COLONISATION OF POLYNESIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4169, 31 July 1874, Page 5

COLONISATION OF POLYNESIA.

TO THE EDITOR, Sir, —The Colony being invited to consider a Ministerial proposal to guarantee £50,000 per annum for fifty years to English capitalists, who will invest £1,000,000 in a New Zealand and Polynesian Company, I trust the importance of the subject will be a sufficient excuse for asking a little of your space to briefly offer a few crude suggestions. One of the objects proposed is “ to colonise the Islands of the South Pacific.” The question occurs, what race of people would an English company of planters and traders in Polynesia import. The company is. to be prohibited from employing forced labor, and consequently, when they would find free Polynesian labor no more to be relied on than Maori labor, where will English capitalists look for the cheapest and most reliable labor on then 1 Polynesian plantations ? For years past the teeming millions of China have been swarming southward on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. Numbers of those industrious people have reached even as far south as our own Colony. They are a frugal and industrious race, but their presence is not favorable to European colonisation •• side by side with them. If New Zealand is to guarantee 5 per cent on the capital of the company, I think it should be on condition that there should be only one managing director, and that all the directors should be residents of New .Zealand, and that they would not promote Asiatic colonisation in the Polynesian Islands. The English, and other shareholders outside the Colony ought to be satisfied with allowing the affairs of the company to be directed and managed by those who are most interested in its success, viz., by the Government, on behalf of the New Zealand tax-payers, and by the resident shareholders, who would bo doubly interested as shareholders and tax-payers. If the Polynesian climate is fit for the European constitution to labor there, it would be a pity to see the islands taken possession of by the Chinese. The entire stoppage of forced Polynesian labor on the plantations, will probably pave the way for colonising those interesting islands with Mongolians or other Asiatics, instead of a European race. Should that be the case, I doubt if the people of New Zealand would wish to admit the South Sea Islands into one dominion with her after they had been colonised in-this Asiatic fashion. If a company guaranteed by New Zealand is to be formed, I think it should be on condition of there being no managing directors, or other directors, meeting or managing out of New Zealand, and that all imported labor should be either European or of European descent, and that the company should neither lease nor sell any of its plantations to Asiatics, nor do anything to promote an influx of Chinese or other Asiatics into the South Sea Islands. If Polynesia be colonised by any other race than Europeans, it will be not be fit for self-govern-ment ; and, instead of becoming a part of a New Zealand Dominion, like Canada, Polynesia should be paternally governed by force as a dependency. Mr. Vogel states that “the ultimate object which he has in view is the establishment of the Polynesian Islands in one Dominion, with New Zealand the centre of Government.” That being the ease, it is to be hoped that if the proposed company is to bo k formed, the agreement with Mr. Whitaker may be altered so as to avoid the danger of an English proprietary introducing Asiatic labor to retai'd the European colonisation of the Polynesian Islands, which the introduction of either Asiatic or African labor would be certain to do by the degradation, of European labor if brought into competition with cheaper labor, which would be the sole aim of the economists of English capital.—l am, &c., W.A. Greytown, July 25.