SIR HENRY PARKES ON THE COLONIES.

Patea Mail, 3 July 1882, Page 3

SIR HENRY PARKES ON THE COLONIES.

At a banquet given to Sir Henry Parkes in London, H.R.H. the- Duke of , Edinburgh presiding, Sir Henry Parkes in reply to the toast of the evening said : 11 It was twenty-eight years since he was first elected to the local Legislature, and during those years of Parliamentary and official life, while confessing his sins as he freely did, he thought he should be a much worse man if he had not offended a great number of people. He did not believe in those excellent characters who had no enemies. As for himself, he had made such a bountiful crop of enemies that though he had gone through some twenty-four elections, he never was allowed on going back to his constituency to walk over the ground. Having referred to the questions with which it had been his duty to deal-—education, the amendment of the representative system, local self-government, and the liquor traffic—he observed that since he had been in London he had been told by various voices that New South Wales was a free-trade country. In connection with that subject, he desired to say that, whether in Government or in Opposition, whether Minister, or member of Parliament, or citizen, he had striven to keep steadily in view the example of the Mother Country. Not that he slavishly copied ■ all that the Mother Country was doing. If New South Wales was more in accordance with the commercial policy of England than some of the other colonies, it was because, to his mind, it was undeniable that every man in acquiring property by his labor had a right to expend that property in obtaining what suited his convenience best or ministered most to his tastes, without any legislative interference whatever. If he now assumed for a time to represent the whole of the Australian colonies, he was sure he would not be misunderstood. He only wished to speak of the whole rather than the section of the country which he more particularly represented. New Zealand, which, speaking generally, ought always to be classed with the Australian colonies, covered an area of 105,342 square miles. Adding that to the great island continent known as Australia, they had an area consisting of 3,127,688 square miles, which might be said to be equal to the area of the United States or the vast possessions of the Canadian Dominion. When he first went out to New South Wales the population of that vast territory was not more than 200,000 ; it had expanded to-day to a population of nearly 3,000,000. In thirty years their trade had risen from a value of £6,000,000 to £63,000,000. In 1871 it was £63,000,000 ; in 1880 it ha'd risen to £94,000,000. The average of their trade for every inhabitant was £l2 higher than in Great Britain, five times higher than in Europe as a whole, and five and a half times higher than in the United States.

The gold extracted in thirty years amounted to £292,000,000. In 1870 their wool crop was 193,000,0001bs.; in 1879 it was 392,000,0001b5. In 1880 the shipping entered and cleared was 8,500,000 tons. They had one million and a quarter of horses, eight million and a quarter of cattle, and 75 million of sheep. In conclusion, the hon. gentleman again returned thanks for the warmth of the welcome he had. received. Loud cheers greeted the close of this excellent speech. .