NEW ZEALAND AND SAN FRANCISCO.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 14, Issue 727, 18 October 1869, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND AND SAN FRANCISCO.

j (From the Argus.) San Francisco has been brought within fifteen days of London, and our correspondent in the former city apprises us that other lines of railway across the North American Continent are projected, which will reduce the transit from the shores of the Pacific to the banks of the Thames to twelve days only. As the ports of New Zealand are said to be within twenty-one days' steaming of the Golden Gate, we were prepared to hear that our fellow-colonists at Wellington are determined to take advantage of the new and expeditious mail, route thus opened to them. A postal line which will bring the Great Britain of the southern seas within thirty-six, and eventually within thirtythree days of her illustrious prototype in the northern hemisphere, is one which will naturally command the preference of the inhabitants of New Zealand over the Suez line, or over that via Panama, supposing the latter were resuscitated, of which we should think there is very little probability. On the termination of the present contract with the Peninsular and Oriental Company, the Government of New Zealand proposed to withdraw its subsidy and to transfer it to a mail service by way of San Francisco. A select committee appointed by the House of Representatives has repoited in favor of such a scheme, and has ascertained, from the enquiries it has instituted, that the cost of the new route will not very greatly exceed the contribution of New Zealand to the Suez contract.

Although the adoption of such a course will throw upon these colonies an additional burden, supposing that we adhere to the Su«z line, and renew the contract, we must not suffer selfish considerations of that kind to restrain us from acknowledging that the inhabitants of New Zealand will be acting judiciously in making the most of their geographical position, and in drawing a "bee line" to their antipodes. It will be the shortest and most direct course of post to England, and probably the pleasantest route for passengers in affluent or easy circumstances. A three weeks' voyage pyer tranquil seas and through a summer atmosphere will conduct the tourist or the homeward bound traveller to the Pacific slopes of the Great Republic, from whence he can proceed by easy stages, or with the utmost rapidity, to the other side of the continent. In San Francisco he will find every event of moment which has occurred on the day previously in any part of Europe or the United States reported in the morning papers which accompany his breakfast equipage, and he will feel, on landing in California, that he has been brought immediately en rapport with the current history of the whole civilised wqrld nqrth of the equator.. There can be little doubt, also, that the commercial relations already subsisting between the United States and this group of British colonies, will grow with our growth and strengthen with our strength. And there is nothing so well calculated to promote an expansion of our commerce with America as the establishment of regular and rapid postal communication. Whether any portion of the stream of merchandise which now flows hitherward from the mother country —as, for example, commodities of a compact and costly character, like jewellery, books, lace, silk-mercery, &c.—will ever reach us by the American overland route is problematical at present, and will have to be determined by calculations of freight, traffic charges, and the expenses of transhipment; but an increase in our trade with the United States may be confidently anticipated from the opening up of mail communication between California and New Zealand. But the subject possesses a larger interest, and assumes an aspect of higher importance if we look at it politically. Eor whatever multiplies the mercantile transactions conducted between the different branches of the great Anglican family in Britain, America, and Australia, multiplies to a corresponding extent the securities for the maintenance of peace, and the restraints which would operate to prevent English speaking nations from engaging in a fraticidal war. If these nations, should ever come to be animated by a common feeling, and obedient to a common policy, they would have it in their power to impose peace upon the whole of civilised mankind. No foreign potentate would dare to contest the expression of a will which would be backed up by such a tremendous capacity to enforce compliance with its dictates.