We have in the North Island what is called a Native difficulty, which some people would lead you to believe is a great trouble to us. Trouble,. Bob ! not a bit of it ; it's a pleasure. The Native difficulty is sixteen hundred a year to a Native Minister, with an establishment and fixings thrown in. It supports in luxury Secretaries and Under Secretaries, Judges, Assessors, Commissioners, Interpreters, a regiment of clerks, and a staff of officials which could not be numbered. Why, Bob, my dear boy,' if we hadn't a Native difficulty, hundreds of men would be thrown, out of employment, and. then what would become of their men servants, and their maid servants and all their belongings ? : When one Native difficulty dies out, what we have to do is to establish another The .present difficulty is something* in connection with land disputes between the Maories 'and the Whites. I dqn?t exactly know what it is. The Maories, some time ago, I believe, sold their land to the Europeans. Now they have been told that; they had ; no right to sell it, or that they sold it too cheap, or sold it for rum,, which it was not lawful for them to do. Certain lawyers are putting these Maories up to

all sorts of schemes to get back the lands they sold and farted with years and years ago. These lawyers are called " Repudiationists," aud are invaluable in keeping up a Native difficulty, for which they deserve the hearty thanks from all who live by it, which, as I have told you, are not a few. The beauty of New Zealand, dear Bob, is that you can't wipe a man out. Insolvent to-day, he drives a buggy, or rides a crack horse next month. If he goes down in ono thing He jumps up again and tackles something else. A man is a baker or a butcher to-day ; he shuts up, or is shut up, and he turns contractor for large Government jobs, which require thousands to carry out. Still, he does carry them out until it suits him not to, when he turns to something else. " Snyder," saysafriend of mine to me a day or two ago, " you see, I have had to file. Thought it was the best thing I could do under the ciroumstanoes—come and- have a drink." Now, Bob, is it possible that such a man under the most adverse circumstances couM be wiped out. Quite impossible, my boy — quite. We have had troubles of late, Bob ; but we have met them manfully. Long months of drought and scorching suns. There was no water anywhere ; but the hotels were equal to the occasion. No man felt thirst that could not satisfy it. Then we had fever in our midst, and we y,ot over that. Then we had insolvency, and the epidemic has not quite left us yet, but thanks to the liberal laws of the country we live in and under, we shall get over that. No one eats less or drinks less or wears fewer clothes, or appears to have less in his pockets. We have had very many fires, but .the insurance offices covered them, and more good than harm has came of them. We have just topped i^p with a flood. One man told me last 0 week he had been ruined. Afterwards I heard he had gone and given five pounds for five tickets in a sweepstakes on a coming race. He did this, perhaps, because he ivm ruined. Such is life heret tQh, my Bob ! Come out at onoe. v Ji I don't suppose yon will care to know about the wages ruling in this place; because wages mean work, and work my boy, is not much in your line. How* ever, here are a few items :-r-Washer-women get six shillings a day, their food, two glasses of beer, and what perquisites they can make for themselves, which will average a bar of soap and two pocket handkerchiefs. A servant girl gets fifteen shillings a week and her keep. Some of these keen a good deal — of what does not exactly belong to them. A well educated young lady, in a public school, who must know something of Latin and Euclid, and any amount of grammar,, geography, arithmetic, history, composition, general erudition, et cetera, will get, if she is very fortunate, ten or twelve shillings a week and find herself in board, lodging,, and washing. Learning, dear Bob, in New Zealand, is a dangerous thing, and doesn't pay, A cook in a public-house will get from two to three pounds pounds a week and all found for him, besides what he cap,- find ? for Ty|biself. A clerk in an office will get aloiont the same, without being found in anything. But why trouble you, Bob, in matters that you cannot possibly feel any interest in ? So, for the present, farewell, until you hear from me again. — Yours ever, SNYDER,