Wellington Independent TUESDAY, 29th JULY.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3869, 29 July 1873, Page 2

Wellington Independent TUESDAY, 29th JULY.

In common with very many of the other leading journals in New Zealand, we have found it necessary, on various J occasions, to draw attention to the de- ! plorable inefficiency manifested in the conduct of the immigration department by the Agent-General. While — owing to the progress of the public works scheme, the recent extraordinary development of our mineral resources, and the increase of general prosperity caused by the rise in value of our chief staple of export — the demand for labor had increased beyond all previous experience, and its remuneration had reached a rate hitherto unprecedented; while the coni struction of roads, railways, and harbor works, the reclamation of extensive tracts of swamp, the development of coalfields and goldfields, were pro jected and eagerly looked for in all quarters, and while they needed nothing but broad backs and sinewy arms, in sufficient numbers, to transform them into realities in our midst, the same cry '< was heard from every province, that its ! j wants in the matter of immigrants had never been so ill supplied as of late ; ; that under the old provincial systems ten ! immigrants had been introduced for every one introduced under the more ambitious general system that superseded them ; and that those, moreover, who were sent out now were not, as a rule, of a specially desirable class. In regard to the mariner of their transmission, too, similar complaints made themselves heard continually. The vessels in which they were sent were frequently venerable rattletraps, the timbers of which were rickety with age and misuse; they were ill found with provisions arid with water ; their cabins were ill ventilated, and order was ill maintained on board them. Altogether, they were such as might have been expected had the lowest instead of the very highest rates ruling in the trade been given in respect of them. For all such deficiencies as these in the conduct of the department a dozen excuses are, of course, at once forthcoming. The paucity of the immigrants sent out was not, it will, be said, owing to any lack of jtidustty and energy on the part of Dr but to the improvement in the condition of the laboring population at home, which rendered them less willing than in former years they would have been, to leavoSthe old country ; to the keen competition of otheriolonies, and of the United States of America, and to the superior ad vantage's, which it was in the power of (he^tatter to offer, ~The de fects connected with the transmission of the immigrants, it might be urged, had been, in the ftrstlplace, much exaggerated, and were at any rate defects .which no care, however conscientious, and no inspection, however rigid, could altogether do away with, j What force" these- may be in these j attempts at palliation we-ssball not at present stop to inquire. To our minds it seems that they account only for a very small portion indeed of the evils complained of. Be that, however, as it may, we have now an accusation of quite another character to bring forward — one in regard to which certainly no palliation o§ the kind can by any pretence, be pleaded. On referring to the correspondence with the Agent-General, laid on the table of the House during last session, we find a memorandum for Dr Featherston fvom the then Minister of Public "Works, Mr Ormond, bearing date the 19th February, 1872, in which an important proposal is made, to the effect that the scope of the immigration scheme should be extended so as to embrace not only the introduction of day'laborera, but also that of small farmers and others having a capital of, aay, from £100 to £500. People of this class were to be induced to mal& New Zealand their home by the offer of land at low rates and on deferred payments

where necessary. The memorandum contains nothing more definite than this. The only object in communicating with the Agent-General at all at the time was tha the might make the intention of the Government in the matter as widely known as possible among the class in question, so that when, more definite terms were offered their minds might be prepared to take them into favorable consideration. About three months afterwards the Public Works Department, acting of course on the presumption that the instructions contained in their first memorandum had been complied with, sent a second, informing the Agent-General what were the lands intended to be made use of as proposed, as also the precise terms and conditions on which they would be granted. The lands to be so made use of were the confiscated lands at Taurauga, on the Bay of Plenty, and on the West Coast north of Wanganui. The terms of occupation were somewhat similar to those embodied in the Wellington Special Settlements Act. It is unnecessary for our present purpose to go into them in detail. - The above gives us a sketch of the action of the Fox-Vogel Ministry in the matter, we have next to see how the Agent-General carried out the duties entrusted to him. Towards the end of September, as we all know, the FoxYogel Ministry resigned the reins of office, and their place was filled for a brief period by Mr Stafford and Mr Sewell and their following. The installation of the new Ministry was, about to involve — had its terra not b6en cut short — wide, sweeping, and most disastrous changes of policy on many points, and on none more than on the confiscated lands question. Mr Stafford intended, after making certain reservations of more or less extent and importance, " largely," as he said, "to divide what remained of them amongst those natives, who, after fair investigation, were found to have an interest in them." VJr Sewell, in accordance with this change of policy, immediately despatched an order to the Agent-General to suspend, till further instructions, any action which he might have taken, under Mr Or mond's letter, for the transmission of immigrants to be settled on the confiscated lands. Dr Featherston promptly replied that he had taken no action whatever under Mr Ormond's letter, and that he ventured to express the hope that such a scheme as Mr Ormond's would never again be proposed, — at any rate, that it would never be brought before the publio of England ! That was all that he thought it necessary to say with regard to the matter at that time ; but he was good enough to intimate that he would explain at length the grounds of his objections to the scheme on a future occasion. Long before this letter from DrFeatherston reached New Zealand, — indeed, long before it was penned, — Mr Sewell had vanished into oblivion, and quite another Colonial Secretary reigned in his stead. He apparently thought it desirable to wait till Dr Featherston's statement of his reasons for acting in contravention of his instructions came to hand before the Government expressed its mind on the subject. At laßt, after a lapse of another couple of months, it did come to hand, in a despatch dated 2nd March, 1878, and numbered " 24" in the " Letters from the Agent-General " just laid on the table of the House. The reasons are seven in number, and are discovered with that ingenuity and elaborated with that statesman - like sententiousness which may be said to characterise everything which emanates from Dr Feathereton's intellect. One of them is to the following effect :—-" That the proposal to form settlements on the confiscated lands in question would inevitably have been viewed with disfavour by statesmen and others interested in the progress of the colony ! " Another was : — " That the influential English journals would have condemned the project ! and would have raised the old cnea K however unjust, of the settlers' greed for land, &c." They all meant, in short, that Dr Featherston thought, with Mr Stafford, that the confiscated lands should be given back to the natives, and that, thinking thus, notwithstanding that the Cabinet and the Legislature had decided otherwise, he determined that he, at least, would carry out the functions of his department on the assumption that such was to be the case. This determination is one which, we conceive, the Government will find it entirely impossible to condone. The Immigration department already' has shown an excess of courtesy in despatching a memorandum to Dr Feateerston, under date July sth, in which his objections to the scheme are combated in detail. It points out that, to the first letter of instructions received by him — on which, however, he declined to act — they were entirely inapplicable, no mention whatever of the confiscated lands having been made in it ; that as regards the opinion of English statesmen and journalists, it is entirely unnecessary for New Zealand to consult them in a matter of such purely colonial concern ; that it doea, moreover, appear strange that the Agent-General of the Government should feel it to be within his functions to combat their policy, and that, in fine, the practical result of his inattention to their instructions had been not that the confiscated lands in question have remained unoccupied, or are anymore likely now to be restored to the^riatjves than they would have been had bjFacted otherwise, but that, instead of being set aside for occupation as special settlements, they are now being offered for sale, and being taken up rapidly in blocks of greater or less extent as ordinary waste lands. We earnestly hope that the Government will not be weak enough to allow the matter now to drop. Henceforth they can have no security whatever that any instructions which they send to Dr Featherstou will receive a moment's

attention. The best and moat appropriate reply, it Beems to us, to the rebellious despatch above quoted, would have been a notification to tha AgentGeneral that his services could no longer be continued unless he for the future confined his action to the carrying out of the instructions of his superiors. • ____.