SIR GEORGE FERGUSON BOWEN.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4460, 6 July 1875, Page 3

SIR GEORGE FERGUSON BOWEN.

(From The Times.) There occurs sometimes in the course of a man's life a moment of supreme good fortune and honor which it can scarcely be thought will be exceeded by anything yet to happen, and which it may be too venturesome to hope will continue always unabated. Are we, then, to consider the present possessor of it a happy man or the reverse? The old standard advice in such cases has always been to die at once, and so to put the final seal upon a felicity which is uncertain from its very greatness. Sir George Ferguson Bowen is still so young a man, and he has, we may well hope, so many years of honorable usefulness before him, that we will not, in our o-vn interests, counsel him thus effectually to insure himself against the unseen dangers of the future ; but he is clearly just- now one of the class to whom the advice must be considered applicable. He has conducted with rare success the important tasks which have been successively assigned to him as a Governor in our Australian dependencies, and he has returned home for a short breathing space to receive the public recognition of his services, to have his friendship claimed as an honor by a member of our Koyal Family, and to listen to the applause of a company well able to judge of what he has done, and to estimate the ldnd of merit his position has enabled him to display. In his speech, which we reported yesterday, he could give a good account of the stewardship which had been intrusted to his hands, nor does the correctness of what he said depend in any way upon his own unsupported testimony. From Queensland, from New Zealand, and from Victoria the same kind of report had already reached us through many channels, and a just share of praise has always been given to the Governor under whose superintendence the colonies have grown and flourished. Sir George Bowen on Thursday last standing in his own country, and with his distant colony stretching far away beneath his feet, was able to tell us of the advance which had been made under his care, of the wealth and peace and general prosperity and contentment of the wide regions he had administered; and the retrospect may well have been satisfactory to him. His enemies, if such there be, may perhaps assert that the results of which he spoke are to be referred to causes with which he has had no concern, and that a wise administration has had the least possible share in a product which is due mainly to natural advantages and to the vigor and enterprise of the individuals who have turned them to account. We will admit the necessity of these influences, but we will assert, for all that, that if the others had been wanting the result would have been very different. There are times and places in which the highest wisdom is shown by a policy of non-interference steadily 'pursued in spite of all temptations to the contrary, and where this has been eminently successful we shall not ask too curiously whether it has been really the highest wisdom which has guided it. Good luck has, no doubt, contributed its full share to Sir George Bowen's political achievements ; but "good luck" is often another word for a thousand nameless virtues, and persistant good luck is so very much like persistent merit that the ungracious distinction, if it exists, is seldom safely to be drawn. 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, j and 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 more 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 final 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 rdads, felling forests, and, generally, of preparing the way for a civilisation which has now encroached so 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 Bmaller States of. Europe, and 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 well governed, and are contented under a system which allows them a principal share in the control of their own destinies. 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 whoso fostering care they ascribe, with truth, a great portion of their blessings. A love for England, a genuine loyalty to the British Crown, and a senao of mutual interest are the light bonds which at present unite them with ourselves and with one another, and, whatever new form these may take, it is not in the nature of things that such a yoke should be easily broken or cast aside. They are, we believe, not likely to desert us willingly, and we are sure that we ourselves shall be most unwilling to throw them off. We will not quito say that we cannot do without one another, but we may safely assert that both parties to the connection will find their best interest in maintaining it, and as long as that is the case we may look with confidence to the future no less than with hearty satisfaction to the present. Other nations than our own may boast of their achievements in war, or of the more than doubtful gain of provinces which they have wrested from their neighbors, and which they must hold still by the same arts by which they

acquired 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 anxious 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 have gained their experience at a distance, or are now, in the temporary want of work at homo, 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. It was natural that • Sir George Bowen should say something of the future destiny of the nations over which he has presided. Their past growth has been so rapid, and their prospects have become so splendid, that the question suggests itself whether their relations with us are likely to bp maintained permanently on their present footing, and whether States which have grown already to be almost the rivals of their mother country will be always satisfied to continue as her mere dependencies. To let well alone for the present is the substance of Sir George Bowen's very sensible advice, The Australian colonies are, he assures us, thoroughly loyal and attached to their mother country. The time may come when they will desire to be more closely united with her, and to be admitted to a share in the government of an Empire of which they will be no mean. part. The matter, however, though a most important one, and one which may possibly come forward before our own generation has passed away, is not yet pressing itself practically upon our notice. » Nor is Sir George Bowen ready with any_ comprehensive scheme for the closer union of the colonies with one another—a thing which he admits may be desirable, but which he thinks it would be foolish to attempt to force on before its time. Australia, happily for herself, lies so far away from the stormy atmosphere of Europe, and she has so little reason to apprehend danger from the near presence of a too powerful neighbor, that she can safely go on for a while as she has gone on hitherto, and may continue to be a system of States rather than a single great Power, in the absence of any danger which could make union necessary. The Canadian Bund has been formed in some degree under pressure from the United States ; but Australia is under no such constraining influence, aud she can afford to wait upon events, and need not anticipate them by a policy for which the circumstances have not yet occurred. It may be well, even so, that all these matters should be sometimes discussed ; and there can be at least no harm in the endeavor to familiarise ourselves with the notion of a vast united Empire, in which our remote dependencies in the far-off East and West will find a place, and of which the old country will be the centre and the common link of union. For some time yet it can only be a dream, but it is a dream which we are the better for indulging in, and the day in which it will be fulfilled literally may be nearer than any of us suppose. It is something meanwhile to be assured that events are at anyrate proceeding in the right direction. Whatever may be our relations with our Australian Colonies fifty or a hundred years hence, we cannot be wrong now in keeping up a loyal union between all the distant members of the Great Britain that is to be. There can be no possibility of error in such a policy as this. It is quite possible that Sir George Bowen and our other Colonial Governors may be preparing the way for the grandest Federation of States the world has witnessed, but we are sure anyhow that their present services are useful, and we observe with pleasure that they are recognised, as they deserve, as often as the occasion presents itself. _^_____