THE GLOBE. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1880.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1839, 14 January 1880, Page 2

THE GLOBE. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1880.

Sir Julius Yogel and his designs on the Falmouth constituency are topics which absorb a considerable amount of interest. Much as the eyes of an audience follow the movements of an acrobat as he treads the dizzy heights on a tight rope, so the New Zealand public have of late been accustomed to follow the movements of Sir J»lius. Trained in our own school of political gymnastics, it is natural we should follow with interest his movements when he balances his pole and turns his somersaults before a larger audience. If we recognise certain traits in his present manoeuvres, which characterised him when amongst us, so much the better: the interest to be afforded is so much the greater. If we find that the main feature of his success is not the originality of his conceptions, but the manner in which he absorbs the schemes of other men and the prescience with which he foresees " what game is in the wind," we call to memory his South Sea scheme and his railway and public worts schemes, all of them the products of other men's brains, but which were taken up, beautified, and given out again with a flourish that absolutely forbad any doubt as to the originality of the ideas. Sir Julius' late writings and public utterances have followed in the same wake. Having the advantage of being placed in what we may call the heart of the British Empire, in the spot from whence the life-blood of the colonial empire rushes only to return again, and to be again forced through its vast circuit, Sir Julius' faculty of foresight can be used to the greatest advantage. He has seen the tendency of the time towards the consolidation of the British Empire, and has immediately placed himself in the foremost ranks of those who are working in this direction. To the New Zealand public perhaps he may indeed appear to be somewhat before the times, but they have not the advantages of possessing the wider outlook that a residence in London carries with it. Our agent has, without doubt, been carefully keeping his eye not only on the general bearing of Australasian politics, but on the politics of Canada and other dependencies. The recent appointment of Sir A. Gait, one of the Cabinet Ministers of the Dominion Parliament of Canada, as a Resident in London, with the view of securing a better representation of Canadian interests, has probably not been such a surprise to Sir Julius as it has been to many of those who have taken a lesser interest in the general situation.

A late number of the " Sydney Morning Herald" defines the difference between the functions of an Agent-General and a Minister-Resident with great clearness. " At the utmost," says that journal, " the functions of the Agent-General must be limited to communicating, receiving, and reporting information; to exerting legitimate influence of an indirect kind over persons who are capable of affecting the interests of the colonies, and securing that in such mechanical matters as the arrangements for immigration, postal communication, copy-right and patent right, the colony may not suffer through the lethargy or ignorance of those at home." " The function of the Minister Resident, on the other hand, will be that of representing at the British Court the dominant Colonial Government of the day. He will not merely advocate the claims of aa Imperial policy, but will impress on the Secretary for the Colonies the value or necessity of measures conceived by his Government in a purely colonial spirit even when they are ostensibly adverse to Imperial interests. Hitherto the dominant party Government in a colony with representative institutions has had no locus standi in British politics. It is absorbed or forgotten in the towering grandeur of the home-appointed Governor. But the effect of this new policy is to protrude into unexampled publicity the personality of the Colonial Government of the day, and to attract a novel attention to the party or personal rivalries out of which a Government is constructed. The new Minister will, further, possess a capacity of representation for which, hitherto, there is no precedent. So often as a Bill promoted by the Colonial Ministry, or a change of policy advocatod by them is under discussion at homo, the Minister Resident will have powers for making diplomatic negotiations, concessions, compromises, or substituted arrangements in the name of those whom he represents and on whose ratification of his acts he can generally depend." We have quoted at length because the

difference between the two positions cannot be more clearly put. A change, tending towards such a vast devolepment cannot hare been a thing of yesterday, it has evidently been for some time under consideration by the Canadian Govern ment. Sir Julius, with his wonderful faculty of prescience and absorption, has long seized on the leading idea, and by his trenchant pen and tactical powers has forced himself into a position which somewhat puzzles the " old folks at home " in Wellington.