OUR JUBILEE.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 444, 8 February 1890, Page 3

OUR JUBILEE.

Auckland, Feb. 4. At the Temperance Hall last night, “ Our Jubilee ” formed the subject of Mr Gulliver’s address. He said that during the past week the people of Auckland had been holiday-making—it might almost be described as universal “ beer and skittles ” —in honour of the Jubilee. It seemed only reasonable to rejoice in the vast changes which had been wrought in the past fifty years, when we saw populous cities standing on hills and plains so recently covered with flax and ti-tree, our harbours filled with ships and powerful steamers which reduce the distance from the Old World from three or four months to as many weeks, while the electric wire brings us day by day the European news of yesterday. Bourienne, in his “Memoirs of Napoleon,” tells how the Emperor, in the height of his power, caused a magnificent mass to be celebrated in the Church of Notre Dame at Paris, and during the celebration turned to one of his old generals and asked him if it were not “very fine.” “Very,” replied the gruff old man ; “it only needs the presence of the million of men who gave their lives to put an end to all that to make it complete!” And so in our own case, we are often forced to think that we have crossed the seas and sacrificed, in many cases, frieads, family ties, fortune and health, to found a nation which should be free from the evils of the Old World ; and yet, in spite of all the ad : vantages of a fresh start in a new and beautiful country, we see the evils of the Old World, which we sacrificed so much to escape, reproducing themselves here. Our jubilant tone just now, too much resembled the jubilation of little Jack Horner over his Christmas pie, and his persistent assertion, “ What a good boy am I!” It was well to look a little at the other side of the picture and then they might see that they were not sudh “ little Jack Horners ” as they tried to make out, and that in many ways they should have had a better account to give of themselves than present circumstances would warrant. Wecame to this country to escape the evils of the Old world. We found a virgin land, fertile soil, a lovely climate. It seemed reasonable to believe that the bitter strife of competition, the narrow sectarian jealousies, the shocking extremes of wealth and poverty would be unknown in this favoured land,but what had been the result ? In their eager selfseeking they had created a “ Frankenstein ” —a monster in the shape of a “ national debt ” which would haunt them for many a day, while the misgovernment which they had permitted had already reproduced among them all the evils they had left their native land to avoid. How could they ever have imagined that the comparative handful of people in this colony could support a Government cumbrous and expensive enough to govern not New Zealand only, but all the Australian colonies as well? Was it any wonder that such a Government became a veritable “mill,’ whose main function is to grind out taxes ? Carlyle speaks of the “dim, potential might have been.” He is looking at the rugged face of an English farm labourer; he notes the traces of ignorance, of hardship, of ill-treat-ment, of lack of human intelligence and sympathy in those dull, stolid features, and contrasts it with what, under happier circumstances, it “ might have been.” Fifty years ago New Zealand was, as it were, a white sheet of paper on which it was our privilege to write the history of a young nation which might have been the very flower of the whole world, whereas the most Jubilee-intoxicated individual amongst us must admit that the record now contains very much to be ashamed of.

Now that the false stimulus supplied by the borrowed millions has passed off and left little to show that is worth having—and the heavy bill to pay—we see that the country has not progressed as it should have done, and why ?—because speculation rather than honest settlement has been encouraged, because we have favoured the acquisition of large tracts of land by individuals to be held for the unearned increment, and have encouraged wholesale gambling with the public estate. We were so delicately sensitive that we would send to Wellington to say “please may we have a little innocent raffle of half a dozen pictures?” while the Government with our consent and connivance was practically raffling away the people’s land. We were living in the most marvellous age the world had ever seen, with powers so vast and skill so supreme that the brain reeled with the thought of what yet might be the future of our race if we learnt the lesson of the past and resolved to apply it to the guidance of the future. Let us look boldly at; the many evil features of our life and say of them, “ This is wrong,” and “that is wrong,” but it shall be so no longer. We will make this beautiful country the home, not of a restless, discontented, unsettled population, but of a happy, united, and contented people, so that when our children in their turn, in the happier future, hold high Jubilee, they may say as they contemplate their pleasant land, “We have heard and read stories of the hard times of the past, but they are now quite forgotten, and have become mere ‘grandfather’s tales.’”