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Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2786, 22 May 1890, Page 2

Ne.uu.y a quarter of a century lias olapsod sinco Sir Charles Dilko paid his first visit to tho Australasian colonies, and gave us the boneflt of the impressions ho derived from a brief but observant intercourse with the various classes of our population. It was then, and still is, the fashion to decry tho presumption of tho globe-trotter who, upon the strength of such knowledgo as ho can acquire at a placo where tho steamer stops to tako in coals, assumes the prerogative of a competent critic, and passes judgment upon the laws, customs, institutions, and social economy of its people. The rebuke is deserved where the incidents of a holiday trip are mixed with reflections which have not been formed by ripe faculties industriously employed iu a study of

the subjects treated. A sweeping censure of the kind is not applicable to Sir Charles Dilke, whose knowledge of colonial affairs, if he had never been in the Australasian colonies at all, would have enabled him to write an interesting book, just as Edmund Burke by diligent research and the exercise of his marvellous mental powers, was abl ■•, to give at the trial of Warren Hastings, a graphic and comprehensive sketch of India, in all its political and economical relations, without having ever set foot on its soil, or mingled with its inhabitants. The proofs of a high capacity for dealing with public business was given by Sir Charles Dilke when a Minister of the Crown, added to the clear evidence of the useful purposes to which he devotes his hours of leisure by the publication of his two volumes in the " Problems of Greater Britain," inspire the hope that the misconduct, accident, or misfortune, or whatever it may be, which drove him from the front rank of Parliamentary fame is not absolutely irretrievable. He possesses an intimate acquaintance with the true characters, as well as with the general reputations of our leading public men, and in very few instances indeed will it be discovered that he had missed the mark, or failed to penetrate beneath the covering by which their real opinions, prejudices, or infirmities are attempted to be veiled. At present, the tastes of tho colonists are mentioned by the writer as wanting in cultivation ; deep reading is avoided, and a skimming of the surface of scientific treatises is tho measure of the professional ranks, while the reading of novels satisfies the circle within the squatter's home. On the whole, Sir Charles Dilke has drawn his portrait of the average New Zealand colonist with the friendly hand of an artist who uses neither dark colours nor a rough brush, and if the paint now and again besmears the features, there is always a compensating brightness close by, on which the eye can dwell with delight. The political movements of the respective colonies are discussed with a temperate allowance for the many disturbing influences which intrude themselves on a country only gradually reaching the perfection of a settled State, and which has to adapt its machinery to the ever varying exigencies of its progressive condition.