MATTERS POLITICAL-NEW ZEALAND FOR NEW ZEALANDERS.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 258, 6 May 1896, Page 2

MATTERS POLITICAL-NEW ZEALAND FOR NEW ZEALANDERS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAB. Sir,— The above has been the cry of j our so-called statesmen for some years ■ past, and repeated, parrot like, by i thp unthinking portion of the community. Let me draw the attention of your readers to the fact that nature's law of competition or the survival of the fittest rules (1) the lives of individual members of a community (2) trade in its widest sense and (3) nations or peoples. Now a careful study and analysis of Hansard for the past five years shows that the majority of those in the House at the present time are. tinkers and patchers, so to speak, or what Mr Cecil Rhodes would call •' town-pump politicians," and their mental vision can reach no further than the limits of our shores ; they are so eaten up with vanity that they boast of " leading the van of civilisation." Now, what is the plain unvarnished fact 1 We have a paltry population ot, say, 700,000, men, women, and children, and we occupy one of the most favored and fertile portions of the world, which is well known to every nation on the face of the globe ; nay, even the soundings of our harbors are known to the Russians and Germans ; and were it not that we are an integral part of the British Empire we should soon be snapped up by Germany or France. The prosperity and development of the British Empire means also our prosperity and the greater amount of British money that come to us through trade channels — not through the Government — and the closer our trade relations the greater will be our prosperity. Surely the most untrained mind can grasp the idea, and yet one of our " tinker " and " town pump" legislators, the Colonial Treasurer, last session put a tax of £50 on commercial travellers coming from Great Britain. I ask in all seriousness, can childish folly go further than that? Let me ask my readers to study the competition among nations from the time that Warren Hastings determined to make the whole of India a part of the British Empire to the present date, and they will see the law of the survival of the fittest running through every event. Granted good and statesmanlike gov- J erntuent at Home, and also in her colonies, the Anglo-Saxon race will, owing to its fecundity, in the course of time, overrun the world and be able to dictate terms of peace to every other race ; but we in New Zealand will not he able to help Britain to do that while we allow the Premier .to bully our military advisers, and neglect our defences, and to put a paper ring — in the form of an act of Parliament — round our shores. Whether the Socialists and others of that ilk in New Zealand reject nature's law or not, we shall find the Germans, Russians, French, and Japs will act on it, and if we are not prepared for the struggle for existence as a part of the British Empire we shall some day have to pay taxes to a ruler speaking a different tongue. I am, <fee, George Wilks. Feilding, 27th April, 1896.