SIR J. VOGEL’S SECOND SUPPRESSED LETTER.

Patea Mail, 19 December 1881, Page 4

SIR J. VOGEL’S SECOND SUPPRESSED LETTER.

A SECOND suppressed letter by Sir Julius Vogel has been published. A considerable part of it is occupied in discussing the point whether Sir J. Vogel was holding office for the convenience of the Government at the lime of the loan negotiations. Sir J. Vogel then proceeds : —“ lam not surprised at the opinion you expressed concerning the recompense I have enjoyed for my services, since that opinion is consistent with the treatment I have received from your Government, as well as with the essential difference in our policies. When I took office under Sir William Fox in 1869-70, the colony was in a greatly more depressed condition than when you took office in 1879. The policy of my colleagues and myself was founded on an entire belief in the resources of New Zealand and the necessity of developing them. The depression which followed your accession to office was very differently viewed by you. Fortunately, the effects of our policy still sufficiently remained to tide the colony through the blank despair of your policy. And, as I have before said, had it not fortunately happened that people in England had a better opinion of the colony’s resources than that expressed by its Government, most serious financial disasters might have followed the panic-stricken utterances of last year. You are good enough to express a halting approval of my opinion that good faith demands from the statesmen of New Zealand the completion of the trunk system of railways. lam amused by your hint of my want of knowledge of existing conditions. I fancy, if I visited New Zealand, the colonists would have as much faith in my knowedge of existing conditions as in yours, Frankly however (11 differ), with the way in which you banish into the remote future a question to which, in my mind, the good faith of the statesmen is pledged. Those who have made vast fortunes out of the railway policy must remember that they owe the railways adjacent to their lands to the colony’s credit, and that that credit was given because it was believed in all parts of the colony that the scheme of trunk lines would be fulfilled. There is no reason whatever why the fruition of the original plan over a moderate period should be delayed. Properly placed before the British public, such a scheme would be welcomed. Bailway enterprise has made enormous strides during the last few years. Money for railways in America, remote from settlements and civilisation, is being supplied at a littl® over per cent., and money to any reasonable extent would be forthcoming for railways in a British colony, backed up by the contingent guarantee of the Government. As a matter of fact, public opinion all over the world has justified the policy of New Zealand ; and you are now lifiing in invnitely better times for giving that policy effect than when it was commenced. It would be a sad thing for New Zealand that timidity and selfishness should stand in the way of a complete and early development of a thoroughly effective system of railways. Depend on it, if the colony will make the railways, the railways will make the colony, I have to ask you to be good enough to add this letter to the others already published. lam sending a copy of it to a friend in New Zealand — a course which I consider 1 am justified in adopting.