NEW ZEALAND'S MILLION.

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 133, 22 February 1909, Page 5

NEW ZEALAND'S MILLION.

'i'-.0.-'*' v.h" rcr:i'-nilnT t:v !!.L'p.->t amid which New South Wale? n«-ar*-d and pa-'fled the million mark will (says the Sydney Daily Telegraph appreciate i what the experience means to New Zealand, whose population, including Maoris, ha* just been estimated at 1.008,373. For not mere liking for good round figures or gratification at the achievement of some self-sit task explains the elation that such an event excites. As well and of course more importantly- -the new figures arc hailed because in a tacit way they indicate the young country's coming of age. its arrival among the leading merrbers of the colonial family. Yet it has taken New Zealand about a century to obtain a million people. It is true that the first systematic attempt at colonisation was not made until 1825. when a company was formed in London to settle some land in the Far North, but the country was known and white Governments were in touch with it long before then, so that it is roundly a fair statement that it has taken 100 years to get a million people to a land of exceptional fertility, well watered, highly productive, and rich in all the guarantees of health and prosperity that any good new country can offer to robust and industrious settleis. We do not suggest that New Zealand is peculiar in this. On the contrary, there, as in so much of the rest of her national progress, she is representative and actually has done better than some of her Australian neighbours. But that it is pretty much the same all round does not make the actuatlity any brighter, but rather the reverse. If only New Zealand had failed to attract the population it should possess, while we might deplore the fact we could find solace in the greater good fortune of Australia. But no Australian State is on any pinnacle of superiority from which it can decently offer compassion to another. New Zealand has doubled her population in about 23 i years, it has taken rather longer to do the same thing in Australia, and between them with all Australia's vast rich spaciousness and New Zealand's wonderful concentration of human opportunities—they have less than six millions of people! The fact is anything but a comfortable one to think of, but it is necessary to cite it as a reminder of the work that has been done perhaps we should say begun—in peopling this country, if only for its safety's sake. We have a i too-low birth-rate, and the immigration j is exasperating))- slow by comparison with what apparently ought to be its pace looking at the thousands of emigrants who leave Great Britain and the Continent every week. The increase of the population, therefore, is anything but assuring to those who ; take heed of Australia's relation and New Zealand's to the Esst; and it will remain so, causing a real and great danger to hang like a cloud over our national future, unless ways can he j devised of bringing immigrants in at j the rate of about a hundred for every j one that comes in now.