NATIONAL HAPPINESS.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 79, 5 April 1879, Page 3

NATIONAL HAPPINESS.

Mr. Lowe say* that to seek for glory, prestige, increase of territory is in a people loadnoss, and in a Government crime, localise there are objects distinot from

that happiness, what then ? That is insanity. Be it so. Bat if nations can be happy only by being insane, in vie tl abandon the pursuit of happiness V In thai ca*B Mr. Lowe's argument falls to the ground. The fact is people must bo allowed to be happy in their own way, and a siniilar right mast be conceded to nations. There are some men wfcb cannot be happy unless they are allowed to be ambitious—to pursue glory, success fame, phantoms, anything Mr. Lowe likes to cull them. There are nations, of the calibre, who cannot be happy unless they are colonising, conquering, humanising distant! races—in a word asserting themselves. England is one of them. Borne people enjoy being kicked; but it is well known that Englishmen do not: and ruilier than be kicked they will fight -'Europe, Asia, the whole world. They could not sit down happy under the kicking. What further proof does Mr. Lowe require of the utter irrelevancy and wortherlessness of his dictum that Governments are bound to confine themselves to the task of making the people they serve happy f Tet though the doctrine is wortherless and even fatal for Mr. Lowe's purpose it is none the less of value when properly understood and properly applied. It is the duty of a Government to try to make a people happy; but it must consult the nation as to what its happiness consists in. Mr. Lowe professes to tell England what will make it happy. But that is because Mi. Lowe is a pedagogue, not a statesman. Mr. Lowe would instruct the nation in all things. Statesmanship consists" in the double task of instructing it and consulting it. Mr. Gladstone's Administration forgot to consult the nation as to what would make it happy, and consequently covered it with humiliation, which rendered it exceedingly unhappy. It allowed Russia in 1870 to tear up the Black Sea treaty and fling the pieces in our face, and Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville assumed that permitting Russia to do this would leave us' happier than if it had sent a fleet to the Black Sea to prevent Russia from doing it Their assumption was wrong because it left national sentiment out of the ac-., count, and attended only to what it thought interest. In other words it divorced politics from ethics, and thereby committed an egregious blunder. Mr. Gladstone perhaps saved us from a war and yet we were not happy The connection between politics and ethics makes it plain enough that far from it being true, as Mr, Lowe would have us believe, that the Tories have lost sight of ethical principles, it is he and his friends, the Liberal party, who have of late yoars left out of sight the truth that man does not live by bread alone. Of course it is open to Mr. Lowe to assert that Imperialism means vulgar swagger, systematic aggression, and unscrupulous violence but all arguments based upon, .this dofi-_ nition will fly wide of the mark, simple reason tliat the definition is not true. Imperialism means a tendenoy and determination to play the part of a great nation, just as an economico policy means a wish to subordinate imperial and indeed all other considerations to pounds shillings and pence. The latter polioy had its trial, under Mr. Gladstone assisted by Mr. Lowe. It utterly failed to produce happiness in the nation.— Week.