Looking Backward.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 26, 1 February 1904, Page 4

Looking Backward.

Friday last was the tilth anniversary of the founding of New Zealand a; a colony. Commenting on this a writer in the New Zealand Herald exclaims : " What wonders have been wrought in that lime ! Seventv ■.ears ago the will untutored savage •■'■o,'ncd suprc, i„ ih,.se islands, the =l handful of missionai ies, whalers, "'"' otiier ad'. rolls spirits ; but now- large- cities ha\e sjirung into existence, and the whole countrv is dotted with Briiisn homes, churches .mil school-:. W,. h„v ir jiarks] ■ l.'.raries. and ail ealh lies ; railways traverse the iai.d. end great steuiiH-rs cniMil the H.tarves ; and the ..nee lonely bailees now smile with golden harwsts. It is indeed a marvellous transformation ; a great lent in nation-biiildiiie. 'the foundations were w.-'l and Inih laid by i.-iose noble j.ioa- ei s ~f i-iMlisalion >iin> are new pa-.ing nw:i>, one lolliiHing the other i n all too ipiick succession ll is a great country, and great things have been accomplished ; but we want a few more millions of people to share its glories with us. Our chief need is population—people of t'le right stamp, sound in mind and body, and able to help in making the progress of the next half century even greater andmore astonishing than that upon which we. can now look back with mingled pride and gratitude. Looked at in certain ways, 50 or even 100 years is not a very long lime. A writer in an English magazine recently stated that when a child he | knew an old lady who was born in 1702, who remembered being taken in very eaily childhood to see a very old man who, when a very little boy, had held the gate open for Richard Cromwell,-son of the great Oliver, to go to the meeting-house at Hursley."