MR TROLLOPE'S EXPERIENCES OF THE COLONIES.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 193, 8 November 1872, Page 3

MR TROLLOPE'S EXPERIENCES OF THE COLONIES.

The following is a synopsis of this author's speech so far as relates to New Zealand, arid is extracted from the Auckland " Southern Crass : —Toe Chairtoan proposed the toast of the evening, the health of their guest Mr. Am f honv Trollope. Mr. Trollope, in responding, expressed himself highly pleased with the kindness which had been shown to him in Auckland, and the other places of New Zealand- which he had visited. Ori leaving England for the Australasian colonies he expected to coine amongst men earnest in their struggle to reclaim a wilderness—earnest in their carving out of the primeval forest homes for themselves and their families, with but little time and less inclination to pay attention to literature. But what were the facts he found on ; a personal examination P All through the wide extent of A ustralia, . slii'd iti, 6very, house in New Zealand he had been in, he not only found some of his own works but many of the w.trks of Thackeray. Dickens, and other authors ;of eminence in all. the walks of literature, and he had become convinced that on a population basis the colonies had more warm patrons of literature than j even the old country, with all its riches. He referred to the indebt L'dness of New Zealand,. and said since he had come here he had become convinced that New Zealand owed a great deal of money, and that the colonists knew well how to borrow. But they had no reason to be discouraged, for France, America, G-erinany and Euglanl each and all owed a great deal of money. Estimated, however, upon the populations of the several countries, he thought that New Zealand was by far the largest debtor. But while he admitted that New Zealanders knew how to borrow money, he had seen enough to convince him that they knew also how to spend it satisfactorily. He could not but look upon the roads he had seen made and in progress in different parts of the colony, the railways that had been constructed and those planned, and the relation those roads and railways held to the settled districts of the Colony, without being assured that, if those colonising agencies were faithfully carried out, a great future awaited New Zealand, and that they would repay twofold all their borrowed money. It was the faithful expenditure' of the borrowed money hitherto that had raised the credit of the Colony so high in the old country; and while the same judicious mode of expenditure was observed, there would be no want of money on applying for it in England. He looked upon this Colony as a remarkably fast country. It had done, in its short history, what no other country ha,d done. It had acquired its lands by fair means, by fair purchase from the natives, and, as they had begun he hoped they would continue to act justly in the future. It was the fairness observed by the New Zealand colonists in their dealings with the natives that had raised the colony and its inhabitants so high in the, esteem of the old country, and when facts were made a little better known the Colony would suffer nothing by it. He had been eighteen months < in these colonies of the "South Pacific, and if he had not thought something of them he would not have stayed so long. Eighteen months in one place was a long time for him, and he was afraid if he remained much longer he would never leave his bones in old England. He spoke of the comparative influence which agriculture and the gold mining industry exercised upon New Zealand society, and attributed the rapid progress in material prosperity in this Colony more to the influence of her goldfields than to her agricultural resources so far as' they were at present developed. The large undeveloped resources of the Colony were briefly referred to and he concluded with the reniark that what he had seen New Zealand, and his thoughts upon the progress she had made in her brief career, yet remained to be told.