The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1876.

Evening Star, Issue 4054, 23 February 1876, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1876.

The occupation of New Guinea by British subjects has been actively taken up by an association formed in London, which the ‘Globe’ asserts to be “one of the most audacious bodies of our time.” Its audacity seems chiefly to consist in the straightforwardness df its proceedings, and in having had the impudence to ask the patronage and assistance of the British Government. The answer of Lord Carnarvon was discouraging so far as sanction was concerned, and he warned the association that no magisterial action by any of the members of it would be sanctioned or approved, but beyond refusing to sanction the expedition, he had no power to interfere ; the association could not be prevented prosecuting their object. As the ‘Daily News’ puts it, “this New Guinea expedition may prove a farce or a tragedy, or a dash of both; it may be a shadow or substance, a solid success or a ridiculous failure. All that is for itself and the Destinies to settle between them. * If it fall in, good night, or sink or swim ’; it will have all the mues of land if itsucceeeds, and we know not what if it fails; but in any case there is no Government partnership,” The chief opponents of the scheme are the AntiSlavery Society, who, in view of the unsuitability of the tropical climate to the English constitution, have visions of slave holders in their minds, compelling natives or coolies to work at the bidding of their task masters that they themselves may live at ease and in luxury. While fully coinciding with their desires to suppress slavery throughout the world, we see no necessary connection between taking, possession of unused territory and the institution of slavery. The experience of the last fifty years has proved that almost of necessity the frontiers of British colonisation in the Pacific must be extended, and that it is to the world’s advantage to occupy its fertile islands

and to people them with an industrious, ener getic, civilised race. However disinclined th* British Government maybe to recognise new Colonies, they have ultimately to give way, and as in the case of New Zealand and Fiji, to incorporate them with the British Empire. It seems to us therefore that it wmld have been the wiser and more humane plan to have devised conditions regulating the conduct of British subjects in this and similar proceedings. The fault of joint stock colonisation hitherto has been absence of sound system, and the consequences have been that abuses have grown up requiring repressive legislation to suppress. The Anti-Slavery Society has sought to do this by crushing enterprise, and the Missionary and Aborigines Protection Societies sympathise with them. Some portions of the Home Press, too, condemn the expedition, as did also Earl Cardigan, as being identical in purpose with that of Pizarro, while others liken it to the filibustering of the American Walker. We regard neither of these instances as parallel cases. There is a wide distinction between taking possession of land that is not in useful occupation and using it for purposes of production, an 4 devastating civilised countries by destroying their inhabitants and institutions. If a few savages, unable to occupy or utilise a country, are to be held to be exclusive owners of territories equalling in area some of the populous kingdoms of Europe, and if their islands are to be held sacred and doomed to be grown over by forest and swamp, inhabited by wild and savage animals or venomous reptiles, rather than reclaimed and occupied by civilised men, there is an end to progress. Traditional notions of rights of property are at the root of the opposition. Because territorial rights for conventional purposes are accorded to individuals among ourselves, the idea of property in unused land has taken deep root m our minds. It seems not to be recognised that true property in land consists in the investment of labor, or labor’s representative, money, in it; and that a savage, who puts neither the one nor the other into it has no more claim to exclusive possession of it, except conventionally, than he has to the air he breathes or the water ho drinks. It is an instrument to be used by man as a means of existence. The mere possession of the territory is one thing : it is no robbery, but a duty to bring it into useful occupation; but it is quite another matter to establish equitable relations with the and it is here where the interference of a powerful Government might be useful. Unfortunately, this regulative influence is never exercised until some abuse has grown up. Queensland and Fiji were allowed to institute a system of slavery unchecked, until the outrages became notorious and the world began to feel scandalized that a nation should spend so much for the suppression of slavery on one side of the globe and allow it to be practised by its own subjects on the other. Had there been a law prescribing what they might and what they might not do, but little harm would have ensued y but because no supervision nor regulation existed, cruisers and gunpowder have become necessary, the innocent have been murdered, and the guilty have escaped. Much as there is of doubtful expediency in Sir J, Vogel’s South Sea scheme, it is far preferable to the desultory irresponsible character of the system of colonisation permitted by the British Government. For the future of these Colonies it is of paramount importance that civilised and well-to-do populations should dwell on the islands and borders of the basin of the Pacific. We doubt, however', that the expedition to New Guinea, even if successful, will prove to be only another outgrowth of a faulty system.