NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5237, 5 January 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEW ZEALAND.

(From the London Times, November - 8.) An absolutely perfect state of things is seldom found by anybody to exist in the country in which he himself is living. Those who are most willing to give credit to the excellence of all that surrounds them are well aware, too, that it is tempered by not a few faults and defects. The ancient Greek looked abroad for a blamelessness he could not discover at home. To the far north, and south, and east, and west there were, no doubt, people among whom the quality was to be found. The Hyperboreans and Ethiopeaur, the Indians, and the iuhabitantsof the far off islands of the blessed might all be possessed of it, but the Greeks certainly were not. The modern Englishman it would appear must look still further away from home to find an object for the same faith. England, he is well assured, is not perfect. His instinct for perfection must be satisfied, if at all, by the accounts he gets of the Antipodes. Tho speech of Sir Julius Vogel on New Zealand, which we reported yesterday, comes thus opportunely to gratify a natural craving. The picture it presents is all light, without one shadow to relieve it or darken it in any of its parts. In population and in wealth New Zealand, we are told, has been making good progress. Local rivalries, which have been very mischievous indeed in aur other Australasian settlements, have had the happiest results in this. In almost every department .of industry New Zealand can compare well with her more powerful neighbors. She cultivates already almost as much land as all of them together. Her varieties of climate, from temperate to semi-tropical, are favorable to corresponding varieties of natural products. Her wool trade is important, and it is fast increasing. Her mineral resources, vast as they are already proved to be, are far from having been fully explored. Small ns she is, comparatively speaki g, she has her 800 miles of railroad, and by the end of next June will have her 1000 miles, bringing in a net income of £174,000. Her inhabitants, it is true, are of tho same stock as ourselves, and might be expected to reproduce our faults. This, however, is a conclusion which Sir Julius Vogel does not admit without reserve. They are of the same stock, but they are not .ordinary specimens of it, being both better in themselves and better educated than those whom they have loft behind in England. If there is a weak point anywhere in New Zealand, it might have' been supposed to be the amount of the national debt. Tho railroads and other public works iu which New Zealand rejoices have not been obtained for nothing, and as they grow tho bill will grow with them. Even here, however, Sir Julius Vogel has a word of comfort for his hearers. A national debt in the present day is the common lot of all nations. People must no more expect to bo free from it than from the other evils of humanity. There is a difference, ton, between the debt incurred by New Zealand and by tho countries of the Old World. The money has been spent, not on war, but on the development of industry. ft has added something more than its own amount to the va’ue of the land on which it rests! and it will do better still by ami by. It includes, too. a god many items which are not ordinarily reckoned as part of a national debt at all. We must take iu our own local bur-lens before we can compare our own state with that of New /lealaud iu the matter of finance. The Government holds, moreover, some 3 4,000,000 acres which it will sell in due course, and it received last year a clear million of revenue from the sale and lease of a very small part of these. The state of affairs is thus perfect at every point. Here is the reality we have bee i .-igbing after, or looking for in the land of dreams. Virtue struggling with adversity may be a sight dear to the gods. Vutue iu the enjoy, meat of prosperity is the sight which the Agent-General of Now Zealand prelers, with good judgment, to'disclose to the gaze of Englishmen.

We arts "lad to have the pleasing report. Sir •Tillius Vogel puts before us. The finance of New Zealand has not, we fear, been always thus favorably looked upon. The public debt of the islands is so largo in proportion to tlioir resources that it needs to bo accounted for and excused. If we compare it with the uumb.ii'of the. inhabitants, wo shall find ' hat t'no share of each person is nearly twice as great as that of each member of the United Kingdom in our own national debt. Weoandidly admit the force of the differences which Sir Julias Vogel has pointed out. Our own debt does not, indeed, all represent money wanted or employed unproductivelv, but a very large part of it certainly does. But it is not always that public works turn out as good an investment as Sir Julius Vogel seems to imagine. His defence of thejjn, as a matter of principle,

is not easily to be controverted. But the principle, as experience teaches ns, is one which needs to be applied very cautiously. Money supplied by private enterprise has a good chance of being well spent and well looked after subsequently. Public money is very apt to bo employed without the same keen and constant sense of the necessity of good returns. We hope tho New Zealand State lines will realise all that Sir Julius Vogel expects from them. The State lines of India have not hitherto done ns well as those which have been worked by private companies. The fact is easily to be accounted for. Thera is not in the one case the same inducement to keep down expenses and to secure a profit that there is in the other, and there is a corresponding difference in the results of tho year's workings. New Zealand may bo more fortunate than India has been : but we fancy, in spite of all that Sir Julius Vogel can urge to the contrary, that human nature in the two countries must bo very much the same at bottom. It is such considerations as these which will somewhat temper the eagerness with which Englishmen might otherwise avail themselves of the invitation they receive to invest their money in New Zealand securities. There is, as a corrosDondent informed us yesterday, no want of capital in New Zealand itself, and it is subscribed, readily enough, for all legitimate local purposes. Wo cannot help believing that those who are on the spot, and who have accordingly the first choice, will pick out the most promising investm-nts. Those that remain may be very good and Very sound, but we may be pretty sure that they are not tho best and tho soundest. But, whatever view we may take about the possibly too flattering figures In which tho entire balance-sheet of New Zealand is shown according to the views of New Zealand statesmen, we rejoice to bo able to admit the general correctness of the statement we era asked to credit. Public works may not prove quite to justify the Ihll hopes which have been based, upon them. But that, as compared with avowedly unproductive methods of laying out public money, they should not do a great deal for ths benefit of the country, is what we eauuot think for an instant. There can bo few places in the world which have a better chance of being so prosperous than New Zealand has. Tho country is made up very largely of good farms, with an ample choice of virgin soil before them in whatever direction they may wish to extend. Tho land is free from many of the burdens which weigh heavily upon agriculture at Home. There is, as Sir Julius Vogel reminds us, no poor rate, and all other local charges are borne upon the national funds. There is no need whatever for keeping up an expensive system of external defence. The white population, more? ever, have so outnumbered the natives and so trained them in the arts of peace that there is little now to be feared from what was onco a very pressing danger. But it is not only in her extent of arable ground that New Zealand is rich. We must add to this the wealth she derives from her mines. Gold is as yet the most important of her productions from these. Her stores of coal, which exist, Sir Julius Vogel tells us, in almost every part of the islands, are oven more promising for the future, and will be of the utmost use by aud by in the development of her manufacturing industries. It is not by a little excess of expenditure in public works that a country such as this will be kept down. Even these may pay their way iu due course, in any case, they may help to create a prosperity which in turn will make them remunerative. New Zealand, we are pleased to think, has a great future before her. But wc must remind her, nevertheless, that it is in the future still that her great history is written. She must pardon us if wa deem it prudent for her not to discount her chances too confidently in advance.