advantages always accrue to first or original members, as they are termed. The entrance fee has often, in a few years, been more than trebled. Such, it may be confidently hoped, will be the case with the new Settlement; and, doubtless, each succeeding year will greatly increase the value of freeholds.
It is but right that those who are the first to join a good cause should have their reward. It is natural to expect that, generally speaking, they will get the best sites in the new capital, suburbs, post-towns, and in the best pasturage districts. They will, probably, choose their rural sections as near these as they can; and it is fair to infer that they will find them daily rising in value. After-purchasers will neither have the bonus of the half-acre in the capital, nor will they have their pasturage at the same cheap rate.
The standard is raised! Who will gather round it? Who will join our Canterbury Club?
THE CANTERBURY DISTRICT—HYPOTHESIS AND FACT.
'Suppose now that, by a sudden reflux of the sea on one of the coasts of Great Britain, a tract of land were laid bare, consisting of two millions of acres, and that this land were found to be immediately available for the purposes of agriculture. Suppose it to contain excellent pasturage for cattle, to be well watered by streams, and to possess a healthy and invigorating climate. Suppose, further, it to be probable that beneath the surface minerals, including coal, might be found, and that the right of getting such minerals were promised to all who should become the purchasers of the soil. Suppose, further, that the land were offered for sale at a price which, when compared with that in any part of England fit for cultivation, was extremely low; and that two-thirds of the price were returned to the purchaser, in the shape of outlay upon roads, bridges, churches, and schools, designed for the benefit of the new settlers on this derelict of the sea.
'Would not such an accession of territory be looked upon as a very providential event, and singularly adapted to the exigencies of the times?
'The case is hypothetical as regards land contiguous to our shores—but the territory described does exist in the Middle Island of New Zealand. No doubt the bridge is long and the way wearisome, and it is not without a struggle that a man can bring himself to abandon the home of his birth to seek his fortune at the antipodes. But the question is not one of taste or inclination, but of necessity. It is infinitely better to buy land, stock a farm, rear sheep and cattle, and sell the produce at a profit in New Zealand, than to struggle on here for a bare maintenance, with the prospect of bankruptcy and the Gazette. And, for those who cannot afford to buy land, it is infinitely better that they should go out to a country where labour, their only capital, is in demand, and they are sure of finding employment at good wages, than stay here to become the pauper inmates of a union, or perish of cold and hunger in a hovel. If, in addition to these inducements, a promise on which they can rely is held out, that due provision shall be made for their spiritual wants, and that they will find churches and schools for worship and instruction when they arrive at the end of their voyage, we think that they have before them all that they can reasonably desire. The great ends of colonization, in such a case, are answered. The mother country derives benefit, and the colonist enjoys happiness.
'We have, indeed, hardly an option in this matter. The tide of emigration is rolling on year after year, and we have no power, had we the wish, to stop it. Men will fly from starvation to the uttermost ends of the earth; and from our villages and towns thousands after thousands find their way to the seaports, know-
