The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 1873.

Evening Star, Issue 3221, 17 June 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 1873.

It was our intention to have given a review, in the usual form, of Anthony Trollope’s sixth division of his work on Australia and New Zealand, which is devoted to New Zealand, and is well worth reading; but there are some matters in it that bear so immediately upon what should have weight with us in the coming election of Superintendent, that we prefer giving a notice of it in our leading columns. Although Mr Trollope is best known as a novelist and writer of fiction, he is a barrister-at-law by profession, and, from early training, well able to understand the evidence of prosperous social conditions, He does not seem impressed with our form of government. Like all strangers, he cannot reconcile himself to the idea of it being necessary to have half-a-dozen legislatures to govern a third of a million of people. Perhaps he is right; but that is not the question now before the public: what they are called upon to decide is, whether our state of prosperity shall continue, or whether we shall risk its being sacrificed to mistaken notions of public policy. On reading the quotation we shall extract from Mr Trollope’s highly interesting work, it is necessary to bear in mind that the picture of Otago he has painted would have appeared in more sombre colors, had he been in the Proi vine© half-a-dozen years ago, IJe

would then have hoard on all sides complaints of dull trade and gloomy prospects. He would have heard of railways projected with no possibility of making them, because the credit of the Province was so low that nobody would lend the money. He would have seen Dunedin in a very different dress from that in which he viewed it: shops and houses were untenanted; bands of workmen, whose families wanted bread, held meetings to force the Provincial Government to give them employment; the bankrupt list was daily augmenting ; people were leaving the Province. Op. inquiring into the cause, some would have blamed the Maori war; some the exodus of miners to the West Coast; andMr Reid’s party would have said it was owing to the wicked land law of 1866, which, according to them, prevented settlement on the land. It is, however, worth bearing in mind, that, prior to that period, there were Superintendents in office, who, however respectable, were not progressive in their views. Tbeir notions and their actions were identical with the ideas of the party now seeking, on a false pretence, to eject Mr Macandrew from power. Mr Reid, in protesting at Mosgiel against the charge of thwarting the Superintendent, said he never thwarted him excepting when he wanted the Clutha Railway formed by a Company (at that time the only possible way); when he wished to give employment to those out of work by placing them on a goldfield; and on some other similar occasions. These admissions showed incontestably that he did precisely thwart him in those very matters that would have prevented the Province sinking into so low a social and commercial condition as that into which it fell; and the man who now seeks to be Superintendent (Mr Gillies) aided and supported Mr Reid in his opposition. We have often before pointed to these facts : they are nothing new; and we again draw attention to them as those which are acknowledged by the party, and for which, with a strange infatuation, they claim credit. Had they regretted their opposition as a mistake, there would have been hope ; but claiming credit for it necessitates keeping them out of office, if we are to progress. In regard to Mr Macandrew, they seem to be imbued with that spirit, and wish others to be so too, that Mr Trollope wittily ascribes to the English at Horae in regard to the Colonial Office : The idea saemed then to prevail, as it has at all times prevailed, with regard to one or another of our public departments, that the man entrusted with power was of all men the least capable of exercising that power with wisdom, and the least likely to exercise it with fidelity. With this notion we have no sympathy. The true test is to judge men by their works. Let us apply it: To gain power, the Gillies and Reid party have not hesitated to be the instruments of men whose sole object has been to thwart and oppose every measure not emanating from themselves. No Land Bill would suit but their’s : but we tell them it is not a settlement of the question. They did not hesitate to bring the Province into debt that required extraordinary sacri-

fices to free it from; they opposed liberal goldfields legislation, railways (excepting on conditions they could not realise), and, as a last effort, under the pretence of Constitutionalism, they brought legislation to a dead-lock. The height of impudence is, however, attained in asking the Province to ratify their doings by electing one of the leaders Superintendent. Surely they must imagine the people have neither memories nor brains. Mr Trollope speaks with admiration of New Zealand generally and of Otago in particular, which he singles out as the highest type of successful colonisation. We will present our readers with only one extract, for we have no wish to forestall the pleasure which every intelligent person will have on reading the necessarily somewhat superficial, but very clear account which he gives of New Zealand. It will do more for us in the way of colonisation that fifty Dr Featherstones.

The chief products of Otago are gold and wool; but agricultural pursuits are extending themselves in all parts of the Province. The number of free-selectors, or “cockatoos,” is increasing, and by their increase declare their own prosperity. Individually, they almost all complain of their lot—saying that the growth of their com is precarious, and its sale when grown effected at so poor a price as not to pay for the labor of producing it. The farmers are in debt to the banks, and their lands are not unfrequently sold under mortgage. But such complaints are general all the world over. No man is contented unless he can make a fortune —and no man is contented when he has made a fortune. The squatters, the miners, the cockatoo farmers, and the laborers working for him, all say the same thing. They regret that they ever left England. It is a mistake to suppose that the Colony is a blessed place. Argylesnire or even County Galway is much better than Otago. But in Otago all men live plenteously. Want is not known. If a man fails as a freeselector, he lives plenteously as a laborer. I will quote a few words from a printed despatch respecting Otago, sent Home by Sir George Bowen, the Governor of the Colony, in 1871 “ After the lapse of only twenty-three years” —from the first settlement of the Province—- “ I find from official statistics that the population of the Province of Otago approaches nearly to 70,000 ; that the public revenue, ordinary and territorial, actually raised thereon exceeds £520,000; that the number of acres farmed is above a million; that the number of horses exceeds 20,000; of homed cattle, 110,000 ; and of sheep, 4,000,000. The progress achieved in all the other elements of material prosperity is equally remarkable; while the Provincial Council has made noble provision for primary, secondary, and industrial schools; for hospitals and benevolent asylums; for athenaeums and schools of art; and for the new university which is to be opened at Dunedin in next year.” I found this to be all true. The schools, hospitals, reading-rooms, and university, were all there, and all in useful operation ; so that life in the Province may be said to be a happy life, and one in which men and women may and do have food to eat, and clothes to wear, books to read, and education to enable them to read the books. The Province is now (1873) twenty-four years old, and has 70,000 inhabitants, and above four million sheep. Poor Western Australia is forty-five years old, and, with a territory so large, that an Otago could be taken from one of its comers without being missed, it has only 25,000 inhabitants, and less than one million sheep—sheep being more decidedly the staple of Western Australia than of Otago. J do not know that British Colonists have ever succeeded more quickly or more thoroughly than they have in Otago. They have had a good climate, good soil, and mineral wealth; and they have not had convicts, nor has the land been wasted by great grants. In founding Western Australia but little attention was paid either to climate or soil: land was given away in huge quantities, and convicts were fotrpdviced to remedy the evils, and to

supply the want of labor which that system of granting lands produced. And in Western Australia gold has not been found, I know no two offshoots from Great Britain which show a greater contrast. Much as the people of Otago have reason to be proud of what they have done, much more would have been effected, but for the short-sighted opposition of Mr Reid’s party. The reason is plain : they have not men trained to business amongst them; they know little of business details, and cannot grasp what is good for themselves and others. It is, therefore, conferring upon them the highest good to retain men in office who will benefit them in spite of themselves.