The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and Echo. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1384.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 4529, 4 December 1884, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and Echo.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1384.

For the cause that laoks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future tn the distance, And the good that we can do.

Sir JuLrus Vogel has never lost faith in the future of New Zealand as the centre of a great South Pacific trade. His opinions on this and many other subjects are distinguished by their great breadth of view, if they merge occasionally into the fanciful, and impracticable; His ideas haye also an agreeable freshness which" is stimulating. In a niemorandum on Nw Guinea aad the Pacific Islands, which he has subiinitted to the Cabinet, and after 1 approval ..forwarded to the AgentGeneral as an instruction expressing it-^ °f the Government, hi states the. case,..MNew Zealand with an acume_ and force that disarms

hostile criticism. Reviewing the whole question analytically, he shows that the interests of New Zealand in Hew Guinea are very secondary and indirect —that Queensland is the colony chiefly concerned. He believes that "the establishment of a foreign power in the south-east of New Guinea would in course. of time be as disastrous to Queensland as would the foreign occupation of one of its islands be to New Zealand; or the foreign occupation of Tasmania be to Victoria." New Zeaand has much more to gain from the annexation of the islands east-* ward of Australia; and New South Wales and Victoria are as much concerned in establishing British supremacy over those islands as in the exclusion of foreign influence from New Guinea. The predominance given to the New Guinea question by all the colonies involved, therefore, " a rare disinterestedness," but, he adds, " no colony has so much interest in any one island or group of islands as Queensland has in New Guinea, and the colonies are bound to look at the question from something more than a selfish point of view." The Colonial Treasurer, however, thinks " there is no reason why New Zealand and the other colonies should carry their self-sacri-ficing disposition so far as to fail to press on the Imperial Government the immense importance to them of the annexation of the Easterly Islands as well as of New Guinea." He specifies the Tonga and Samoa Groups as the most important territories in the Pacific yet unannexed, and says:—

"The Tonga Group is now ruled by an aged king. It is an open secret that whenever he dies there are likely to be such disturbances in the islands as will make the natives glad to welcome the intervention of a strong power. Viewing the situation of those islands with regard to Fiji, putting apart all other considerations, there would seem to be no doubt that Great Britain should be prepared to intervene at Tonga whenever the necossity arises. The Saraoan Islands possess advantages of which foreign Powers have shown themselves awaro. Negotiations relating to them will probably be of a very delicate nature, and it is better to refrain from saying more than that they are fully as valuaole to Great Britain as to other Powers."

The scattering of a criminal population over the islands, laying the foundation of future generations of lawless people, would, Sir Julius contends, be even more deplorable than their actual access to these colonies, where they can be kept under restraint. In the past methods employed for the attainment of these objects, the Colonial Treasurer seems to think there has been a want of diplomacy. He observes :—

"No representation on the subject can be too strong, but it is to be doubted if it is not better calculated to aid tho British Government in its negotiations that the representations should be made to it direct rather than fulminated in a manner calculated to arouse the pride of a great nation. It should be easy to show to France, from which country the danger is apprehended, that in the interests of Tier own possessions in tho Pacific, and of the large trade that must grow up between them and the colonies, it would be to hor own advantage to seek some other part of tho world as a home for her criminal population."

The principle of annexation by the colonies contained in Sir Georgs Grey's bill, which was passed by the Legislature, and reserved for the sanction of the Home Government, meets with Sir Julius Vogel's approval, and he thinks that "as far as the other Australasian colonies are concerned, it must be better in all respects that the islands annexed should, without expense to them, become integral portions of a constitutionally governed colony, in preference to a system of a protectorate, or of Crown colony government."

Sir Julius Vogel's views on Confederation are not less comprehensive than those bearing upon the foreign policy of the colonies. He argues that the Federal Council Enabling Bill is a device for trapping the colonies into alienating a part of their legislative powers. If covered by laws which they had little voice in making, bitter feelings would arise, and a struggle for emancipation from the obnoxious joke. He thinks, however, that the proposed Council should be shorn of some of its ambitious proportions and reduced to a.kind of Convention, whose business would be confined to the preparation of laws on -subjects of importance common to all the colonies, such laws to have no force until adopted by the several colonies separately. The dangers attending the creation of an outside legislature exercising powers •infringing the perfect local autonomy of the colonies have been so strongly represented by Sir George Grey that public opinion is fully educated on the subject, and Sir Julius Vogel approves the commonly received view of the question. His able memorandum, backed by the -collective force of the -few Zealand Cabinet, and representing the matured public opinion of the colony* will, we believe, exercise a very important influence upon, the final settlement' of •this, the most important question that has occupied the minds of Australasian statesmen in recent years.