A Wrong Standard.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 31, 31 July 1902, Page 18

A Wrong Standard.

The English publicist who still imagines that Wellington is somewhere in Australia, and who thinks river ferry boats the medium of communication between Australia and New Zealand, has been focussing his gigantic intellect on Mr Seddoa, and applying his own Liliputian standard to our Premier's claims to a voioe in Imperial concerns. He sagely points out that the population of New Zealand is only 761,000, which, by the way, proves that the critic is not yet in possession of the census returns compiled in March of last year. He also incidentally mentions that the population of Glasgow is 735,000, of Liverpool 627,000, of Cape Colony 587,000, of Natal 69,000, and of Hastings 62,913. And he then asks what would be thought if the Mayor of Hastings had brought up to London an « unofficial mandate ' on Imperial Trade Policy ! The obvious answer is that just as much would be thought of the proceeding aB if the mayor of a provincial town in the Colony were to go to Wellington and try to instruct Sir J. GK Ward in the composition of a Loan Bill or the construction of a railway policy. The critic omits to mention that the mission of Mr Seddon is only part of a wide colonial movement, having for its object the consolidation of Imperial interests and the crystallisation of Imperial sentiment in some tan . gible fashion. It may be, as Mr Barton says, that for Borne time the mutual obligations of the Mother Country and the colonies will be interpreted in terms of the heart rather than in terms of the counting-house. But despite the vaticinations of economists, who declare that a zollverein is for the present impracticable, something practical is certain to come, even though it should cotce about by the unwritten law of national feeling and not from written oom pacts. The bearer of a message from one of the parties to a pro.* ject such as this must not be compared to the mayor of a provincial town. The comparison is not fair. The potentialities are much greater in a young and progressive colony than in even the most nourishing city. New Zealand, yet barely half a century old, has a trade amounting to about twenty-four millions per annum. The trade of all the British Colonies amounts to £212,000,000, or nearly one -third of that of the whole Empire. Though this is considerable, it is only a fraction of what will yet be acoomplished, and the importance of the Colony, like that of all the others, is to be measured not so much by present results a3 by future possibilities. There is an unwritten law at courts that the ambassador of an independent country takes rank equally with others who represent nations much larger and more important. The Premiers of the colonies, who are now meeting in conference in London, can surely lay claim to the same considera tion.