The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1895. "THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT."

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 160, 5 January 1895, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1895. "THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT."

Truly have we fallen upon degenerate days. Fraud and corruption are in the air, and the whole body politic is " sick with a grievous sickness." The bursting of the boom bubbles in Australia recently exposed a sea of commercial and moral turpitude that could give points to the infamous New York Tammany Ring in some respects and win. "We don't say that Australia proved herself to be a land of reckless unprincipled gamblers, but a large proportion of her commercial and other citizens were worse than the ordinary gambler, for they played in the wildest and most reckless fashion with other people's money. Victoria, especially, was a kind of Austral Monte Carlo, where the people, from Prime Minister to bullock driver, played for a high stake— and lost. It was a new game, everyone won for a time and then everyone lost. Poor Victoria, her accounts persistently refuse to balance, and her credit is such that she cannot raise a cent. Honest John Bull is loath to believe the worst about his prodigal degenerate offspring, but he is getting a bit anxious. And now we have the oldest colony of the British Crown, Newfoundland, in dire distress. No more industrious honest people are to be found anywhere than the simple Newfoundlanders, but their present troubles are partially or wholly caused by Governmental corruption. The simplicity of the people doubtless has enabled the uncru'pulous mountebanks who have had political control all the more easily to practice their swindles. In these colonies we do not trust our rulers too far and therefore these political Bill Sykes are not so much in evidence as they have been lately in the senior colony in the northern sea. Social problems of a toughish texture are not confined to the old world ; the colonies are fairly well up to date in their manufacture, and poli tical corruption, lack of principle and morals in our public and business men are some of the rocks ahead for us. In this respect New Zealand bears a comparatively good record so far among her sisters, let us hope that her people will profit by the lessons of the laat year or two and avoid, as in the past, some of those crooked paths by which some of their kin across the seas have nearly come to wreck.