PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 465, 23 April 1890, Page 4

PROBLEMS OF GREATER BRITAIN.

Sir Charles Dilke on New Zealand' Copious Extracts, Etc. (From Our Special Correspondent.) London, February 6. The following series of extracts from Si r Charles Dilko’s book are much fuller and more copious than those forwarded last maii. Protection in New Zealand. The year 1888 was marked by a distinct advance in the direction of protection in New Zealand as well as in Queensland and South Australia, and protection of the Victoriau type has triumphed in all three colonies. The New Zealanders, like the Tasmanians, call their tariff a revenue tariff, and assert that there are fovir strong free-traders in the Ministry, which has lately increased the duties ; but this is mere dust for colonial free-traders’ eyes. Sir Robert Stout. Sir Robert Stout is an able speaker, and a well-read, thoughtful man ; an ardent advocate of temperance principles, a strong democrat, and in religious matters an active “secularist.” Sir Robert Stout’s honesty, to my mind, is not doubtful, and he has proclaimed his convictions in favour of State ownership of land in such a way as to bo politically damaging to himself, at a time when he knew that the opinion of the colony was against him. He was damaged by his coalition with Sir Julius Vogel in the Stout-Vogel Government, from 1584t01887. Sir Robert Stout’s opponents are divided between those who foolishlyquestion his uprightness, and those who think that he weakly yielded to a clever advocate and an accomplished party leader, who is charged by his enemies with having plunged the colony into financial embarrassments from which it is now recovering. Sir Harry Atkinson is carrying out a policy of retrenchment, very necessary in New Zealand as I shall show, but now that Sir Julius Vogel has decided to give up colonial politics, for a time at least, one of the principal items of the strength of the Atkinson Ministry, namely, the terror of “ Vogel finance,” has disappeared, and the Ministry has begun to suffer from internal discord.

Lord Onslow will find, as Sir William Jervois found, that the existence of towns larger than the capital, and the jealousies of the former provinces and their chief cities are difficulties in the way of New Zealand governors. On the other hand, the colony sometimes sees cause to rejoice at the absence of a great city which forms and guides opinion, as is the case in Victoria and New South Wales with Melbourne and Sydney respectively. The" legislative peculiarities of New Zealand are it 3 system of Government life insurance, its electoral law, which leaves the demarcation of districts to a board appointed for the purpose, and its combination of a heavy succession duty, graduated according to amount from to 10 per cent, in case of strangers, making at the outside 13 per cent, in all, together with a property tax on all property over £SOO. As regards the liquor question the Queensland and New Zealand Acts are the fullest Local Option Acta in existence in any Australasian colonies, and give the temperance party that which they ask in England more than any other non-Canadian Acts *, but there is a good deal of evasion, in New Zealand as in South Australia, of all licensing provisions in portions of the colony. New Zealand, like. Canada, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and the great majority of our colonies, has payment of members, and the reduction of the number of members in the New Zealand Parliament is made doubly beneficial by tliis fact. Such a reduction was indeed in my opinion as necessary in New Zealand as it was some years ago in Greece, and the success of M. Tricoupis in halving the number of members and doubling the taxe3 shows that such operations are nob so difficult, in a parliamentary sense, as they are supposed to be. In New Zealand generally it may be said that in spite of the financial condition of the colony, which is nothing like so bad as it would be if the figures referred to an old country and nob to a new and undeveloped one, the people are contented. Moreover, a new wave of prosperity seemsabout to break upon 'the colony. The beautiful climate and the fertile" soil make, as has been pointed out by an eminent colonial politician, the women and children of the settlers happy with a happiness that belongs to working women where the cows give plenty of milk and bubtei', the fowls give plenty of eggs, the land smiles upon them, and the children thrive. Under such circumstances settlers can bear a good deal of taxation without flinching.

Population Possibilities.

If New Zealand were populated like Italy or Japan she would have from twenty to thirty millions of inhabitants within her boundaries. Her soil is fertile ; her climate as good or better; her minerals much more valuable ; and there can be no reason why this colony, small though it is as compared with most of the Australian colonies, should not one day hold thirty millions of prosperous and contented people. Variety of Production.

The advantage which will be'the making of New Zealand, is that of variety of production, which she possesses in a higher degree even than Queensland, and which must always cause her to be rich through whatever momentarydepression shemaypass. Sheep country, cattle country, minerals of every kind, timber, fruit—all the productions of the whole of the Australian colonies, and others which they do not afford, are found in united New Zealand. Her coal is not placed where it is most wanted, but, nevertheless, her steam coal is most excellent ; gold still exists, probably in large quantities, and the other minerals are all present, and will undoubtedly in time begin to yield their harvest. New Zealand has to some extent been handicapped by a war expenditure. Repudiation, which has been suggested by some English books which have aroused fierce indignation in the colony, is as unlikely in the case of New Zealand as in the case of any of the colonies of Australia, and the colony is now settling down into what is likely to prove an era of more permanent prosperity than she has yet enjoyed. Character of New Zealand Settlers. There is a good deal of originality in the character of the New Zealand settlers. Men holding peculiar and even eccentric opinions obtain power and influence in New Zealand more readily than in the Australian colonies. While Victoria was first in the introduction of many radical reforms, and while Queensland has ab the present moment taken her place as the most demonstrative and active, politically speaking, of the colonies, New Zealand is now coming to the front in the field of political and social experiment. < Comparisons. I Physically it may be said that there is

absolutely no resemblance between New Zealand and Australia, except in the facts that gold and wool are produced in each. We find, of course, in New Zealand much that is common to New Zealand and to Australia, bub common also to these and to the Canadian Dominion much that is generally colonial: blackened stumps about the fields, the absorption of the community in agricultural or pastoral pursuits, good fellowship, the manliness of the men, the plentiful, 'perhaps exaggerated, use of tea, even the slang, descending as it does from the diggers’ tongue, first born in California about 1850, j but nothing can be more complete than the contrast between Australia and New Zealand. Marcus Clarke has told us that weird melancholy is the dominant note of Australian scenery, which is true enough for the Australian landscape is as lonely as melancholy, and as solemn as the Roman Gampagna, with the added weirdness of bark-shedding trees and of uncouth beasts and birds. New Zealand is wholly differ- : ent—severe and frowning in the south, open and alluring in the north, with a bright Polynesian loveliness. Australia is, as we have seen in summer, 1 a land of dry rivers, brown grass, yellow lurid glare and brassy sun ; and in the greater part of winter a land of blue sky and sof tsmoky haze. New Zealand in summer may resemble parts of Australia in winter, but she has a real winter in her south islands and a wet winter in her extreme north. The west coast of the Middle or South Island, whence come the New Zealand coal and gold, is a country of constant rain, of glaciers and of tree fern, and clattering parroquets, inexpressively distinct from the dried-up Australian goldfields of Sandhurst). South central Australia has the climate of Greece ; whilst New Zealand, owing to its enormous length from north to south, has, like Japan, and for the same reason, all the climates of the world except the dry brilliancy of Australia or Greece. New Zealand, which is almost tropical at the Bay of Islands, is Scotch at Invercargill. It is happy for Australians that they can visit the perpetual snows, and stand sometimes by the rushing, murderous torrent rivers of New Zealand usually half lost in their gigantic stony beds. They find something there to dream of when they return to their native creeks—beds of small rivers, consisting of mere baked mud—and swelter through the still heat of their long dry days, watching the mirage through the fierce yet healthy heat of their burnt-up plains. New Zealand Scenery. New Zealand scenery, with that of Japan, is the most beautiful of the temperate world. The one drawback to living in the loveliest part of New Zealand is the drawback to Japan—the wind. The west coast of the South or Middle , Island of New Zealand 13 unequelled in the 1 combination of jungle with low glacier. It is as fine a coast in its way as the west coast of Guatemala, but it bears no resemblance to that or any other in the globe. The glaciers come down almost as low as that of Norway on account of the great rain- , fall, the constant damp, and the absence of . a true winter; while the tree ferns of the largest size resemble palm trees in their apparent tropical loveliness. In the central part of the North Island, in a warm , and less wet climate, having just enough I rain to moisten its rich soil, the snow peak of Mount Egmonb and the strange white 1 mass of Tongariro rival the snow dome of , Mount Cook of the Southern Alps. On the . coast of the Middle or South Island are fiords as wild as those of Norway or Labrador, and in the extreme south rocks , as rugged as those of the Sanguenay. It is ■ indeed to be hoped that in our day New , Zealand may be able to export .to us something besides wool aud frozen meat, for the r true poetry of nature should belong to the k New Zealand youth ! New Zealand and the Pacific. I If New Zealand wishes to play a great - part in the future in the Pacific she will 1 do well to take farther steps bo strengthen j herself in a military sense. 1 I•** • * » ■ 1 It would be impossible to return 1 to the New Zealand programme because no arrangements between England, Franco and Germany would now suffice, inasmuch as the Americans 1 have abandoned their former position of . not interesting themselves in the affairs of the Pacific, and have virtually obtained a , magnificent harbour in Samoa, have subsidised a steamship line, and have shown ! that they mean to play a parb in the ! Pacific. Intercolonial Federation. It would be wise, even at some sacrifice of form, to bring New Zealand into federation, as she would strengthen Victoria in resisting the possible secession from the | British Empire of oue colony. The clause 1 allowing a colony to withdraw from federaj tion would, of course, have no hearing one way or the other upon the larger point of withdrawal from the Empire. The New > Zealandei’s seem generally to take the view that the Australasian colonies ought to pre--1 vent the isolated secession from the Empire of a single colony. They argue that Canada ' is a federal dominion large enough to have ' an opinion of her own, and that if Canada wished to leave the British Empire it is 1 obvious that she could not be prevented from so doing, but that this view is nob applicable to colonies generally and withou limit.

Means ought to be found to satisfy New Zealand that there is no intention of making her a dependency of Australia. The poinb at issue is in fact that point. The Australian colonies in any matter in which the interests of Australia and of the far detached New Zealand were different, would easily out-vote New Zealand on the Federal Council. New Zealaud desires to have a general control by her Legislature of the applicability or non-applicability of federal acts to the colonylof New Zealand. It is a natural feeling, bub one which might be satisfied and yet New Zealand take part in the Federal Council.