PANAMA AND WELLINGTON.

Wellington Independent, Volume XX, Issue 2204, 11 May 1865, Page 2

PANAMA AND WELLINGTON.

We recently pointed out that the advantages which would be conferred by the Panama service, were more prospective than present. No doubt arrangements have already been made for the extension of the Q.ucen's Wharf and the erection of a Patent Slip, tindertakings which will soon necessitate the employment of a large body of men, and on their completion ensure that this Port shall become the most important in New Zealand waters. But all these things arc trifling in comparison with the gain to the Colony which may be expected to accrue from communication with those young and rising communities in the western world, which will grow into national greatness as other Stales decay. Through this, commerce- and settlement will alike make gigantic strides of progress, and in a few years JSTew Zealand having emerged from those teinporaiy difficulties which now retard her growth, will become in reality, what it has hitherto only been called in name — the Britain of the South. It but requires time to accomplish all this, and we can well afford to wait. In the letter of a correspondent who has written to us on this subject, the following passage- occurs : — " Your article in the last issue is suggestive. What will the regular steam packet service of this route open up and create ? Large trade with America, both to the British Colonies of Columbia and tho gold regions of California, as well as the corn growing countries to the South. West India produce will also come in a short month to our market, while all Europe will bo only a little further from us than they are from the cold colonies of Canada and IN' ova Scotia, and the old ports of the American States ; thus enabling New Zealand with her superior attractions to compete as a field for at least an upper class of immigrants with the largest entrepots of immigration in the world. A pauper immigration is only one step better than convict immigration, unless guarded by a cautious and well principled agency at home, which has seldom been obtained ; but men who have had thrift enough to husband their resources at home so as to pay their passage and settle as independent men in New Zealand, carry within them tho stamina and life of good colonists. Such men will come in increasing numbers b} r the Panama l'oute, spy out our land and return for their families. Large and frequent steamers will pry between Sydney and Wellington, and in spite of Victorian prejudices now, Melbourne will lay on a line also. Is it too miK'h to anticipate that those lovers of human life in the Eastern Continent, India and China, will also meet with 3 r et nnotherline of steam ships, the great trunk lino here, making Cook's Straits, a cross way, a centre of roads for this Southern Hemisphere, and the grand point midway between Europe and Asia ? Honor should be done to Dr Featherston for his efforts in this good woi'k, and encouragement given him to go on to other useful deeds, particularly the introduction of measures adapted to promote and facilitate the occupation of the lands of this Province by hard working men of small means, : thousands of whom in the home country would gladly settle on a small block of Wellington ' land, if they could with certainty obtain it, < uud get to it with tolerable ease. i