SIR GEORGE BOWEN.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume X, Issue 167, 8 July 1875, Page 4

SIR GEORGE BOWEN.

The London Times, its the course of a leading article on Sir George Bowen, has, the following remarks: — The vast regions over which Sir George Bowen's constitutional sway has extended are, indeed, a possession of which any empire might be proud. We find in Australia Proper the most rapid material advance the world has ever witnessed, and we feel, at the same time, that what has been done is but a small instalment of the greater progress which coming years will bring with them in their course. The districts are singularly favored by nature, and there was needed only energy and order for their development. To supply these has been the combined duty of subjects and rulers, aud where both have done their work well it is not easy to determine in what proportion the praise is to be shared between them. The administration of New Zealand was a moire difficult matter, and one in which the influence of the Government has been more obviously essential. Sir George Bowen assures us that the policy which he and his successors have followed has led to the financial pacification of the country, and we have every hope that the comforting promise may be verified. The loyal native chiefs and their followers have been enlisted, he tells us in the useful task of keeping down their more restless fellows, or have been engaged in the more peaceful work of constructing roads, felling forests, and generally, of preparing the way for a civilisation which has now encroached co far that its permanence is tolerably secured. Look, therefore, in what direction we will throughout the " Australian group of colonies,',' the prospect is everywhere encouraging. We see a growing nation, or> rather, cluster of nations, each of them already in advance of the smaller States of Europe, aud making up together a really great and formidable Power. They are still in their infancy, but it is the infancy of a veritable Hercules, and promises well for the vigor of their approaching manhood. They are growing fast in wealth and population and intelligence. They are governed, and are contented under a system which allows them a principal share in the control of their own destiaief. In fact they possess, or are on the road to attain, everything that is a proof and cause of national prosperity; and they are not ungrateful to the Mother Country, to whose fostering care they ascribe, with truth, a great portion of their blessings. A love for England, a genuine loyalty to the British Grown, and a sense of mutual interest are the light bonds which at present unite them with ourselves and one with another, and, whatever Dew form these may take, it is not in the nature of things that such a yoke should be easily broken or cost aside. They are, we believe, not likely to desert us willingly, and we are sure that wo ourselves will be most unwilling to throw them cff. We will net quite cay that we cannot do without one another, but we may snfely assert that both parties to the connection will find thek best interest in maintaining it, and as lone aa that is the caee we may look with coufidence to the future no less than with hearty satisfaction to the present. Other nations than our own may boost of their achievements in war, or of the more than doubtful gain of provinces which they have wrested from tbeir neighbors, and which they must hold still by the same arts by which they ecquired them. We have been occupied with the nobler and safer task of the creation of a new world ; we have spread our name and language over regions vaster by far than any which others have appropriated, and we find in all of them willing confederates, proud to maintain their relation with us, and anxiously to draw still more closely the ties which unite them with their distant home. We have learnt . lessons from one another already, as each has been successful in solving problems in which the other may have failed. Just as India has been our school for war, so also our colonies have been our school for empire. The ranks, too, of our home Statesmen have been largely and usefully recruited by those who had gained their experience at a distance, or are now, in the temporary want of work at home, employing themselves abroad in learning the arts of government, and the true way in which a free people may be preserved in prosperity and contentment.