SIR JULIUS VOGEL.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 355, 2 August 1875, Page 3

SIR JULIUS VOGEL.

The “ Anglo-Australian,” writing in the European Mail, says:— Mr Yogel—l beg pardon, Sir Julius Vogel, for he has been knighted since my last-=-has very much improved in his general health. Honors and good fortune sometimes upset men’s heads, but in the case of Sir Julius they have put him upon his legs again. Well, it is an easily earned honor, and I suppose Sir Julius has been rewarded more for what he is expected to do in the future than for what he has done in the past. In this view of the case, then, his return to New Zealand may be presumed to be left no longer in doubt. Rumours have been current—and I dare say you have heard of them —that he was about to leave New Zealand to take care of herself, but in this instance, as in many others, rumour may be, in the estimation of Kir Julius, “as lying a gossip of her word as ever napp’d ginger or made her neighbors believe she wept for the death of a third husband.” Still, New Zealand would like to be assured upon this point, and the only way to allay the uneasiness which I know to be felt there, would be for the object of their solicitude to “ pronounce ” one way or the other. As the colony is naturally anxious on the subject of the next meeting of the Assembly—and I don’t wonder that Sir George Grey should have headed a movement in the province of Auckland in favor of its being convened at once—that is to say about the end of April or the beginning of May. Much, however, may be excused on the score of ill health. Bat in other respects there is nothing that has been done which might not have been done with equal promptitude and success by the AgentGeneral, and it may be questioned whether much that the Premier has done is not to be regarded in the light of an impertinent interference with the duties of that experienced and indefatigable official, and so call for some explanation when next the Premier comes in contact with the Opposition in the Parliament at Wellington. What would be said of our own Premier if, in the course of a trip to Germany, he should usurp the duties and functions of the duly accredited ambassador 1 If there is any distinction, it is one without a difference, and the objection will hold as well in the one case as in the ther. Sir Julius is very reticent upon the subject of his movements, but from what I can learn it is not unlikely that he may go over to Germany at the end of June. If statements which have been going the round of the press are to be credited, Bir Julius has altered the conditions under which emigrants are selected for New Zealand—a privilege which I had hitherto thought belonged, not to a Minister upon his travels, but to the representatives of the people in Parliament assembled. Excepting for domestic servants, the free passage system is to be discontinued, and the promissory note (or cash) in part payment of the passage money is to be reverted to. I understand that a deputation from the National Agricultural Laborers’ Union waited on Sir Julius the other day to endeavor to make some modification in the new arrangements, but without success.