Barkerville, Williams
Creek, Cariboo
"THE CARIBOO SENTINEL"
In presenting the first number of this journal
to the public we are called upon by established custom to state the claims
which we trust will entitle it to a wide, general, and substantial support.
In performing this duty circumstances compel us to be brief, but at the
same time we hope the objects and principles of the paper will not on that
account be the less understood or placed in doubt. We would despise ourselves
if we sought the countenance of any portion of the British Columbian people
by concealing our view on any question, and therefore we trust the brevity
of the following declaration will not be taken as if we desired to draw
a veil over our opinions.
It has long been felt, and by no class more
than the mining community, that not only the country's highest interests,
but the interests of individuals, have been most seriously impaired and
blasted by the notoriously exaggerated and often unfounded reports published
about the mines of Cariboo both at home and abroad; and knowing by our own
experience in this country that there were good grounds for the reproaches
which we have so frequently heard leveled against the ignorant or designing
propagators of false reports, we long since formed a determination to establish
a newspaper on the first opportunity in the very centre of the mining district,
to send forth reports collected from authentic sources, upon which the adventurous
spirits of this and other countries might base their opinions and form something
like proper and correct views of what they had to expect in coming here.
The long, looked for opportunity occurred
not many months since, and we lost no time in carrying our resolution into
effect. Our object at first, and up to a very recent period was to publish
a journal exclusively devoted to the diffusion of mining intelligence, but
since we landed in the colony we have had forced upon us the necessity there
is for a thoroughly independent journal, with wider and more extensive aims
than we proposed to ourselves at first. The public abuses which exist, the
injustice and inequality of the taxation of the colony, and the shameful
waste of the revenue in keeping up a standing army of official drones in
a depopulated country, demands that those who have a power to wield should
do so for the public advantage regardless of every other consideration.
Our efforts shall therefore be directed to the eradication of every official
abuse, the existence of which now cramps and blights the awakened energies
of the people.
The inequalities of taxation, for instance
that monstrous and iniquitous Gold Export Tax Bill, passed to drive miners
out of the colony, shall be held up by us to the public podium which such
a reckless disregard of common justice demands at our hands. had the officials
of the colony, aided and abetted by the representatives of Cariboo East
and West, passed an Income Tax Bill that would have affected their own incomes
equally with the rest of the community, instead of singling out a class
for exceptional taxation who are not only the bone and sinew of the country,
but from whom the major part of the taxation had been previously raised,
those servants of the public would have shown at least a desire to act justly.
Until this Act as it now stands is rubbed out of the Statutes of the colony,
we shall not cease to call for its repeal. Retrenchment in every department
of the public service is not only demanded but will be force upon the Government
by the state of the public finances. $250,000 a year for the officials of
a colony in which there is not a white population in the aggregate of 6000
persons is an expenditure which the most servile minions of the Government
cannot, dare not, offer any justification of.
