MR VOGELS SPEECH

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 321, 14 January 1874, Page 3

MR VOGELS SPEECH

(continued from last issue) NEW ZEALAND FORESTS

The largest question demanding consideration at the present time is the question of the treatment of the existing forests of New Zealand, and of planting forests for the future of the country. (Applause.) There is no question, I think, which demands more thoughtful or serious consideration from all those who are disposed to deal with public interests in a statesmanlike manner. We are men living under a system which almost demands as a right the exercise of private licentiousness in the matter of a question which I think knows no limits. A man may now buy for £1 an acre of land with £100 worth of bush upon it. As he gets it so 'easily, he values it but lightly, and the cousequence is that it is scarcely too much to say that forests are burned down for the sake of lighting pipes, or boiling pots of tea. There is a most reckless waste of the timber of the country. No consideration is shown for the fact that those who get timber in improper seasons, or who fell it and make use of it as it should be used, are injuring not only their own property, but the property of others, by the wasteful destruction of which they are guilty in regard to the timber of tlie country. Take the case of kauri. I believe that there is no more valuable timber than kauri ; but it is now sent out of the country iv suoh a state that it does not amount to anything like the value it should amount to. At present timber is being cut and put into use within three months ; it is being cut down at times when it should not be cut down. We protect oysters, we protect ducks, we protect birds, all of which Nature provides fwr us afresh in a short time. But those grand WOOda which, require for their perfection scores or even hundreds of years, we deem beneath a moment's consideration. I repeat that the question of forests demands the imperative consideration of the Government of the country. I know that I speak in the presence of some who pride themselves in the thought that 'they are ardent disciples of ultra free-trade principles, and I know also that I speak in the presence of a distinguished member of the old Conservative party of the United Kingdom. In dealing with questions of Government interference, I know that I tread upon most difficult ground, an^l deal with nmtfers in which experience and principles ever are subordinated to doctrines — doctrines elevated into the position of principles, and regai'ded as theories which it is not fair to test by the light of experience. There is a club in London — a club which meets annually for a grand demonstration to sound the praise of its early foundei', Air. Ccb'len, and to celebrate the progress of its principles throughout the world. There are always at those meetings speeches made with the greatest care, not to the club only, but to the world outside ; and those who have the curiosity to read the report of the speeches marlo at the latest meeting of the club will scarcely riso without a smile of amusement at the extravagant length to which doctrinarians will go. The meeting was presided over by Mr. Milner Gibson, who said he felt almost like a traitor to free-trade principles. And why ? Because he voted for the puchase, by the Government of the telegraph lines in England. Mr. Goschen, a Cabinet Minister, followed ; and he said that the mission of England was to set an example to the rest of the world, and he asked himself whether they were going sufficiently far in the direction of free trade — whether they sufficiently .recognised that the Government should not undertake anything that private individuals can do ? Now, as to the purchase of the telegraph lines, no man in bis senses, I should suppose, donies that the purchase has been of the greatest value to those who use the telegraph — that ib has made the use of the lines more available, and the transmission of messages more certain — or that it has been profitable to the State. All experience is in favor of what was done ; yet, according to those gentlemen of the Cobden Club, what was done is not to be approved, because it is "opposed to the doctrines of free trade — in other words, because they are pleased to hold that the State should not bo allowed to do anything that private capitalists can do. I say, we must differ from the doctrines of these learned men who make free- trade doctrines their study. I cannot help thinking that in a new country — or oven in an old one, for I love the Great Britain of historical tradition as much as I love the present Great Britain, with all its fine theories and its enormous development of wealth — we must take lessons from the teachings of experience, and they teach that, theories and "theorists notwithstanding, there are things which Governments can do with greater advantage than private individuals. I instance telegraphs — railways. I instance such as that which has turned Java from a poor, miserable, wretched, unprosperous place, as it was in 1830, to the mo3t prosperous tropical country I believe on the face of the earth. . I instance too, the introduction of beetroot sugar by the Governments throughout Europe. I ask whether we are to accept the teachings of any school of political c onomy as against . the teaclnng which nature itself implants. Can any doctrine of any school convince me that it is not the duty of the Government — the representative of the whole people — to step forward and sap that it is against the most sacred laws of God to allow those grand works of Nature, the trees of the forest, which have required hundreds of years to come to maturity, to be wastefully, profligately cut down, not for use, but absolutely for the mere pleasure of waste, as has been the case in this colony and others ? It is a desecration, I say, of principles which we ought to revere, to allow any such thing. (Applause.) This question demands the mo3t urgent attention of the Government of the colony — not of the Government only, but of the Provincial Governments also. It demands the largest consideration from you, sir, and from the Superintendents of other provinces. Shall we not say that there shall bo some protection for the forests — that timber shall only be cut at proper times, and only be used after having been properly seasoned ? Shall our valuable timber be allowed to be wastefully burned and destroyod ? Shall the experience of Europe, of India, and of America pass by us as nothing? I ask that the*o questions be carefully considered — the preservation of the forests we have, anil tha planting of forests for the future. We must not be insensible to the fact thai, if, whilst using the forests of to-day, we do not plant others for the future, we are inevitably injuring the climate of the colony. We must not forget that, in planting forest trees, we improve the value of the land they come to shelter. I believe that in France the revenues of the state are annually increased to a large amount by receipts from Stjjfce

forests. So I believe it Is in Germany. In Hanover there are 900,000 acres under the charge of the forest conservators. We, in this colony, establish sinking fundß for our loans ; but if that sinking fund were invested in planting fc>tate forests, which would be available as security for the creditors' of the colony, instead of £1, at the end of 40 years at 5 per cent, interest, being quadrupled it would, I believe, be increased to nearly a hundredfold. (Applause.) There is one other question upon which' I should like to say a few words, and that is the question of acquiring

THF TRADE OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS. 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 couutries 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, hut because I feel that there is truly no nobler mission within the reach of colonists who to aspire to something beyond the immediate wants of the passing day than that of turning from heathenism the residents of those countless islands of the South Seas ; and when we can consider that that can be done concurently 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 Mauritius is worth citing as an example. That is a country the area of which is less than 450,000 acres, but which yields produce to the value of from two 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 lay 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 1 am not at liberty now to state ; but I hope that the whole subject will command the attention of the Parliament of the colony at no distant day. In New Zealand might be made to meet those two great fibres by which maiuly the human race is clothed — cotton and wool. With labour cheap and plentiful, we ought to be able to turn those fibres to advantageous use, and, with 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 and commercial colony. (Applause.) I will not now detain you by going into other questions, though there are others that are important to us, for with them you are more or less familiar ; but the two questions which I have dwelt on shoidd be ventilated and most carefully considered, and T believe they will command consideration, not only in this province, but throughout the colony.