THE GLOBE. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1881. MR. MILES ON NEW ZEALAND.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2341, 4 October 1881, Page 3

THE GLOBE. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1881. MR. MILES ON NEW ZEALAND.

That we may see ourselves as others see ns is the prayer of the wise man. Although the process is not always pleasant, it is supposed to be healthy. Daring the late financial crisis we had abundant opportunities of bracing up ourselves by means of the utterances of gentlemen who could not have been said to be in love with the country. These individuals were candid and outspoken to a degree, and laid bare an interesting part or picked up a nerve with a readiness which world have done honor to the most pronounced vivisector ever patronised by Dr. Virchow. It is all the more pleasant then to no te the very high opinion of New Zealand adopted by the Chairman of the annual meeting of the Union Bank of Australia, which was held in London on the 2nd of August last. Mr. E. P. W. Miles, on that occasion, after hiving disposed of the purely business points to be discussed, proceeded to give his views with regard to the general question of emigration and the comparative prospects of the various colonies. He noted the sparseness of settlement in the Australias as compared with the denseness of population in the Mother Country, and he dwelt with pleasure on the latest telegrams from New Zealand, which pointed not only to an increase of revenue but to a diminution of expenditure. " It has sometimes," he said, "been a vexed question which colony is most prosperous or appears most likely to go ahead." And he then mentions the impressions which forced themselves on him when travelling lately. "Some persons," Mr. Miles stated, " think that Queensland is ihe gem of our Australian colonies, but, personally speaking, I have a strong feeling in favor of New Zealand." Mr. Miles arrived here in the middle of a bountiful harvest, when the whole country looked like a land of plenty, and the eight was one that showed the capacities of the country. The speaker took the occasion of the meeting to mention all +Ms because, as he said, " there has prevailed and there still exists among a great many persons in London an idea that New Zealand has been going too fast and spending too much money, borrowing right and left." But Mr. Miles declares that the money has been well spent in roads, railways, bridges and harbors, and there is sti 11 room for more of such improvements. Speaking in London, Mr. Miles evidently contrasted the objecta on which money had been spent here with those which had absorbed so much of the Imperial taxation. Ho wished apparently to draw the very obvious moral that it is better to go fast in materially improving the country than in entering upon costly wars, which one administration goes into heart and soul, and tho results of which the next incontinently drops. The very high opinion held of this country by Mr. Miles is all the more gratifying when we note the information he is in possession of with regard to other colonies. In speaking of the railways to be made, one from Roma to the Gulf of Carpentaria, the other commencing at South Australia and running to a certain extent paralled with the first, ho incidentally mentions the fact that part of the country to be traversed by these railways is one vast mass of splendid ore. " Some say that this ore is silver, others that it is lead. I don't know what the ore really is, but I am assured that the mineral is one of tbe richest ever discovered, and I hope that this may prove to be the case, as it will all tend to bring grist to the mill." The calm way in which the Chairman of the meeting talks about these leviathan railways running over beds of the purest ore is truly astonishing. No less is his non chalant attitude with regard to what the ore may happen to be. The possibility of a conglomeration of Bonanzas existing in these parts does not turn him a single hair. He is prepared to adopt any theory that may be presented. It will merely " tend to bring grist to the mill." And yet in spite of all this New Zealand holds her own in Mr. Miles' estimation. Her crops and her climate carry tho day against the hidden wealth which should by all rights revolutionise the money markets of the world, and possibly alter completely the relative values of the precious metals. Tho compliment is, to say tho least of it, a high-flown one, but we have been

accustomed to so many disagroeable little spoeches of lato that wo can swallow a good deal in the way of flattery.