THE TRADE OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 128, 29 January 1874, Page 2

THE TRADE OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS.

Mr. Vogel in his after-dinner speech at Dunedin thus alludes to this subject:— "Within a few days’ sail of New Zealand, and naturally commanded by New Zealand on account of the direction of the prevailing winds, there are countries capable of supporting enormous populations and of yielding immense productions. They are countries the management of which calls for the exercise of the highest possible statesmanship. It is not because I see around me so many of those who are devoted to the cause of missionary labor that I say this much, but because I feel that there is truly no nobler mission within the reach of colonists who like to aspire to something beyond the immediate wants of the passing day, than that of turning from heathenism the residents on those countless islands of the South Sea; and when we consider that that can be done concurrently with the progress of all those arts and manufactures which command our most ardent sympathies in this colony, surely it is a work to which we should turn our attention. The Alauritius might be an example for us. That is a country the area of which is less than 450,000 acres, but which yields produce to the value of one and a-half to three millions a year. Yet within easy reach of New Zealand there lie neglected—and I care not under what country’s flag they are —there lie countless islands that might be made more productive than the Mauritius. That trade, I say, it should be our object by every possible means to develop. What I think those means should be lam not at liberty now to state; but I hope that the whole question will command the attention of the Parliament of -the colony at no distant day. New Zealand might be made an emporium of those great fibres by which mainly the human race is clothed—cotton and wool. With labor cheap and plentiful, we ought to be able to turn these fibres to advantageous use, and, from the commerce which would result, we ought to make New Zealand—what from its climate, and its great supply of coal, it seems by nature destined to become —a great manufacturing colony.