THE SOCIETY FOR THE REFORM OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.

Wellington Independent, Volume VI, Issue 484, 1 June 1850, Page 3

THE SOCIETY FOR THE REFORM OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.

(From the Colonial Magazine, Jan. IBOOJ

A prospectus has been placed in our hands, issued by n society entitled, "The Society for the Reform of Colonial Government." The first council consists, for the most part, of members of the two Houses of Parliament, and comprises men whose names stand among those of the leaders of the most opposite political parties and factions of the dey. The chairman.is the Hon. Thomas Baring. A coalition between hostile political parties has always a significant meaning.

'chcrs and pupils will flow in ; subscriptions and legacies will incrcaso; and the only fear will bo, that the corporate body will become too rich, and that wealth will lead to luxury, and luxury to laziness, and laziness to contempt. Beyond the first striking a key-noto, I would advise you to hurry nothing. Send out a few very men, and wait patiently until you can obtain others. The mere name of a college, with a good but insufficient body, is far hotter than a full staff of incapables. In the former case every kind of right principle may be established from the first, and gradually developed in practice as assistance is obtained ; but •in the latter, when Rood men are found •at length, they will have to work up against a host of evil habit and false principles, which will have been be■qucathed to them by their predecessors. "The public will have formed their own ■' -idea of a collegiate institution from the corrupt model which they have seen in operation, and will look upon its errors i with that kind of prescriptive dotage with which a college cherishes its privilege of ignorance. Tho new comers, like the Dauphin's fresh oysters, will bo better in reality, but they will be less relished than tho stale. This danger of hurry has led me to remonstrate against the limitation of time proposed by the New Zealand Company. On no account consent to any such restriction. It will be a continual stimulus goading on to something premature, as tho company itself has been hurried on by its own purchasers into -selling land before it was surveyed, and even before it was bought. Remember Lord Eldon's maxim, " Sat cito, si sai henc;" and though you travel now by steam, instead of the "heavy Salisbury," remember that such luxurious locomotive has not yet found its place in New 'Zealand. Now, then, I suppose you begin with the map of the Great Southern plain stretched beforo you. You have seen Captain Thomas' report, and perhaps the very soil of the several townships which I advised him to send in boxes to be analysed in England. A goodly number of stanch * * * aye collected round 'your committee table; all men of some substance, and above all of much piety. 'The bishop's letter is read pro forma asa regulator and drag chain of the undue velocity of immigrant imaginations in haste to bo rich or happy. The meeting begin to calculate— £3 an aero is a .sum to give for land, and one aero wffl only feed four sheep; their wool will weigh about twelve pounds; and we shnll be lucky to get from7d. to 9d. per pound from the merchants at Port Cooper, so that the clear profits cannot well be moro than 6d. per pound, or 6s. for the acre, that is just 10 per cent, on our purchase money. Well, so long as we can live and bring up our families we have no wish to make fortunes. In fact, the school, the church, and clergyman, are the true interest for the outlay, and not the produce of tho land or the increase of flocks and herds; for this profit has found its limits in the Australian colonies by an excess of all the necessaries ol life, and by reducing nine-tenths of the settlers to bo then- own tallowchandlers. Who is for Oxford ? Who is for Mandoville? Who is for Stratford? is the cry of the trusty * * or conductors, who are plymg for passengers to their respective townships. -A fine country, Sir. "Church spires as thick as in Lincolnshire; schools in every village." "No fear of the children breaking their necks mbirdsnesting." « Pine c ß ountrv fora hardy man that can do without a hre Town acres let by tho season for quail.shootmg.' "Mutton so fat that the sailors of the Acheron could not eat JL . 7 taste aPortCooper ™xt to Stilton." Such will be some of the various « protreptics " which tho * * each according to his own fancy, will gean from our reports. But some grave old gentleman in the corner will call out - % good friends, let me advise you not to go out expecting to find every thing to your mmd; but trusting that, by Gods blessing upon tho colonizing 3 r f, S ; f the Anglo-Saxon race, yo£ will find the means of solid comfort in the only form m which it can give you true pleasure-as the reward of honest industry and in answer to prayer. You will see spires and school-houses sprhi*. nig up i n all places, for money will do that; but money will not make faithful preachers or fruitful hearers. Money will not make children obey their parents or keep the commandments of God From the very first, you must have a social compact one with another; the Oxford leader with the Oxford clergyman; and tho Mandeville leader with the Mandeville clergyman; and all the leaders and all the clergymen with all their bands of labouring men and settlers, that they will all go out to found, so far as God may be with them, a Christian colony ; that they must agree to support one ■another—' like people, like priest, , —in «very good and holy usage of their mother church ; and as they will leave their native country amidst the prayers and blessings of all whose names are already

written on tho land of their adoption, so their course of devotion must be curried on, on shipboard with their own loved and chosen chaplain, till they see their own bishop, or one who will be to them as their own, standing on the beach to welcome them on their arrival; that their first act may be prayer and thanksgiving, and that the first building into which they enter may be the house of God.