The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. TUESDAY, MAY 12, 1896. THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 263, 12 May 1896, Page 2

The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. TUESDAY, MAY 12, 1896. THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND.

In the course of a speech in tbe Can adian House of Commons, made by Mr William Laurier, the Leader of tbe Opposition (who by the way is of French descent) said that in everything that made a people great in colonising power, in trade and commerce, in all the higher arts of civilisation, England not only excels all nations of the modern world, but all nations in history as well. At the present day, when the nations of Europe, her competitors, have been concentrating all their energies in tbe creation of standing armies, and in maintaining stupendous armaments, England has devoted all her energies to the arts of peace, and to-day her accumulated wealth is such that she is the banker of the world. The citizens of England to day hold in their pockets the bonds of kings and nations, and, on the recent occasion when she waa threatened with warfare across the sea from a quarter where she had reason to expect nothing but friendship, just by declining the bonds of that nation she inflicted upon it almost as much j harm as war. itself. Well, these are I guarantees of peace. I think they are splendid guarantees of peace ; but if -***• i ■ s -

the day sbould come — which God forbid — if the day should ever come — which again I say God forbid — when England should have to repel foes, I am quite sure that all British subjects all over the world would be only too glad to give ber what help they could, not only British subjects of her own blood, but British subjects who are not of her own blood, but who have received from her the inestimable blessing of freedom.