The Westport Times. THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1869.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 452, 14 January 1869, Page 2

The Westport Times. THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1869.

It would be ungenerous to suppose that any but the purest motives have prompted the General Government to encourage literary talent by offering prizes, as they have done, for essays on the subject of " the permanent settlement of the mining population of New Zealand." It would be impossible to imagine that the Government of a great colony like that of New Zealand would occupy the humiliating position of avowing ignorance on such a subject if they had not a full and weighty sense of their ignorance and the rare magnanimity to confess it. While deploring their ignorance, no one would dare deny their magnanimity. No one would surely think of insinuating that there is even the slightest hint conveyed to the Provincial Governments that they, at least, have not adopted the " means for securing the permanent settlement of the mining population, and for fixing within the Colony the capital which is being drained away from the gold-fields," or that there is the slightest hint that the General Government is at all desirous of doing what the Provincial Governments have hitherto been deputed to do, and have not done. No one would be so irreverent as to conceive that the offer of premiums out of public money could conceal a joke. No one would venture to think that, by their very paltriness, the offer of such premiums as .£SO, .£3O, and £2O is nothing better than a farce. No one in New Zealand can so highly estimate his time or his talents as to delude himself with the belief that the offer of such premiums is an absolute insult. How ungenerous it would be to entertain all, or even any, of these ideas towards a Government which is so magnanimous, if ignorant! How unreasonably generous towards Provincial Governments and poor authors ! It would, indeed, be heretical—probably treasonable—to believe that anything but the most happy results can follow such a liberal and well-directed expenditure of money. We shall have the question solved, no doubt—all for a fifty-pound note. That particular sum is the talisman by which the talent of the Colony is to be reached, aud nothing but it. Members of Assembly and Councillors meet periodically in solemn conclave, presumably to settle such subjects, but, compared

with this, what inducements have they had to do so ? Has there ever been shown to them such consideration as the offer of a fifty, or a thirty, or a twenty pound-note, which the Government has now, in a paroxysm of generosity, placed at the command of the whole country ? Prime Ministers and other Ministers there are ; and -eke there are Superintendents and Secretaries of various degrees; but it is not in their sal tries —or more probably in their souls—to settle such a question. So it is left to the people, everyone of whom can, if he chooses, express his views on the subject, and one of whom will positively receive, for so doing, fifty pounds ! Generous Government,' Happy people ! Uuparallclled achievement of legislation ! "Who will dare to say that the Legislature of New Zealand does not take the liveliest and warmest interest in the "mining population?" There is just one deficiency discoverable, and that occurs in the statement of the scope of the subject for the discussion of which prizes are offered. The question, as it is put, is how to secure the permanent settlement of the mining population, and to fix within the Colony the capital which is being draiued away. There is nothing, however, said about " how not to do it," and it is especially upon that phase of the question that there prevails the greatest amount of intelligence. An extra ten-pound note dispensed to essayists whose acquaintance with the subject is practical, rather than theoretical, might be the means of educing, for the information of the Government, some startling statistics ; and it is especially to be regretted that, by the fifty-pound prize being restricted to the elucidation of one side of the subject, the Superintendent and the Executive of Nelson are excluded from the privilege ofbecoming competitors. Instead of " securing permanentsettlement " and " fixing the capital which is being drained away," it has, unfortunatelyfor thepresent purpose, been their endeavour to *• secure " the capital, or as much of it as they could seize in the shape of taxes, and to "fix" the miuing population in a fashion which it is not necessary, in these parts, to elaborately describe. Starting with the belief that " permanent settlement" is altogether antagonistic to the tastes or disposition of the " mining population," our Superintendent has imbued his Executive with some extraordinary ideas which are not likely to be found in the recommendations of the essayist who may gain the first prize. It is a pity that, while so generous in one direction, the Government should have been so parsimonious in another as to offer no encouragement to men who take such different and extraordinary views, and it is impossible to withhold one's sympathy from those who, as essayists on the settlement of goldfields, could so ably demonstrate that the thesis of the Government is a delusion and a snare.