The Evening Star TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2650, 15 August 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1871.

It is impossible to witness the influx of Chinese without again reverting to the unaccountable blindness to our own duties, which seems characteristic of our nation. At Home, as well as in the Colonies, the dream of superiority to other people has induced a sort of aesting on institutions, no doubt very g,«od in themselves, and when first adopted, well fitted for the purposes ■designed, but which arc now surpassed by other nations, whose necessities have Jed to a closer investigation of the

adaptation of means ends. Reason seems a poor educaror now a-days. People must be taught by some popular story such •as I)ame Euro pa’s School or the Battle of Dorking. Very possibly if some good genius were to | devote his attention to the subject, and draw a picture of the invasion of Otago by the Chinese in 1871, and how they were ultimately defeated by enlisting an army of miners from Cornwall, who brought their wives and families with them, gathered all the gold, and spent it in building neat cottages and pretty country towns, where they and their descendants lived in comfort and happiness generation after generation —he might reach the ears of those who imagine they understand how to govern us. He need not be afraid there is not material for the apologue. If we were to sketch out a plan for him, we should ask him to describe how some clodocrats came from Britain with notions gathered from the plough, and how aft r a few years some of them grew rich and fancied themselves wise. How they quarrelled with men who owned flocks and herds, and when they brought out laborers, how they they seemed to think only those could be useful who could plough, and sow, and look after sheep and cattle. He might perhaps even shew how horror-struck were these clodocrats when it was found that there was gold in the Province, as well as good soil to grow corn and potatoes, and grasses for feeding stock. Then it might be shewn that an army of bachelors spread themselves like locusts over the diggings, picked up some of the loose gold that lay on the surface, eat and drank and quarrelled, and spent some bullion, sent the rest away, and finally went away themselves, leaving behind them grain untouched that had been raised with the idea that they would buy it, and beef and mutton in abundance. Then the clodocrats began to feel that it was a good thing to have plenty of mouths to feed, and they folded their hands and looked after those that were gone ; but they never tried to induce others to come and take their places. Instead of* that, they divided into two parties, and had tierce battles about the land—the clodocrats quarrelling because they said their opponents wanted it to feed sheep and cattle upon, and the squattocrats because they said their opponents wanted to feed sheep and cattle, and grow grain too. The war grew so fierce that noliody thought about the gold and minerals—the coal and building stone. Then some spies from China came, and found out how rich the land was, and they went away and fetched ship-load after ship-load of Chinese, until the people began to ask how it was that these heathen could find out how to live and get rich while they who were quarreling about the laud walked about with their hands in their empty pockets wanting something to do ? Some gave one reason—some another ;bnt though one journal pointed out the way, the clodocratic general would not listen. He said it must be for the people to decide—the Government could do nothing until the people bid them. At length some young men, taught in the High School, who had studied six months at the TJ niversity, began to think the clodocrats started at the wrong end when they left the people to say what was best to be done ; and that it was for the Government to mark out a workable scheme, and to ask the people to help to carry it ontSo the first thing they did was to unship the clodocratic leader and put a better man in his place. Though the new chief was but a youth, he was no worse for that, for his brain had not been fed on confused political theories gathered fiom ill-understood writers on laud, finance, and liberty. He studied social organisation, and ho saw the advantage that it was for a nation to act as one man. He saw it was necessary to give men some wellgrounded assurance that, if emigrants left Home, the}' would better themselves ; so he had the goldfields properly examined and mapped. He then sent agents to the mining districts of England, with authority to assist those willing to bring their families and to work certain ground—the money advanced to be repaid on their obtaining so much gold. So year after year the number increased and the country became richer, and there was no room for the Chinese. The clodocrats at first wore sulky, and did not like to he put in the shade : but when they found their com sell, and that nobody took any notice of their narrow-minded ravings, they discovered they knew more about double-furrow ploughs than the art of Government, and—shut up.