WELLINGTON INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2258, 24 May 1881, Page 3

WELLINGTON INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION.

(press association telegram.) WELLINGTON, May 23,

The Industrial Exhibition was opened by His Excellency this afternoon. The exhibits were very numerous. In reply to the address of the president, His Excellency said:—Gentlemen—l am far from thinking any apology necessary for your request that I should be present at the opening of this Exhibition. On the oontrary, lam grateful to you for the wish that I should take part in the proceedings, and be associated with you in your undertaking. Such exhibitions must always, in a new and rising country, be attended with peculiar interest, not attaching to perhaps more dazzling displays of longer established communities. We see in them the first tentative steps taken to ascertain what are indeed industries for which the locality is really suited, and whioh will eventually augment in a considerable degree the wealth of the colony, and give employment to those of its population who are not engaged in agricultural or pastoral occupations. Before this can be effectually done, however, feelers will no doubt be thrown out in many directions without suooess. It is inevitable, and it is important to remember, that probably no industry oan obtain, and that certainly none deserve, success unless able to command it without permanent relianoe or artificial aids to existenoe. A manufacture whioh oan only be secured by the exclusion of all foreign competition with the artioles produced is a direct injury to the people at large, and a questionable, benefit to the produoer himself. Young, however, as New Zealand is she already possesses industries which need fear nothing from external rivalry, and I have it on good authority that her woollen manufactures ;very closely contested with the vineyards of Australia for the Imperial prize awarded at the late Melbourne Exhibition for the most successful enterprise of colonial industry. The artioles here collected will no doubt afford material for thought and enquiry, and I trust that their exhibition may tend to promote the development of the vast resources of the colony. _^^_^_______