The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2741, 29 November 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1871.

Tub South Pacific Ocean presents many interesting studies to the; politician, on political and social economy. He sees nations being formed under various inlluences and upon different systems. Australia, thinly peopled, has been taken possession of by Knropeaus who have practically ignored ta.e native populations, taken the soil, . ; before whom the aborigines are vapidly disappearing. The Governments there are necessarily democratic, but their fiscal systems embody the views of monarchal and despotic Europe. ihey have not advanced beyond their fathers in anything excepting the non-exist-ence of a privileged class, which could not, from circumstances, have being amongst them. In other respects they are identical. They have placed similar fetters upon industry, and hampered themselves with a number of social yokes that may not gall for many years to come, but which will prove too heavy to be borne, as certainly as effect follows cause. The diffusion of education in time to come will in all probability correct this: but we fear not before much damage has been done, Ju New Caledonia French absolutism is reproduced, and there the foundation of an aristocracy is being laid, assuming that the natives survive, become inured to work, and subject to their European rulers. New Zealand is the theatre of another experiment, which, under the system of the present Government, may possibly succeed, but which two or three years ago looked very like a failure. It has been a mixed colonising and proselytising effort, in which the originators did not agree as to method. An off-shoot from New South Wales, very probably had it not been been for the iufhience of the Episcopal Church, Great Britain would not have assumed the sovereignty over it; but having done so, under the idea of reclaiming and civilising the natives, the attempt has been made to force British laws and institutions upon them, before they wci'o prepared to understand or estimate their value. Notoriously the effort to christianise the aborigines by the method of teaching adopted has failed. We do not wonder at it, for, like children, savages cannot understand that which is abstract. They had too much placed in their hands from which to choose, when they had Jewish history mixed up with Christian doctrine ; and so like the lawyers, in Swift’s Tale of a Tub, they picked out the examples that suited them, and set up a God of their own. The scheme has proved an expensive one, and has entailed an unprofitable burden upon several generations to come, who will have to pay interest for money wasted in badly conducted and useless wars. In Fiji a kingdom is rising up under new auspices, and under totally different conditions. The intelligence of the European is to be ingrafted on the savage system. Wc do not think that Fiji is on(! jot the worse for the refusal to annex it to the list of Colonics by Groat Britain. In fact, if we may predict the future by what has taken place in the Sandwich Islands, unfettered by European or other Governments, Fiji is destined to advance rapidly in wealth and civilisation. Warned by the mistakes of the Colonies in the neighborhood, those repressive tariffs that form such standing disgraces to the intelligence of the colonists are avoided, and the sound common-sense view of raising a revenue by direct taxation has been adopted. The consequence will be that in a very few years, the commerce of these islands will he only limited by the products they are able to give in exchange, or the foreign capital employed in it. The expense of government will lie comparatively lightly upon them ; the natives will quickly become anxious to share in the comforts of civilised life, and although it would be too much to expect that they will at once forget their savagery and settle down to work, the desire to possess what seems good in manufactures and art will cause them gradually to follow that course of industry that is open to them. If the course of free importation that at present forms a prominent feature in Fijian policy is adhered to, it is impossible to say what the good result will be. We may admit .that it has been forced upon the Government, because the imports are as yet too small to justify the idea of raising revenue by customs duties. However numerous the native population may be, they are not large consumers of imported goods, so that the revenue would bo but tricing. But freedom from expensive restrictions will soon make its effects manifest in jtJin encouragement afforded to the investment of capital in trade. Like the ancient Greek Colonies of Miletus, Ephesus, Agrigentum, Tarcntum, and Locri, the commerce of the Fijis may at no distant date surpass that of the Australian city which scut colonists

to cultivate cotton ; for the trade of Melbourne, has been throttled by the very men who are dependent upon it for their incomes. Wherever the expence is least, so long as the position is convenient, commerce finds its home j the free port becomes the emporium for distiibuting to surrounding countries. Twenty or thirty years, though a large portion of man’s life time, is a short period in that of nations. It may vermin' that time even in Colonial life to effect the change. Before then this article, perhaps even the Evening Star, will be forgotten ; but should the prediction be remembered by some who are now young, it may be instructive to reflect that every error, fiscal or political, sooner or later brings its own punishment, and that if ever Levuka becomes the centre of supply for the Pacific Islands, it will be because in the one country trade was free and in the other fettered.