SIR ROBERT STOUT'S ELEVATION.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2167, 29 May 1886, Page 3

SIR ROBERT STOUT'S ELEVATION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, — I must confess to a feeling of some disappointment on reading your short notice of the knighthood of Sir Robert Stout. Tho principles you have always advocated would have led me to believe that tho advancement of a man eminently a prototype of the second generation of colonial statesmen would have been warmly welcomed, as showing the great possibilities open to industry, energy and talent under our free institutions. You are as well aware as myself of tho history of the career of Sir Robert Stout ; you know that no influence, no family connection at Home or in New Zealand contiibuted to push him up the ladder of social and political distinction ; that his native talent finding its outlet through our equal and just laws has been the sole means of raising him to the proud position he has grasped. What, •ir, did we all expect and hope for when we deliberately and with gteat labour built up our education system ? Why are we now submitting to taxation to provide for an expenditure of something o\er half a million a year to maintain that system ? Why have we in connection with, and as a lesultof that system lowered our patent fees to a nominal sum, and within the last few year* established a radical franchise, except that we desire to create in tho future a race of self-reliant men, who shall have risen through thes>e agencies to such of tho coveted positions of honour in the State as their abilities may entitle them to? In this free country theie is not, and there cannot be, any aiistocracy but an aristocracy of intellect, and the event of Sir R. Stout's knighthood marks this in a pronounced manner. No one will \entina to dispute with you the claims of Major Atkinson and Mr Bryco ; I cordially agree that the service-, of both these gentlemen fully merit distinction. Her Majesty's Birthday, tho jubilee of her beneficent reign, the exhibition of the wonderful progress of the colonies now going on in London, and the wonderfully increased influence of tho colonies in the councils of the Empire have no doubt been propitious for the present Premier of the colony and his knighthood. But the colonists of New Zealand cannot, I think, fail to regard with a legitimate pride the reception of such a mark of distinction by the boy who landed at tho age of twenty in New Zealand, was but a schoolmaster at twenty-seven, was a leading lawyer and jurist at thirty-three, was Attorney-General at thirty-seven, Premier of the colony at forty-three, and is now, as far as I am aware, the youngest knight in the wide colonial possessions of H er Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria. —I am, yours faithfully, Young New Zealand.