SKMINISCENCES OF AN EXAGENT-GENERAL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 245, 7 December 1880, Page 4

SKMINISCENCES OF AN EX-AGENT-GENERAL.

Sir Archibald Michie reoenlly de« livered a lecture in Melbourne under the abovfl title, from which the following are extracts:-— I bavG been asked so HMD? questions about the office of the agent general, and about my experiences of English public men during my recent-tenure of office as the representative of tbe Victorian Government, that it has ooourred tome that within the limits of one of the lectures of the series I might be fcble in part to satisfy the curiosity of some of my friends, and at the same time drop a few observations by the way which may not be altogether unworthy of their attention, An agent-general, officially, is not a very intelligible creature, and his duties are of a somewhat mixed character. He may perhaps be as well defcribed io uepotives aa in any other way. He 13 not oxftctly an ambassador. He 'c not started from the colony with £5000 in his pocket to do, or pretend to do, tbe diplomatic in Downing-streetj he is not a mere business agent either, although his duties partake of both characters. He is not en officer attached — save in the estimates— to any ooe particular department more than to another, although of course, as a matter of convenience, alibis correspondence with the colonial Government ia conducted through the Chief Secretary for the timQ being. He acts under a general letter of instructions, in wbich be ia required, in some detail, to do all ha can, in conj.uoction wilh his Board of Advice, for the ndvantoge of the colony he represents As I was the fourth of tbe succession of agents who had held this position since the constitution of the office in its present form, I of coursa found the department in full working order when I entered upon the discharge of its dutier. As I walked op the steps of No. 8, Victoriacbambers, Westminster, the first object which cfiught my eye wae the blind on each of the windows of what was to be my office- room for some years. On these blinds were the words, in large, characters, " Agent-General for Victoria, Australia." The title thus tlazoned to the world at large struck Die then, as it appears to me now, as not a hoppy. one. The meaning of it ia bo easily misapprehended that when instructions were first given to the blind-tusker, in the words as they now appear, that ingenious artisan ventured to think that be could tn»ke his employer's functions still more plain and intelligible to the public, : so he sentborne the blinds with the words transposed thus, •' General Agent for Victoriß, Australia." The then incumbent of tbe'office, my friend and predecessor, Sir George VerdoD, happened to bo engaged in tbe city when the blinds -were fixed, and on his return — as I web informed — he rushed at once to remove Ihe staring blunder, from the windows. I was not surprised on receiving this repot;t of bis action. Even the title in it present form is one which did not always secure me from the calls of enterprising men, proposing business cot only not smacking of the ambassadorial, but altogether foreign to government work. Had I been in a position io accede to all the proposals submitted to me, I believe I could have done a smart stroke of business in guano, in P.Y.C. tallow, in old bones, in tin, copper, and colonial produce generally;, and" H~T)ecFme necessary to explain to - not a few, (hat agent-general and

general agent were by no means synonymous, I once told Sir Julius Yogel what I am now telling you, and he was so tickled by, end from bis own experience ha so sympathised with, the agitation of my predecessor, that he h«s been the means by which the story has got round to Mr Tbdd, the author of Parliamentary Government in tbe colonies, and Mr Toddbas produced tbe seme story in that work, * * * Turning from the title of our officer to the woik he has to do, this is of more various character than people are aware of. Every communication from tbe Colonial to the Imperial Government, whether by telegram cr dispatch, ie made through its Agent-General. Kvery kind ot material which ia required by our Government for our different departments, whether it be iron or steel rails, Martini-tlenry rifles, , cardboard for railway tickets, material for our volunteers, silver, or copper ooinage for our backs, and a hundred , other things which oan more economically be imported from the mother , country than made herej have to be contracted for by the Agent-General , under instructions wbich come to him from our various departments through the Chief Secretary. Again, every ( now and then seme matter of conee quence ari&ing out of our relation* with the Empire, would crave immediate atteotion and treatment, such aa the fix , ing of a postal terminus, the proper- , tional contributions of Empire and Colony to the carnage of our letter* , and newspapers backwards and for- ( wardß, or the furnishing the. Colonial , Office from time to time with informa- ; malion with the object of aeeisting & , Secretary of State in coming to a con- j elusion in reference to some or other oi ( England's forty dependencies-. These matters neceeseitate visits to tbe War ', Office, the Foreign Office, the Colonial ; Office, the Admiralty, the Home Office, , the Mint, and other departments; i whilst within doors the Agent-General , would never be long without a call from ; some member of Parliament, or other i public man, desiring information about Australia, for at home all the five i colonies melt into the nofnen generalissimum Australia. Mokt of these came from no abstract interest they felt in the colonies, but generally intent on ; some object personal to themselves or : their friends or poorer neighbors, the latter perhaps seeking a free passage to \ some part of Australia. Occasion- 1 , i ally drawing-room meetings; .(«' novel; ' sot t of social science movement to, me) would be held in noblemen's or : gentlemen's mansions for some such, benevolent purpose as the promo-; tion of emigration, or tbe advancing! j of some other movement for tbe; bettering the condition of . the; | poorer classes. To such meetings i the Bgents-general of the colonies were frequently invited and their counsels; invoked. I attended several, and have j a vivid recollection of one> in which 1; am afraid I was not , considered altogether agreeable. It came off in one of i the spacious drawingrooms of the West' End, and the fine and rather grand-| looking nobleman the Earl oi Harrowbjr was in tbe cbair. The oVject of the. gathering was the facilitating of the; emigration of destitute needle-women i and others, to the Australian colonies.; Among the company were many ladies,' end not a few benevolently-minded clergymen. Various plans were dis-< cussed, but not as I thought, in a very ; practical manner. ._ There is a vagufc sort of feeling at home in the minds oi i many people that if Melbourne and ;

Sydney be not exactly paved with gold anybody may get a living there, however unfit he may be for anything at home. Something of this feeling, but not exactly as bad as I have put it, was expressed ot this meeting. As I considered, end etill consider, there is, in one respecf, in the quality of an immigrant uo tnoditiar. lie must prove either a benefit or a burden to the country of his adoption. He must be able to do something which is in demand, and for which other people are ready to pay, or Lib so-called education is woree than useless. Mindful of what our own immigration system had been, I stood up for it, as I thought if we were to adopt any at all, it should be one which would, at any rate, minimise-— to use a word of BenthßuVs — our risk of getting a bad article} and this end I consider was reasonably attained by our nomination system, as it ia not likely that people settled hero will be eager to import relatives who may prcve a burden to them. Some of the speakers seemed to attach great respect to written testimonials of Character and competency furnished to applicants for assisted immigration, I ventured to demur to such testimonials as frequently untrustworthy. In the first place there are a weak-minded class of people in this world who will. sign anything Ibey ero asked to sign-— except such instruments bb bills of exohange— an*! in the next place, the signers will frequently put their names to to testi monlala theraselvfs from motives quite different from those whioh the teeti monials seem to indicate * * * *. Poor . relation^ haVe ndw become so regular an export from England that they turn up almost every week in the columns of the morning papers, as the A.B. family, or the CD. family, as appeals to the charity of the publici It is very clear to my mind that the' calculating shippers of these poor and shiftless fellow-creatures of ours not only go thewho'e length •with Charles Lamb in his account of them, bur> unlike. Charleß Lamb, seem to be pre-i pared to go almost any lengths in the operation of getting rid of them, for he, humorous old fellow, seems almost to cry and laugli at the same time as he reveals his own experiences; tl A poor relation/* says he, 'Ms the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondency, an odious approximation, a. haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow lengthening in the noontide of our prosperity/an unwelcome remembrance, a perpetually recurring mortification, a drain on your purse, a more intolerable , dun uppe pride, a drawback on success, , a rebuke to your risingj a stain in jtiur bVood) a blot on your scutcheon, & rent in your garment, a death's bead at your banquet, ' a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door, a lion in your path, a frog in, your chamber, a Jly in youif ointment, a mote ia your eye, a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friend, the one thing not needful, the hail in harvest, :the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.-' This, then, being the generally recognised moral and social estimate of " poor relations " in England, no wonder shipments of them to Australia are so frequent, or, that they are.Ko frequently reshipped. home again. Of one great fact we may be certain, viz., that a great wav.e of emigration of some kind must soon pour out from England to go somewhere. Cheap beef and mutton and other foods pcured into the mothercountry from America and Australia are striking with dismay the great landed interest ; farms are being thrown up by scores ; rants are rapidly falling ; landlords** incomes are straitened; dowagers and younger brothers must suffer ; and a higher sfratuni of society than haß ever yet been moved in mass must soon yield before the great though slenfc revolution being effected by steam and rail. How far our own colpny may be benefited^ by .. ttie movement will doubtless in part depend on ourselves. We have lately been regaled with much philosophising abb.ut t he. decline of marriage, bnt I. do hot suppose that we ahalLever .be so,, hard put to it for population as 'to be driven to import; v families of six children, all of them .under sight years, of age. Asking pardon for this digression, into -which t have been carried, by the importance of the subject, X proceed to mention some others of the, very miscellaneous, duties, cast upon the. Victorian agent-general; Part, and a very responsible, part, 1 of- his • .work' hj the payment of all the "Victorian pensions, and remittances of money or goods sent from Victoria to be handed jover to the persons entitled to them, land who are residing in England or elsewhere on tlie: other side of the ( world. These latter, scattered about: |in various parts:— we have an ex-sur-vey or-general who, has been for many fvears in Texas— often occasioned cpnpiderable trouble by reason of the precautions necessary ■ to ourselves against the risk of such money or goods going to others than the parties' reially entitled to them. More than once "I have had occasion to remark the utterly thankless spirit with which our all, but gratuitous' service .is, accepted |)y those to whom it is rendered, r I jiave even had . indignapt visitors demanding of me, " £ray, sir who is this Mr. W '—(I give his initial, as they never pronounced f his name properly) — " who seems somehow to have got hold of my father's or my, husbani'Si or my brothers property," as the case might be, "and has written me ' this letter referring me to you ?*' And at, times it has proved a trial to one's patience, when endeavouring to explain' to some distrustful listener that Mr. "W. was a public officer responsible to the Supreme Court and to the Groverflmenfc ; and that intestate estates not being able the absence of those interested) to take care of themselves in Victoria more than such estates could do anywhere eke, a curatorship thereof became necessary in the person of some one. "Women were generally more exacting than men. One nice young person of a distinctly acquisitive turn of mind, once desired to know whether I; was not gpiDg to pay her interest on her moneyvfrom. the time of its transmission from Melbourne to the time of its payment to her in London ; and this being declined^with the reminder (hat she might have gone to Melbourne for it, or employed a mercantile or banking agent had she chosen, and|that at any

rate the Government of Victoria did not, any more than did any other government, carry money for nothing and pay for the honour of doing so/ she, with a pretty toss of the bead, departed — disgusted, but evidently* not satisfied. To meet the many demands I have noticed, large remittances are sent to the- agent-general, particular sums dedicated to particular purposes, the expenditure of which bas to be duly accounted for so as to enable the audit commissioners to satisfy the Government and the Legislature that the moneys were applied as directed. Those audit commissioners and, their office I do most profoundly respect. They will ever be maintained, I trust, ' as one of the necessary, although, perhaps, not always effectual bulwarks be- . tween our Treasury and the " Iree eaßyj and accessible manner * * * I now change the scene, and ask you to accompany me in imagination to the rooms of an English Minister. As the home prints will have informed yoii. the Queen's Birthday is celebrated in London by 'all tier Majesty 'sMinisters' giving full dress dinners to tbe various officers and others connected with the respective departments, and later on in the evening, the whole of the guests, with their wives and other lady members of their families, are invited to a reception at the new Foreign Office, a magnificent suite of rooms, admirably adapted for showing at their best the grandeur and pre-eminenco.of the British empire. From tlie balusters overr looking the noble and branching stair« lease iiaye 1 .observed , the neir to the throne looking down on- the gorgeous, and distinguished thrpjag .slowly, ing to the i fee'eption, rooms, and surely, not on this earth could a sight be witnessed more calculated to awakon deep and sbletian thoughts in the beholder.; Here, within; a littje space, was assein-. bled much' of the energy and intelligence potent in making or marring the his- , tory of the time — distinguished states- 1 men, philosophers, judges, scholars, divines, governors aud ex-governors, of. colonies, ambassadors from all ? the ! sovereign ppwers "of. the world, maharajaliß and native princes from tbe far \ East> Soldiers and sailors have | seen, service in every clime, and who | have upheld England's hohuor in the: uttermost parts of the earth. Could (1 ' thought) an empire" which, gathered within a Minister's rooms such a company as this ever come to decay, much less pass away as Babylon s and other jpowershave succumbed to time and cbangefuL fortune ? For after all this gorgeous: pageant of apparently limitless ..wealth and power and resource, one could not but feel it must rest on something more solid than on itself ;on the farms; the factories, tbe workshops j. on the brawny armsj, atid Btrong brains, atid stout hearts, and successful industry of the millions, and last, not least, on. the wisdom of rulers and ruled ; and, therefore, just as other great nations have donie to decay, so tnay that, travelled ■New. Zealander of Lord Macaulay's fertile, brain yet become a reality oh' the ruins of London Bribge.