HANDS OFF IN THE PACIFIC.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1606, 11 February 1884, Page 3

HANDS OFF IN THE PACIFIC.

(Pall Mall Gazette.)

It is hands off all round—with the exception, of course, of (lie hands of Englishmen. To Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, and all other "foreigners," the whole of the Pacific south of. the Equator is to bo forbidden ground, We do not understand our Australian fellow-subjects to demand annexation, except in the case of New Guinea, but they do demand that while we shall be free to annex when, where, and how we please, all other nations shall be warned off as trespassers. The South Pacific in short is to bean English preserve, The French have, indeed- the inore's the pity—got a penal settlement at New Caledonia. Therefore the Australians invite Her Majesty's Government to make serious representations to France with a view to the abolition of penal settlements in the Pacific. There is an understanding with France-inore's the pity again—that neither Power shall annex the New Hebrides. Therefore it is extremely desirable that Her Majesty's Government should seek to tie the hands of France tighter in these regions and at the same time to free itself from so inconvenient on obligation. As for the proposal to transport the scum of French brutality and crime to the near neighborhood of Australia, there to le turned loose to prey at will on the rest of the world, let that be resisted by every means in the power of the English Government. That and not less than that is the startling summons that rings across the Southern seas to the Mother Country from her children at the Antipodes.