A Southern gentleman.- on a visit to Patea, has informed tho " Patea Mail" that it will no longer pay to build houses to let in Canterbury, seeing that they return only 8 per cent., and 15 per cent, can be got for money lent on good freehold security. A private letter from Canterbury says : — " Times are worse at present in Canterbury than they havo over been before. On an average, there are twenty bankruptcies per week—many of them for large amounts. You would see by telegram that S. aud Co. had tailed. It was privatclv reported for £100,000, but the papers say £30,000. The accounts aro greatly complicated, and mixed up in land speculations. They are said to own any amount of lund all over the province, which, ut the present time, is un saleable at auy price. . . . It is com monly reported that the Christchurch busi ness "of tho banks would not pay 2s 6d in the pound. The consequence is, that people who havo money can got 15 and 20 per cent D has all his land in the market, and can't get a bid for any of it, aud ho is in a mess with the bank M has a hundred

sales in tho county next month, that will givo you some idea of the state of utFairs here—and the worst of it is thero arc no buyers. . . The chief cause of this de pression seems to be that tho floating capital, which should be the stand-by when the markets fall, has all been drained oil" into the pockets of laud sharks. In the prosperous years that have jus-t passed, property was mortgaged to the last penny it could command, to enable the owners to buy, often at very high rates, in new dis tricts. Now, wiicn markets are depressed and crops ruinously small, farms will not pay the interest on the mortgage, and the now land produces next to nothing, and cannot be sold, the result is the state of things referred to above. The land busi ness has not yet been overdone hcie, and hence it is that the prosperty of the colony has hidden itself away in this and similar places." It is to be hoped our settlers will value and maintain their high distinction as being prosperous beyond the great majority of their fellow-colonists.
