a

“THIS IS TRUE LIBERTY, WHEN FREEBORN MEN—HAVING TO ADVISE THE PUBLIC, MAY SPEAK FRE

|. ——EURIPIDES.

CHARLOTTETOWN, P. E. ISLAND, SATU

RDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1847. [No. 19.

Vou. I.]

maneErr: SR : sienna SPIBIP OF PES EWERISA WLRBSF. such an ample opportunity of seeing and feeling its con- themselves the whole state of society, and create the SS Sequences, he saw and felt them in rebellions in Canada,medium in which they are seen. The plea of useful THE COLONIAL OFFICE.

jin Caffre ware at the Cape, in war and insolvency in and flourishing results has been continually urged in We perceive by our English files, that Mr. Fimian | S9O¥ Zealand, in crimes abhorrent to human nature in| favour of excessive railway undertakings. Peel viewed Stephen, commonly called King Stephen, so long the Van Dieman’s Land, in ruin and devastation in New | with ecstacy the growing consumption, and struck off master spirit of the Colonial Office, and the bane of the South Wales, in the gradual extinction of capital in the another tax. Cattle were imported, butter, and cheese colonies, has been removed from that Department. His| West Indies, in dissatisfaction and animosity in every and bacon could not be landed fast enough on our quays, removal will be regretted by every Tory who has a suit | Colony and in every colonist. But experience taught) yet prices still rose, merchants prospered, and farmers to urge or an intrigue to forward. But for this gentle- him nothing ; he persisted in the system which a stroke were happy. Hudson, the pet of the aristocracy, point- of his pen, or one generous thought, might have altered ; ed with triumph to the armies he maintained, the poor

of in times past. Familiar with the details of a system @nd he leaves the system rampant in mischief. rates he relieved, and the price he gave the landlords

man the Colonies would have had much less to complain | which made the Colonial Office, instead of the Colonies,) But, it will be asked, if all this be true of Mr. Stephen, for their land. In this way the delusion, for such in its

evapo en man Cieaemenemagl

the Court where every petty grievance was tried, Mr.| how came he to be retained so long in office? We re- Stewhen acquired a position and influence which was Ply that he was pushed into the Colonial Department by alike fatal to the interests of the Colonies and to the the clique to which he belonged, ata period when its in- several Secretaries who presided over the Department. | fluence was paramount: at atime when the then head of Educated under such a system the late under Secre- the ciique declared, in a letter which accidentally tran- tary had no affection for that more enlarged and liberal|spired, that ‘all the Colonial Office wanted was to be plan of Colonial Government propounded by Lord Dur-|saved from the trouble of thinking.” The influence of ham and ultimately conceded by Her Majesty’s Minis- that party, unfortunately prolonged by Lord Glenelg, ters. The official party on this side of the water, with|and revived, when about expiring, by Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Stephen in the Colonial Office, were never without added to his own ability and cunning, and the ignorance a friend to help them in their hour of need, to defeat the of his superiors, maintained him there, despite the out- action of the Local Legislature. For a quarter of a cry of the victims of the disastrous policy of which he century the master spirit and guardian of the old Colo-| was the instrument. And it is only at last, when the nial system, he has at length yielded to the pressure of consequences of that policy have been brought home to public opinion and the enlightened spirit of the age. A | public conviction, that his retirement is made a tardy late No. of the Daily News furnishes the following ac-| offer upon the altar of public opinion. count of the late Under Secretary :—

extent it was, defended and propagated itself. A theory was invented for the occasion which told with wonderful effect on the noodles. Capital that was spent—circu- lated. Expense was reproduction. Money paid to the labourer went to the shop, and from the shop returned to the tradesman, the farmer and the merchant, who, by re- investing it in railways, were thus enabled to keep pros- perity in perpetual motion. After a most lavish and ac- celerated consumption, the country was each month richer than before. If we do not now stay to investigate the vice of this circle, it is because we need not waste ‘time on so transparent a humbug, and, moreover, are ‘now speaking of results. There was, however, at that time, no arguing with men who could show two or three hundred thousand Jabourers at full wages. The argu- ment was unanswerable as long as the funds were forth- coming, and the bread, cheese, butter, bacon, and beer

Mr. James Stephen has at last resigned the office of [From the Lendon Times. } “i oo The larder is now empty, and the bubble urs

Under Secretary of the Colonial Department, and by his, . CAUSES OF PANICS. The disbanding of armed retainers in the reign of

resignation has terminated a career of great misfortune 7 gee th Ea to the public, and of sad injustice to a large number of In a mercantile country it is very intelligible thet at a| Henry VIL, and the clearance of another sort which dis-

unfortunate persons who have served the crown under | Period of frequent disaster sy mpathy for the great who tinguished his successor, and, to pass over many similar that department during his tenure of office. He has) T° fallen, for the wealthy who - destitute, and for the incidents on a less scale, the reduction of our own army certainly retired as gracefully as circumstances would children of ease who are forthwith consigned to drud- and navy ia 1815, threw vast masses into extreme des- permit. He has been saved the mortification of yielding |S°'Y, privation, and dependence, should prevail over |titution. All capricious, fantastic, and excessive ex- to the storm of indignation and popular reprobation &Very other feeling. The constellations that have disap- | penditure does thesame. The safest expenditure is that which so frequently raged around him, and has had his peared from the firmament are enumerated in obituaries, | which is most common, necessary and regular, Whims reputation protected, as far as protection could be given and lamented in orations. Whole neighbourhoods are |and manias give a sudden fillip to labour, and then leave to it, by a summons toa seat in her Majesty’s Privy described as saddened by the downfall of all established it in the lurch, Luxuries and extravagancies alternately Council. Henceforth he is the Right Honourable J ames families. We are told of princely houses that have overwork the people, and consign them. to inactivity. Stephen ; but henceforward he is no longer Under Se- grown with our growth, and strengthened by our|The man who draws on his capital to build a castle or cretary for the Colonies. ‘The empty honour is his: the Strength, that were the pillars of our social state and the lay outa park, to give his name to an ornamental suburb, real gain is to the public. | tepresentatives of our greatness and honour. Certainly,/or do any other great thing above his means, generally

We have no desire to do injustice to the right honour- | it ”* most lamentable spectacle to see a hundred com- ‘finds that he is brought to a standstill; he is obliged to able gentleman. Mr. Stephen is undoubtedly a man of Panes and private fir ms, involving several hundred \dismiss his men, and is saddled with an unfinished work very great intellectual power; his mind has been highly. families, suddenly smitten down, and their members which has not the slightest power of paying its own way

;

doomed to struggle for life through the byepaths, the to completion.

cultivated; his views are frequently original and always’ : worthy of consideration; his information is varied and Steeps, and the shades of society. Meanwhile they who |; js q very heartless thing to misdirect labour to pre- extensive; and his style of literary composition is rheto-|/°F° numbered and not named are almost forgotten. De- carious and unprofitable employments. Labour,energetic, tical and glittering. He failed in the Colonial Office, 8¢ending through managers, foremen, clerks, and other confiding, and docile, but ignorant and incapable of self- and injured both this country and its colonies, not from confidential servants, we come to the rank and file of in- ' guidance, is at the mercy of wealth and every other do- want of ability, and certainly not from absence of oppor- dustry, the thousands upon thousands who are thrown ‘minant quality. Itcan be ledas a child. Compelled to tunity to serve them, but because he had been educated ‘out of work and subsistence by blighted speculation. | consult its daily necessities, and taking everything on

in a hollow, insinecre, presumptuous, selfish, and into- lerant school, and becaine master of that school. Craft, policy, intrigue, jealousy, and chicanery were the cha- racteristics of the Colonial office during Mr. Stephens’ long direction of it. No one connected with it had, till lately, confidence in its justice, its honour, its integrity, or its generosity; the colonies feared it ; the colonies hated it; merchants connected with the colonies des- pised it; and every one who knew aught of its mechan-

We fix our eyes on a few great historical groups, and do not see the dark background of distress. The com- mercial barometer rises and falls, and men speculate on its fluctuations; the temperature of enterprise is alter- nately genial and keen; but as surely as the keen frost of autumn levels the pride of tne garden, and destroys whole tribes of animated beings, credit cannot touch its

freezing point without condemning whole classes to)

misery. The day has come, the inevitable day, that

ism, attributed its defeats, its faults, its crimes to Mr. compels the suspension of a — of railway works ut- James Stephen. Some of the ablest statesmen of the terly beyond the resources of this country. Cassandra

day were its chiefs whilst Mr. Stephen was Under Se-| has long prophesied, and long been disregarded ; but the

trust, the smallest difference of wages will seduce it from the cultivation of the soil, or from the other primary arts that supply our sustenance, our clothing, or our shelter, to the most foolish, the most injurious, the most destructive occupations. Ifa poor fellow can get six- pence a week more by helping to raise an artificial mountain than he can by preparing the soil for seed, he will be obliged to follow his fortune, get sixpence more, and be an useless man. It is positively cruel to impose on the helplessness of a being'so little able to choose for himself. We have all along felt this, and have most earnestly deprecated the employment of useful and in-

cretary—Lord Ripon, Lord Stanley, Lord John Russell, day has at length come when the sufferings of the pe-|dustrious myriads in undertakings which could not do Mr. Gladstone, for example ; but all failed, signally and ple must atone for the follies of the chiefs. Quicquid anything to repay their own cost for several years at disastrously failed therein. (delirant reges plectuntur Achivi ; and while we write we Jeast, and which were certain to come to a standstill as

These stateswen failed, because success under our, learn with unfeigned concern of thousands and tens of ‘soon as the capital of the country had been exhausted. present colonial system is not within the range of possi-| thousands suddenly thrown out of employment. Others, however, urged on the enterprise with all the bilities or of human ability, for it isa system thatteases,, Such is the most lamentable result of great social er- infatuation of Napoleon redoubling, his conscriptions, irritates, worries, and overgoverns the colonies; and of|rors. Far atime, like a bad argument, they seem to/and driving half Europe before him to perish in the that system Mr. Stephen was the life, whence it moved,,support themselves with sophistry, declamation, and,'snow-drifts of Russia. That cruel trifler with the des- “ereathed, and had its being. No one in our time hadjabove all, with a show of success.. They assimilate to| tinies of our race thought man was food for powder. It