THE PRESS OF NEW ZEALAND.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 188, 9 August 1859, Page 4

THE PRESS OF NEW ZEALAND.

(From the Wellington Independent July It)//*.) The division of New. Zealand into Six Separate Provinces is the great blot of our Constitution. Six distinct political organizations within the limits of a single Colony ! Six distinct and often contradictory codes of laws; six sets of . Land Regulations. Six legislative bodies; six Superintendents, •each believing himself equal with the Governor ! To get rid of this hurtful anomaly, to abolish multiplicity of jurisdiction, to compel uniformity of laws, to equalize the ration of provincial progress, retarding the advancement of the more energetic to the pace of the more feeble, has been the aim and object of the present Ministry. And not without success. A beautiful uniformity begins to prevail, delightful to Contemplate with the eyes of a centralist. If in any instance the General Government appears rather to have multiplied divisions as in the case of the New Provinces Act, such multiplication has been only apparent and not real—the great aim has been kept steadily in view of weakening the separate political organizations, and reducing all under the common control of the Central power. So far well; but one source ofincon•guitv yet exists with which the General government has not been able to grapple— we mean the diversities of the press. In -every province there exists at least one, in most several, public journals—advocating ■opinions altogether irreconcilable —altogether without uniformity—clashing not only as between separate provinces, but ■as between several papers in each province; and producing a state of intellectual con•fiict horrible to a mind well regulated and in conformity with -the principles of centralism and order. For our part we see no remedy for this prolific evil, except the establishment >of a censorship of the press. Under the control of such a department ■uniformity of opinion might quickly be restored. Wellington and Auckland might be brought to harmonise—the ink of the Southern Cross might be employed in -compliments to the New Zealander— the Independent might be filled with the praises -of Stafford, and the Lyttetton Times venture to give vent to its own opinions in a leading article. Political Lions like the Editor of the Spectator might be found .lying down with political Lambs like ourselves —and the ploughshares with which we •have perhaps too rudely cultivated the field ;of politics might be turned into ivory handled pruning "hooks, such as those used by the greatest Editor of the Nelson Examiner. What a nice thing it would be under those circumstances to be a member of the '. Ministry. The snobberies of Stafford would no more be exposed. Sewell might •combine as many officers in the Executive with as many seats in Steam Directories as ■!he pleased—^Richmond's boastful speeches at Taranaki taverns v/ould go uncriticised — Tancred would not be ridiculed as a goose nor Whittaker held up to public contempt as a small souled quibbling attorney. But above all,, the office of Censor, would afford a substantial piece of patronage to a government which has pretty well exhausted its ingenuity in the art of creating new berths to reward dependents or silence opponents-; and it would be precisely the style of thing, with a salary of say £800 ayear, with which to bind in chains of gratitude some backstairs supporter, "some cunning cogging and insinuating knave," of whom we have no doubt it"' has many about it thoroughly qualified for the duties of the office. ' Contrast such a state of. things # with that which exists at present.' With a population not equal to that of a third-rate English town—not so large as that ot a London parish—we have no fewer than seventeen newspapers —4 at Auckland, 2 at Taranaki, 3 at Wellington, 1 at Wanganui, -1 at Hawke's Bay, 2 at Nelson, 2 at Canterbury, and 2 at Otago. ~_ And what to one of those organs of opinion is black, the same is white to another; what one states as a fact, another brands as a falsehood; what cne propounds as a panacea another denounces as a malignant poison. It splits one's head to read these intellectual antagonists. A stranger reachingthe colony in one of Sewell's well subsidised steamships, going the round of the several provinces seeking for information as he travels along, and thinking to glean it from the columns of the papers, goodness, what a state of brain-racking confusion will his ideas be in by'; the time he has consulted the seventeen journals ! But with a well regulated press under the control of an intelligent censor, such a man as Tancred for instance, who has studied in person the institutions of Austria, how different would all this be! The same sentiments which met his eye in the columns of thefirst paper--he- might see, would be those, which he would encounter wherever he went. If the Nelson Examiner told him that Stafford was an eminent statesman, he he would find the opinion echoed in the Otago Colonist; if at Auckland he found the Rew Zealander proclaiming Thomas Gore Brown as the model Governor, at Wanganui he would find the Chronicle of exactly the same opinon. If at Lyttelton or Christchurch he found Sewell whitewashed, at Wellington he would read of him as the most disinterested of mortals, the most immaculate of statesmen, and the first of financiers. It would add immensely to the efficiency of the system if the existing newspapers were subsidised by the government, and a monopoly guaranteed to them for (say) .60 years. Nor do we see that there .would be any.harm in allowing the censor to have a direct interest, (as a shareholder for instance, but not with a seat in the Directory,) in any paper with which he might choose to connect- himself. He might; make it well worth the while of the public journals to give him a pecuniar}?, interest in their success; and the government might even if necessary, advance through him public money, by way of loan, to any journaHn

which he was interested; and which might be in necessitous circumstances. < . , Of the papers at present produced in the Colony a brief account may not be uninteresting. First at Auckland—The largest paper and, we believe, with the largest, circulation of any in the colony, is the Aew Zealander. "it is published bi-weekly. Edited by a party who has been connected with the penny-a-line department of the; English press, its literar}' ability is beneath contempt. A few cant phrases of modern, journalism and a talent for personal abuse, are the chief indications of its idiosyncracy. Its politics are ministeral and of Government House; thoroughgoing, indiscriminate, emuleus of the entire animal. In other respects the paper as a matter of business is well got up—plenty of shipping: news, market prices, reports in police courts shocking accidents, English extracts, and all the rest of it. Enough for the money, in quantity at all events. The rival of the New Zealander is the Southern Gross, also bi-weekly. Edited by; a Cambridge scholar, the growth of whose; mind seems to have stopped short when he left the University; a pedant to the back bone. Arguments framed like those with which Squire Thornhill posed honest1 Moses; the naked machinery of his logic paraded to astonish the unlearned reader. Quotations from Shakespere alternating with scraps from Dante, while an article on finance will be stuffed full of Horace or Euripedes. All addressed to men whose talk is of bullocks. Aiming to be witty; he deems his end attained if he succeeds in | being epigriammatic; but though occa-; sionally not without point, the intention to make a point is so apparent that it always fails. We know few writers whose productions carry the reader so little along with them. We feel glad to get out of school and quickly forget a lesson taught with so much' self love in the teacher, so little for the learner. Personal vanity breaks out., at; every turn. He lately assured his • readers \ that the Cross "had the credit of never making a mistake." At all events its Editor has made one;.and that in our; opinion was when he became politican and editor in a new country like this; the necessities of Which his previous training and natural sympathies have entirely disqualified him from comprehending. Politics, entirely at the service of the Stafford ministry, with an affected air of independence, which practically always ends in smoke. Paper, not otherwise very well got up—and generally second rate in tone and appearance. Circulation far short of the New Zealander. These two had the Auckland field to themselves till very late—when a new print, the Examiner published once a week, stepped in. The New Zealander treats it with silence, and summary contempt —the Cross notices it but thinks it horrid ungenteel. ■'•• The Examiner cries "a plague, on both your houses" and walks into both with right good will. ... There are passages in it we admit, particularly in its lengthy notices ' to correspondents/ a" leetle" too strong for " small tea parties; "but we will say this, thatitspgaks out without fear or favour, and lays on as if it meant it. The Editor, whoever he be, has his heart in his work. He shews a good deal of general reading —writes much better than either the Cross or the Neiv Zealander —and fears no man. We have learnt many things from the Examiner which the other two had carefully concealed, but which ought to be known. Perhaps the brusquerie and want of regard for small conventionalities of speech were assumed—it is certainly not so "broad" as it was at first, and if it continues to exhibit the real talent it possesses, while it avoids, the faults it not unfrequently commits, it cannot fail to take high place among the journals of the colony. Politics, (what the Cross pretends to be) really independent—guerilla war—and no compromise. " ; The other Auckland paper, the Eegister, ' is also a weekly publication, and very " weakly." With three other papers on a much more pretensious seal© in the same City, we can hardly understand the existence of this little washy sheet. It seems to be the organ of no opinion, and is too small; to be of waste pa| er value. Surely it cannot pay. Certainly it does not instruct. What can be the object of such a publica-, tion? The copy before us, however, is some months old. We suspect it has found an early giave and is among the things that were. Then Taranaki with its population of 2,000 souls has its two journals, its Herald and its News, taking no doubt opposite sides on the great questions, which from time totime convulse' the province of New Ply- ; mouth. The News is the'largeet paper and seems the better done—but why have two: opinions at Taranaki ? Why,not leave it to the Censor to say ;i which is right and rule. out the other. '':; ' Then Wanganui must have its organ, the Chronicle —Wanganui not.even a Province of itself, but a mere off-shoot of Wellington. Yes, this upstart little place dares to maintain a printing press, canvasses Governor Browne* criticizes Commissioner M'Lean, has its fling at Stafford, and claps Featherston on the back. Before long, no doubt there will be a rival press, a Wanganui Standard, ot something of the sort, still further decentralizing public opinion and confusing the public mind. Said we not well when we declared for a Censor? ; At Wellington there are three of us— three as bitterly opposed as we can be* First, there is the Spectator, which hates us worse than poison, and though we are perpetually forgiving it, it hates us all the more. Originally it belonged to a Committee of Settlers, and stood on the j liberal side, but its present proprietor having got independent of the Committee, sold the cause and threw himself and paper into the hands of Sir George Grey. For years" it was the organ of opposition to self'-rgbvef nme'nt, then it became the mouth-piece of; the Eodway party professed ultraradical opinions-—now there is a split

among them, and it confines (itself'; phiefly to personal abuse of Dr. Feathersoh and his colleagues in the Provincial Government. It supports the orthodox parsons—^apd the orthodox parsons in return support it. It is edited generally by its proprietor, formerly an assistant-surveyor in the New Zealand Company's service, but. occasionally by a clerk in a department of General Government. It is well printed and neatly, got up, but exercises very little influence; either in the Province or out of it. The Advertiser is quite a recent enterprise —said to be established by the surplus: funds of an " eminent merchant," whose; money was a burden to him, and who was ambitious of having a journal of his own,; and an editor who knew how to aspirate his! H's, At present it gives away 2000 CO pi es —or professes to do it—an artifice: which may obtain it a circulation which it will. hardly keep unless it secures better literary and editorial talent to raise it to a higher standard. For ourselves we are what you see, kind reader. We try to speak the truth, and speak it plainly. By so doing we make many enemies, for' men will forgive your saying. .of them anything but the truth. Others object not to what we say, but.hovy.we say it. We admit we have not had the advantage of that, "penny more," which, ; the editor of the Nelson ,Examiner s-. parents paid to teach him manners —nor have we been taught "to caper nimbly in a lady's chamber." We look on politics not as an amusement for our leisure hours, not as a trade whereby to put money in our purse —not as an arena on which we may display our abilities —not as an occasion for the interchange of courtesies between carpet knights—but as a hand to hand fight bebetween believers in opposite political creeds, as a great and solemn duty which admits of no compromise, and into the performance of which the man who undertakes it should throw his whole energies, his heart and soul. If in doing so we offend many, yet We make friends of more; and, in the noble words of Sir Philip Sydney, which an Auckland contemporary has taken as his motto, we feel that " though we be extinguished, yet there'll rise a thousand beacons from the spark we bore." We know that the hard truths which we, perhaps, too roughly enunciate, have borne and will bear fruit, and that though we ourselves may not share in the harvest, a harvest there will be* Our politics are too well known to require much to be said. We think Stafford a great statesman and an unequalled orator. Sewell the most able of financiers, an admirable witness before a committee of the Commons," a wonderful hand at raising a loan, and powerful at getting up the steam. Richmond we admire for his liberal sentiments, his hostility to old feudal notions, his modesty and his sympathies with popular progress. Whitaker for his prudence, for his freedom from the narrow prejudices of his profession, and his abhorrence of its trickery and cunning. While Tancred we regard as the man of a thousand, in short, the "coming man" if he hie not come already, who combines the far seeing wisdom of a great legislator with the ready aptitude of a great administrator. But we must cut short our remarks. At Nelson there is the Examiner, once the champion of popular liberty and self-go-vernment; now a runholders advocate and organ of centralism, edited by the most nominee-ish of Sir George Grey's nominees. It is a renegade print—and of course a good stickler for the proprieties. It is opposed by the Colonist, an organ of provincialism, the small fanner and the working man—an outspoken paper, edited with considerable talent, and apparently honest in its convictions. The Lyttelton Times, and Canterbury Standard, we must except from the category of those journals whose conflicting opinions may confuse the mind of the enquiring traveller—for whatever opinions they have, they sedulously conceal, and keep in the dark: contenting themselves with English extracts, local news, and now and then, the former at least, with some wonderful discovery in the science of political economy. The number of advertisements contained in them is worthy of a note, an indication of a lively sense, on the part of the Pilgrims, of the value of printers ink in a commercial, if not an intellectual, point of view. The Otago Witness does war to the knife with the Otago Colonist—the former a somewhat longwinded and vicious minded p a p er __the latter one of the best and most ably got up journals of the Colony. Last of all, to close the list, comes the little Eaivhes Bay Herald, organ of Thomas Fitzgerald, and skilful lever by whose active agency that worthy individual greased the wheels of the chariot in which he rode triumphant- into a seat intended for/better men. i

The London papers state that the Queen's Birthday was celebrated on the ]9th of May in the usual manner. Her Majesty held a brilliant Drawing Room in the afternoon. The weather was showery during the whole day. At the Court of Bankruptcy, on the 18th of May, judgment was given upon the question of certificate in the case of Messrs, Schlesinger, crysalters, ofßasinghall-street, the Commissioner wholly refusing their application. The anxiety which the spread of the exceedingly fatal disease diptheria is now causing is evinced by a .communication which has been addressed from the Privy Council Office to the heards of gnardians of the several unions and parishes of the metropolis, requesting them to ascertain from the medical officers of their unions, and inform their lordships whether diptheria is now prevalent in any part of their unions, and if so, in' what parts and to what extent. If the disease be not now present, but hereafter appear, their lordships request to be informed of the fact.