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Lyttelton Times, Volume LVI, Issue 6491, 16 December 1881, Page 4

In discussing lately the visionary scheme of a Colonial Peerage, which seems to have floated through certain minds in London, one important point was purposely not touched upon. We sketched the anomalous position of a titled colonist living in the United Kingdom, and the injury, social and economic, likely to accrue to these Colonies from such a system. But there is another evil not less great, and more evident and immediate, which, existing already, would be made thereby indefinitely greater. That is, the bane* ful influence of the returned colonist element at tho Colonial Office, and on public opinion at Home, as far as it concerns itself about internal affairs at the Antipodes. Of this interfering influence we have had quite enough in the past, We certainly have no wish for its increase in tho future. It would ho difficult to recall one single instance in which it has worked for good; but it would bo easy to remember many cases in which it has worked for no good at all To the colonial Liberal the strengthening of this influence would be an object of well* grounded fears. The wealthy squatter, landowner, or speculator who busies himself concerning colonial matters in London, is the moat Con* aervative of menu He has all the prejudices and hatreds of the old English Tory, without, in most coses, one touch of their old English patriotism or love of fair play. In hie colonial character he loves to talk platitudes about Socialism and Mob Bole whenever he cannot get altogether his own way. But inasmuch as in England ho finds that there are classes who shut their doors upon him, and will have none of him, ho has invented the curious paradox that Liberalism at Home and Liberalism abroad are two very different things. In England, he plays the Badioal; in the Colonies, he apes the Conservative. By these men, a section of the Loudon Press, which ought to know better, is led to adopt this fashion of treating matters Colonial. They look on the Liberal of tho Antipodes not as a brother who, under different eirounißtanoea, hae a battle to fight similar to their .own way, but as an alien to bo snubbed and discarded. A caste of Colonial Peers, interested in maintaining this state of things, would, obviously be no small danger to the popular party in Australasia.