OUR LONDON LETTER.

Evening Star, Issue 7877, 9 April 1889, Page 4

OUR LONDON LETTER.

• ♦ ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES. [From Our Special Correspondent.] | London, March 1. J I made a mistake last week in saying that Lord Salisbury was amongst those who went down aboard the Victoria to see the i Onslows off. The Premier was at Liverpool i street, for I saw him myself, but it was i solely for the purpose of bidding farewell to , Lord and Lady William Cecil, who were ■ going out to the Mediterranean in the steamer. Furthermore, Lord Onslow, after seeing his children and suite away by the Victoria, returned to London, and he and the Countess will not join the ship till Monday next, at Brindisi. They left London m route for Italy on Saturday morning last, a number of friends putting in an appearance at Victoria to bid them farewell. ! Mr Walter Johnstone has started for New , Zealand, in fact joins the Victoria at ■ Brindisi on Monday, He will have capital opportunities for making the acquaintance of Lord Onslow on the voyage. Mr Johnstone’s family remain in England. j Sir John and Lady Hall sail by the direct steamer next Friday, Miss Hall has ! completely recovered, and will accompany ! them, j Dr Grace has arrived, and is stopping ;in Condiut street. He leaves for Rome im- : mediately. Sir Julius Vogel has not forwarded his j resignation yet, and there is now an idea afloat that it may possibly fit in with one of I his many schemes in mibibus to return. As j against this, I may mention that he has j released his flat in Victoria street for a year, j Sir Walter Buffer will entertain seme (possibly all) of the Maori footballers at J dinner the night before they sail for Australia. Their last match will he against J Middlesex (the team they met at Sheffield j Park), when they hope to wipeout the after- ■ lunch fiasco. The team had a grand time at j Cambridge, and left, on the whole, a good , impression behind. Ellison seems to have j made himself specially agreeable to the ; undergrads—so at least young Buffer, who 'is at St. John’s, tells me. “The men” (all ’Varsity lads are men) took to him at , once, and he and Warbrick and M'Causland had far more invitations than they could ' possibly accept. Mr L. Buffer entertained } Ellison, Warbrick, and Taiaroa to breakfast.

The O.P.Q. Mining Company has finally collapsed. When Pontifex took it up its prospects for a moment brightened, and the shares were even quoted at 3s 8d premium. Some hitch, however, occurred, the brokers

repudiated their bargains, and now the money subscribed has been returned to the shareholders. This means, I’m told, that tuo promoters will lose L 5,000 or so. The Quayle Gold Mining Company is being supported chiefly (so far as 1 can determine) on the strength of Fitzgerald Moore’s “ damnably good luck.” Beyond the fact that the mine is somewhere near Te Aroha, New Zealanders appear to know literally nothing about it. The directors are mostly dabblers in Mexican mines, and the consulting engineers have had no experience whatever in New Zealand. Altogether it’s a queer kettle of fish. Nevertheless, I’m told the whole of the capital has been subscribed, and the shares are at a premium of Is 2d, I have been making quiet inquiries this week into the prospect of Mr Rees’s colonisation company going to allotment, and from what I hear I think it just possible a portion of the money may be subscribed. The intending shareholders are naturally philanthropists rather than business men. Mr Rees, ’tia fair to say, spares no pains to gain fils end. A friend of mine, who affected to ho thinking of taking shares in order to justify some questions I wanted answering, has been simply deluged with pamphlets, papers, a.xvd. prospectuses. Furthermore, Mr Crackncll kindly offers to call upon him and explain any points he wishs elucidated. Such pertinacity deserves success. I have always maintained that if the frozen mutton trade were to be further developed to any great extent, it would have to bo through Liverpool and the North, and not through London. This conviction has been gradually filtering into the minds of a good many people, and the result of it is a mammoth enterprise, to be called the Imperial and Colonial Trading Company, with a capital of a million, headquarters at Liverpool, and branches at Manchester, London, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin. In tne first place, vast refrigerators will be built both at Liverpool and Manchester, and facilities arranged for the distribution of the mutton through the numberless towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The steamers convoying the meat and dairy produce Home will be purely cargo boats, built spociallyfor thetrade,andoccupyingfifty,not lorty, days in the journey. The company expect to be able to pay a better price than has ever before been paid in Australia and New Zealand for mutton, and to sell it cheaper in Lancashire than it has ever been sold in London. The names of the Board are as yet a secret, but I may mention that the Maclvers, of the Cunard Company, are prime movers in Liverpool, and that Sir W. Buffer and Sir Joseph Lee will probably be the London directors. The affair is solidly backed, and to my mind promises well. More about it anon.

The new number of the ‘ Fortnightly ’ contains an article on ‘ Australia in 1888,’ by Lord Carnarvon, which is sure to be read with great interest all over the Antipodes. Mr VV. T. Tillotson, well known in Australia and New Zealand as the head of the famous fiction bureau, died at Bolton last Saturday. Apropos of the learned Pigott’a application to Mr F’orster for funds to help him out to Australia and his old friend Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, it is pointed out that Sir Charles was living in England then, and bad been for some time. I hear that Lady Duffy’s death (which I mentioned in my last) has been a great shock to the aged Nationalist, and that his friends fear he may not be able to support the severe trial. The third Lady Duffy was a Liverpool merchant’s daughter, and lived at New Ferry, on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, before her marriage. Her father is Mr George Hall (of Bernard, Hall, and Co.), Sir C. Gavan Duffy has reached his 73rd year, and is in infirm health. He resides at Nice.

I regret to announce the death of Sir Charles Du Cane, who was for some time Governor of Tasmania, and has always taken an active interest in Anglo-colonial affairs. He was a leading spirit at the Colonial Institute, and usually occupied the chair once or twice during the session. Sir Charles was only sixty-five years of age, aud a hale hearty man. He died at Braxted Park, his seat in Kent. Cablegrams from nearly all the Catholic coteries in Australia and New Zealand arrived at Edgbaston last Thursday congratulating His Eminence Cardinal Newman on his eighty-eighth birthday. Although very weak, the aged Cardinal was present at Pontifical HigK Mass. Lord Lome will very likely succeed Sir A. Gordon as Governor of Ceylon. Sir Arthur goes to the House of Lords very soon now.

Mr Froude is not satisfied with ‘ Oceana ’ as an essay in fiction, and has set to work on a novel. The scene is laid in Ireland a hundred years ago, and the hero is a smuggler. The statement which appears in a number of the papers to the effect that Viscount Hood and his daughter are going to Australia is (up to the present, at any rate) incorrect. They have only booked to Colombo. Lord Kintore and Sir Henry Norman are both being banqueted this evening, the one by the Scottish and the other by the St. George’s Club—or rather by Mr Archer at the St. George’s Club, I may mention, by the way, that Sir Graham Berry and some of the smarter colonials who belong to the St. George’s, are getting rather irritated at the barefaced manner in which the Committee use them for advertising purposes. They wouldn’t mind being utuised occasionally for House dinners, etc,, but they’re constantly being called upon to show up and speak at all aorta of peddling little affairs. “ You give your dinner at the St. George’s, and we'll get old Berry and lots of Anglo-colonial nobs to come,” says the secretary to Mr Bumbo Brownjones, who is promoting ‘‘a little feed ” in honor of his friend, Stumer Binks, who has just been appointed manager of the Bank of Central Australia at Adelaide, The

result of this kind of thing is that Sir Graham and others, who don’t wish to be discourteous to brother members, and yet can’t show up at every valedictory dinner, are giving the club the “ cold shoulder.” Mr Cuthbertson is on the look out for a nice place in the country—if possible, in Norfolk. The late general manager of the Bank of South Australia will, for the rest of his life, do more “ huntin’ and fishin’ and shootin’ ” than banking. He has already put on quite an agricultural manner, talks of the weather and the crops, and has a very pretty taste in horseflesh. Mr Philip Mennell’s ‘ln Australian Wilds ’ only made its appearance on the bookstalls to-day, but several thousands have, during the week, been sold to the big wholesale houses. It is certainly one of the best shilling’s worth of fiction we have had this year, and admirably got up in every respect. Type and paper are good, while the cover is unusually well-designed. Of the tales I like Chambers’s ‘The NUcr-do-Weel ’ and ‘ln a Thirsty Land ’ best; but New Zealanders will probably give the preference to Mr Marriott Watson’s story of the Waitiri Gorge, ‘ The Hand of God.’ Lovers of chit-chat about literary folk will very possibly find (as I did) more entertainment in the facts contained in Mr Mennell’s introduction than in the subsequent fiction. The well-known story of young Chambers’s ambitious boyhood and resolve to succeed; of his plucky journey home and arrival in London with nothing more marketable than a quiff pen in his pocket; of the long, hard, and wearing struggle which followed; and of the ultimate triumph, often—let us hope—to bo renewed all this Mennell tells sympa thetically and well. He also penetrates the secret of “Tasma’s” nom de plume, and gives an appreciative sketch of the imaginative young author of ‘ Marahuna,’ Altogether, the introduction is, as I have said, interesting, and would sell the book of itself. Farjeun’s contribution, I ought perhaps to add, is pure Farjeon, i.e., Dickens-cww-Henry-Kingsley and water, A good deal of water !

Sir George Bowen has threatened to severely “ reminisce.” Needless to say, he will not do it in a frivolous manner, but after his own well known stately and pon| derous style. Sir George has, in fact, handed over his public and semi-official papers to Mr Stanley Lane Poole (the biographer of Lord Stratford De Redcliffe), who hopes to make out of them an interesting record of the work and experiences of a representative colonial Viceroy. Mr Poole’s life of Stratford Canning was a model work, but then the materials he had to work on were varied and important. Sir George Bowen’s speeches will, I fear, prove a tougher job altogether. Stiff Sir George must, in the course of his long career, have had many interesting experiences, which, well told, will be readable enough. All I hope is that not more than—lot us say—half the work will be devoted to Sir George’s pet hobby—“ Imperial federation.” By the way, I see the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette’ has been interviewing the ex-Premier of New Zealand on this subject. Sir John Hall’s opinions are very definite. Ho approves of Federation for defensive purposes such as is now being entered upon, and deplore’s Queensland’s obstinacy in declining to join the league. If England were to become involved in war, Sir John thinks the colonies would act loyally— i.e., unless the quarrel arose out of a purely European question. Then they might possibly feel the burden of war over a matter in which they were in no way concerned a grievance. Sir John thinks the colonies would not care about a Parliament of Agents-General in London, and dismisses the possibility of fiscal federation as a dream.

“ You must,” he said, “ leave the colonies an entirely free hand in the matter of their own Customs tariffs, In New Zealand we arc, as regards manufactures, in the same position as England was one hundred years ago. Then England’s policy was Protectionist; when we arrive at something like the manufacturing skiff and experience of the England of to-day we may think of Freetrade. In the first place we must raise a considerable revenue by means of our Customs, and secondly we want to develop New Zealand manufactures.” “ As the Yankees say, you want to protect your infant industries ?”—“ Certainly. It is all very well for people in England to argue the suitability of Freetrade from the present English point of view, but if you lived in New Zealand you would admit the absolute necessity for considerable Customs duties under our circumstances.” “ New South Wales is a freetrading colony ?”—“ Yes, but it will not remain so. I think it is chiefly the great personal influence of Sir H. Parkes that makes New South Wales cling to FTectrade. It is not a grain exporting colony. In some seasons we send corn from New Zealand to New South Wales, and so I believe do Victoria aud South Australia. But New Zealand is 1,200 miles from the continent of Australia, and our policy and theirs are not necessarily alike. We differ very much in climate, iu position, and, what is of no little importance, in having a more constant and general supply of water than the Australian colonies.”

“Talking of the resources of New Zealand, Sir John, what do you think of Mr Fronde’s forebodings? He says you are over-borrowing, and that your young men will not go out into the country, but cling to the towns where public works are going on.”—“I have in my library put Mr Froude’s ‘ Oceana ’ among the works of fiction. He landed at Auckland, went a few miles into the country, saw the Pink and White Terraces, spent a little time with Sir George Grey (a gentleman of peculiar and very extreme views), and upon the strength of this he gave a general description of Now Zealand. He reminds me of the Frenchman who landed at Torquay, from a ship driven there by stress of weather. He saw several visitors there (invalids) wearing respirators, and then, returning to France, wrote a description of the British Isles, in which he announced that the inhabitants were such a savage race that they had to go about with their muzzles on. Yes,” laughed Sir John, “ Mr Froude’s book is a moat absurd account of New Zealand, and indeed I may say a mischievous and misleading representation. He never saw the great pastoral or grain-growing districts of the colony. As I told you, we export grain to Australia. As for our loans, it is true that they are very heavy, but they have been employed to build railways and roads and harbors—all useful expenditure. Of course the roads are not direct sources of revenue as the railways are, but a young colony needs such expenditure to develop its resources, and indirectly it is largely productive.” “ And as to emigration ?”—“ As far as emigration goes we continue to receive spontaneous emigration, but State-sup-ported emigration might cause difficulties. As Lord Derby very wisely said the other day : ‘ In the colonies the working man is master, and the working man naturally objects to too much competition.’ ” “ What do you think of the question which has arisen as to whether the colonies should be consulted in the appointment of Governor ?” tainly be appointed from Home. The Colonial Secretary should make it his business to know something of the feeling in the colonies and to know whether a particular Governor would be persona grata, but if the colonies were consulted officially it would mean that the Government of the colony for the time being would have the appointment of Governor, and the Governor would not be able to hold the balance quite impartially between the two parties. It was said that New Zealand was agreeing with Queensland in this matter, but from New Zealand papers to hand 1 see that it is nothing of the sort,”

“As our representative left, Sir John’s last words were of the importance of the question of Federation, and the necessity for proceeding with the utmost care, watching for opportunities to draw closer the bonds between the colonies and the Mother Country, but never forcing any measure, however desirable it might seem. ‘An excellent suggestion,’ added Sir John, ‘ is that in both the colonies and the Mother Country a small Customs duty, say 2 or 3 per cent., should be charged on all foreign goods in excess of what might be charged on similar goods from the Mother Country and colonies respectively. The proceeds of this extra duty, which would be a large sum, could be applied to increase the defences of the Empire generally. It would be ample for the purpose, I should like to

see this plan adopted, but I presume there is no hope of it so long as the English people continue their worship of absolute Freetrade.’ ”