NEW ZEALAND IN 18.53.

F/1031 the files of New Zealand journals which have recently reached us in unusual abundance, we arc enabled to clear off some arrears in our occasional notices of the economical progress and political condition of the colony. - PoruLenoN, &c.-Official returns of the population, live stock, and cultivation of the several settlements, for 1852, have been published. From these we take the following abstract.

Land in

Population. Itorses. Cattle. Cheep. Pigs. Tilla,go.

Auelaand 10,697 .. 1,033 .. 10,913 .. 11,078 .. 5,679 .. 13,125

Wellington 7,300 .. 788 .. 11,407 .. 64,009 .. 3,135 .. 4,896 ,,... New Plymouth 1,532 .. 68 ..1,395 .. 2,700 _ _ 1,165 3,759 S'

Nelson 4,287 .. 532 .. 5.838 - 92,014 _ 2.509 _ 5,542

..3

Canterbury 3,273 .. 224 .. 2,043 28,416 .. 1,255 .. 802 '

Otago 1,776 .. 243 .. 3,151 .. 54,829 .. 2,371 _ 1,015 _ I

Totals .. 28,865 2,890 34,790 234,043 16,214 29,140 The colony at the date of the above table was in its thirteenth year. In the year 1844 the population did not exceed 14,000, and the cattle and sheep were few in number. Canterbury and Otago had no existence, and even the abundant pastures of the Middle Island were very imperfectly known. Population has therefore doubled in about nine years, and it is within the same period that the sheep property of the Southern Provinces has been for the most part created.

CATTLE Assn SHEEP.-It will be observed that while about two- thirds of the population and more than two-thirds of the cattle are seated in the Northern Island, the Middle Island has two-thirds of the sheep. The population of the Northern Island is swollen by the two large trading towns of Auckland and Wellington, and the proportion of sheep and cattle is determined by the character of the country. The extreme North is destitute of natural pasture suited for sheep ; the district of Wellington, though beautifully diversified by forest and pasture, mountain and plain, from Hawkes Bay and the head waters of the Wanganui and Manawatu to the shores of Cook's Straits, contains more of the coarser grass land adapted for cattle than of the liner pastures suited for sheep ; whilst the Middle Island contains abundance of pasture lands well suited fur sheep. Many of the flock-owners of Wellington have stations on the Middle Island. It is in the abundance of its pastures that the wealth of the Southern settlements consists. The sheep of Australia have long pressed on the means of subsistence, but the mutton-Malthusians of those parts checked undue increase by boil- ing down : it will be long before it can be necessary to resort to that expedient in New Zealand. LAND IN TILLAGE.-The quantity of land in cultivation will appear small. It is insufficient to supply food for the people. But a large supply of wheat is now produced by the Natives in all parts of the colony, and there seems a disposition on the part of the capitalist settlers to leave cultivation to them and to the small proprietors. It may be interesting to record that 2 acres 1-12th per head in tillage in Van Diemen's Land supplies food for the population and permits an exportation of about 150,000/. worth of agricultural produce (or 2/. worth per head for the whole popu- lation) at the prices of 1850. The comparative fertility of New Zealand and Van Diemen's Land has been estimated at 21 to 19 in favour of the former ; arising, not from any superiority of soil, but from certain favourable conditions of climate. The stimulus of Australian prices, by which both Europeans and Natives seem to be influenced, will probably lead to that increase of exertion which will speedily convert New Zealand into a garden and a granary for the Gold Colonies. In this advantage Van Diemen's Land is her only rival.

THE LABOUR. Mertrars.-But here we are reminded of the la- bour question. The settlers complain of the increasing scarcity of labour. Provident and successful farm-labourers acquire land and become peasant proprietors. Their ranks are not supplied by im- migration. There is no fund for the purpose. It does not appear that New Zealand has been a great loser of people by the attraction of the gold-fields, but she has lost labour. Many who went have returned with some gains, ceased to be labourers, and become in some shape or other employers. A scheme has been set on foot to import Chinese. It seems to have excited angry discussion and much opposition ; but there is a strong probability that it will be tried. To us it appears that the European employers have not sufficiently availed themselves of Native labour. The Maoris work on the roads ; they execute contract work, such as clearing forest land, very well ; they go about applying for work. Why not con- vert them into shepherds and stockmen? But "where there is a will there is a way," and the activity of the settler-mind, under the pressure of a very urgent necessity, may, we think, be trusted to solve the labour question. It awaits the session of the General Assembly. MINES.-Mining is always attractive enough to engage public attention where there is a reasonable prospect of success ; but this very attractiveness is fraught with one disadvantage-it opens a rich field for the practices of the Dousterswivels. Copper has been for some years worked on the Great Barrier and ICawau Islands, near Auckland. It has also been discovered near Nelson ; and a company has been formed to work it. If the results be tolerably encouraging, the colonists would find no difficulty in raising capital in England for mining purposes, if they chose a

favourable state of the money-market to make the attempt. With Consols at 100 they would succeed, where they would fail with Consols at 89.

We hear but little of the gold-fields of Auckland, and for the sake of the colony we hope to hear less. That gold exists in that locality is true, but not in quantities sufficient to attract diggers. They cannot compete with the "monster nuggets" and "hundred- weight pockets" of Ballarat and Mount Alexander ; and the colo- nists will do well to turn their potatoes and cations into gold, after the fashion of the Tasmanians, by growing for the Melbourne market. The papers indicate that both North and South are alive to this. The gold-fields of Victoria are as sure a source of wealth to the agricultural colonies as to the diggers themselves. Under this head of mines we also note, that the settlers of Nelson are sensible of the importance of turning the coal of Massacre Bay to account, in anticipation of the steam-ships of the Panama line calling at New Zealand. This line makes New Zealand practically the nearest to England of all the Australian Colonies.

POLITICAL Connrriort.—The colony is now at the crisis of poli- tical transition. Despotism has reached its dying day ; and repre- sentative institutions, of which the settlers have too long been de- prived, now only await the tardy and reluctant preliminary ar- rangements of the local Government. The newspapers show the anxiety of the settlers to taste the benefits of Sir John Peking- ton's constAution. Recollecting the manner in which Sir George Grey exercised the dispensing power, (much after the fashion of the Monarchs of the Stuart race in England,) by setting aside Lord Grey's Act, they feel some alarm lest he should postpone the opera- tion of the present Act, at least till he can escape from its influ- ence. It is apparent enough that he shows no alacrity in effecting his "preliminary arrangements." Every.thing is put off to the very last day the law allows.

The choice of Superintendents has not been such as to make Sir George Grey satisfied with his personal prospects. In the North, Colonel Wynyard, the Government candidate, has prevailed, chiefly by means of the votes of the pensioners located in the four pensioner villages ; but in the South, the popular candidates will probably all be triumphant. In Wellington, Dr. Featherston—a man of singular honesty of purpose, the steady and consistent opponent of Sir George Grey on the representative question—has been elected without opposition.

The newspapers present an animated picture of electioneering activity. A despotism of thirteen years has not extinguished the constitutional habits of the race. Addresses "to the free and in- dependent electors of —" fill the advertisement pages of the local journals ; and it is worthy of note that most of the popular candidates go for both the Provincial and General Assemblies. The picture is very gratifying to the constitutional reader.

Among the candidates for both Assemblies, is Mr. E. G. Wake- field, who arrived from England only in the present year. At first, from a knowledge that his views were opposed to the now popular cry for "cheap land," he was regarded with suspicion ; and yet, as the real founder of the colony, was received with a kindly wel- come. His assistance, in pressing upon a reluctant Government the full and immediate development of representative institutions under the new constitution, was cordially accepted by the leading settlers, and he may now be deemed one of the principal and cer- tainly not the least active of the popular party. He has lectured at the Mechanics' Institute of Wellington on the causes and effects of the monopoly of land ; he has addressed a large meeting in the Hutt district on the subject of compensation in land to the working classes ; he has published letters to the Secretary of State, the Governor of the colony, and others, on the new constitution. In most of these exertions on behalf of the rights, liberties, and in- terests of the settlers, he has been powerfully aided by the pen and legal ability of Mr. Henry Sewell, who sailed from England in the same ship with Mr. Wakefield, on a special Canterbury mission, but, arriving in New Zealand at an imminent crisis for the whole colony, found instant occasion to employ his talents in the common Cause.

With the active services of such earnest and able allies the settlers could not well have dispensed; for they have a powerful, skilful, and not over-scrupulous foe to deal with. That we are justified in thus speaking of Sir George Grey, will appear from a simple description of one or two of his recent acts.

Tn COMPANY'S DEPT.—An agitation has for some time pre- vailed in the North against charging the land of the Auckland district with the debt to the New Zealand Company. To this agi- tation Sir George Grey has recently yielded, thus giving direct sanction to repudiation. The case is this. The Colonial Office some years since made an improvident bargain with the Company. Having taken the Company's statement of liabilities incurred for the alleged benefit of the colony at 268,0001., that sum was made a charge upon the land of the whole colony ; the Company in re- turn releasing to the Crown all the rights they had acquired over land in the Southern settlements. We have called this bargain improvident, because no sufficient care was taken to ascertain how much money had been really expended for the benefit of the colony. It was therefore wrong to charge it even on the land in the Com- pany's settlements. As to charging it on the district (now province) of Auckland, there was not a shadow of right. The Company's operations never extended there. But although wrong in principle and improvident in fact, it is still essentially a bar- gatn ; and it is subject to that bargain that the colony is now about to receive full control over the land and land-fund. There may be reasons for revising the bargain by the authority that made it. The Imperial Parliament is alone competent to do that. But so long as the contract is in force, Sir Georg Grey can have no right to withhold a sum of 90001. which hies accrued to the Company (by reason of sales amounting to 36,0000 as their clear and now vested right. Yet Sir George Grey has done this, at the request of he lf a dozen gentlemen, whom he errone- ously calls members of the Legislative Council, no such Council being in existence ; thus encouraging repudiation, and casting upon the Secretary of State the painful duty of refusal. Sir George is seeking a -vulgar popularity for himself at the expense of the I. perial Government. Even assuming for a moment that it might be deemed advisable "to revise the bargain," (and we should not have conceded even this much had the settlers or the colony been a party to the arrangement,) Sir George Grey ought to have advised such revision quietly in a despatch, instead of making it a claptrap for his own glorification at Auckland, at the unavoidable cost of considerable embarrassment to his superiors in England. Again, had he thought fit to give such ad- vice confidentially, the case would have been in nowise prejudiced by paying over the money due. The simple objection to the act of withholding the money is that it is wrong—legally, equitably, morally wrong. In so far as it superadds great embarrassment to the Secretary of State, it is an unstatesmanlike blunder. No such collateral object as that of reconciling the head of the Executive to the Northern agitators—no conversion of the extreme of un- popularity into popularity—can justify a wrong : and there is something very like political cowardice in casting upon the Secre- tary of State the responsibility of doing either an unjust or an ungracious act.

THE LAND QUESTIONS.—That Sir George Grey's procla- mation reducing the price of land to ten shillings per acre, and in some cases to five shillings, is popular with great numbers of persons in the Colonies, no one can doubt. The working classes desire to possess small freeeholds ; those above them of all classes, to create estates ; and the mere speculators, to follow their vocation profitably. As a" feature of attractiveness," cheapness exceeds all that Mr. Wakefield and his friends have devised. But the mode of carrying the reduction into effect, and the time chosen for so doing, are highly reprehensible. We are not disposed to press its illegality ; for although it has been pronounced illegal by the Supreme Court at Wellington, the -Under Secretary for the Colo. flies has asserted in Parliament that Sir George Grey hod au- thority, and has therefore kept just within the right side of the law. Whether Sir George's proclamation fixes the price at the point demanded by the best interests of the colony, is not the question. There would have been, under any circumstances, a degree of in- decency in exercising even a legal power and authority to deter- mine the price, at a moment when the Governor had in his hands an act of the Imperial Parliament making over the waste lands to the control of the General Assembly, which his Excellency was bound to call into existence without any unreasonable delay. It is this anticipation, nay usurpation, of the functions of the General Assembly, coupled with his obvious reluctance to call the Assembly together, which has produced a suspicion that there will be no General Assembly in Sir George Grey's time.

Closely connected with the proclamation is the Governor's coquetry with an Auckland deputation on the subject of land-purchases from the Natives. Sir George Grey is well aware that it has been the policy of England for some centuries, and is still that of the United States, to retain in the hands of the Government the sole right of dealing with aboriginal tribes for land. We learn from Chancellor Kent, that this policy invariably received the sanction of the Co- lonial Courts and since the independence of America, that of the Supreme Cour:tof the 'United States. Private dealing with the Natives of Canada for land was prohibited by the proclamation of 1763; and the same rule, after a very full and careful investigation of its history, was sustained by the Supreme Court of New Zealand in 1847. This case was accepted as law, and approved of by Lord Grey. The treaty of Waitangi also preserved the rule ; but the Judges of New Zealand considered it to be binding independently of that treaty. To depart from it now, would be fraught with the most dangerous consequences. Many of the troubles in New Zealand have, on Sir George Grey's own testimony, arisen from the early and unauthorized land-purchases from the Natives ; and to maintain such imperfect contracts, with all the doubts and disputes as to boundaries which they involve, would require an army of English troops. In answering certain addresses from Auckland, thanking his Excellency for his proclamation reducing the price of land, Sir George, though with characteristic caution and guardedness of language, held out hopes that they might possibly be permitted to deal with the Natives for land. One address had pointed out the desirableness of "rendering the land at present in the hands of the Natives available for the purpose of settlement." Sir George answered, that he would "make every effort to induce the Natives to part with large districts of country in this portion of New Zealand," and that, with this object, he would send a commissioner to Auckland to endeavour to complete such purchases. So far there was nothing to object to ; and if effected as well as promised, the Government would have deserved commendation. But Sir George goes on—" If it [that is the above-named effort] should fail, I will endeavour to carry out some system by which the desired end may be obtained." The Auckland people have from the very earliest period desired to deal with the Natives for land, and the Na- tives were readily persuaded to desire it, under a belief that they would get more money. In consequence of the Governor's promise

to the deputation, intrigue with the Natives will probably be set on foot to cause the commissioner to fail, in the hope of forcing upon the Government Sir George Grey's other system—whatever it may be. It can hardly be seriously believed that Sir George intends wore by his answer than to gain popularity by his promise, and make an "adroit escape" from the colony before the period of performance arrives. Thus, he enjoys the credit of a vague and indefinite promise, and entails on the Imperial Government, or his successor, or both, the odium of declining to carry it into effect. Meanwhile, Sir George himself would bear away from the colony, as the proofs of his popularity, so many testimonials, which would be serviceable in the future pursuit of the profession to which he has now devoted himself—the profession of Colonial Governor.

The perusal of these papers, and the survey which we have been enabled to make of the actual condition of the colony, fetch out its solid resources, and strengthen the impression that New Zealand would do more than well, if it had a Governor character- ized not only by tact and cleverness but by that enlarged ambi- tion which seeks the advancement of the community as well as of self, and above all by thorough straightforward integrity.