THE COLONIAL PARTY AND THE GOVERNING PARTY.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 14, Issue 1165, 28 June 1870, Page 3

THE COLONIAL PARTY AND THE GOVERNING PARTY.

(From tho "Family Horald.") To the people wo can appeal in good time when, under Lord Granville, the present ministry seems ready to undo all that which the wisdom, courage, blood, and treasure of our forefathers have built up and cemented, and to scatter to the winds thafc vast; fabric of England's power and greatness, her Colonial Empire. When we look upon Great Britain, as ifc was called when half the world was undiscovered, and then only to distinguish it from a corner of France, we are astonished at tho part played in the world's history by her. When we look at history, we are more astonished at the bravery of her people and the stout courage they displayed ; and more than ever do we wonder afc the singular incapacity and cowardice of our present rich race of men. As Spain dwindled, we increased. We colonized what is now the United States, we won Canada from the French, wo won Jamaica, India, Gibraltar ; we discovered other places ; bufc, of all our vast empiro, there is hardly a foot that has nofc been won by the blood and treasure of the British people. Remembering, too, thafc treasure, or money, is but saved up labour, and that labour is gold, we may claim to have brought under cultivation, and to havo fertilized half of the earth, — and the better half too. While the Easterns and the Celtic nations have lain dormant, wo Teutons, or Auglo-Saxons, havo been eager, active, and always engaged in progress. Wherever a settlement has been effected, thither, too, has been carried a church, a meet-house, or some other place of worship ; there too, are a newspaper and a method of debate, a parliament, as it were, and a nucleus of AngloSaxon institutions, liberty, development, freedom, and progress. AuEuglishman's heart may well be proud when he thinks of all this : there lies England's glory, which can by no means be eclipsed. We have nofc only subdued the greater part of the earth, and replenished ifc, bufc, on the whole, we have done this with an almost unmixed benefit to the rest of mankind. Not one even of those curious and sneering historians, who in our history will only record battles, murders, and cruelties, can pretend to say that, were we not paramount in India, the battles, murders, and slaughters would nofc have been multiplied ten thousand-fold. Not one even of the bitterest sceptics who sneer affile missionary, and who laugh afc our faifch, will dare fco say thafc the Southern Archipelago, smiling with its thousands of islands full of peace, industry, wooden churches, and black-coated preachers, its scholars and native Christians, is not better and happier than when, afc stated periods, the savages of one island surprised and ate all tho inhabitants of a smaller and weaker island. And ycfc half the fruit of the labours of the despised preachers is not ycfc seen, nor will ifc b. for these hundred years ; for although some of our colonies are old, still our colonial work is yet in its infancy. It follows that most of our colonies need much protection, and thafc ifc would be cruel and unwise in the extreme to sever tlio tie which binds the Mother Stato to tho children, some of whom aro mere babies. We have colonies nofc ten years old ; and many a big State certainly nofc more than thirty. The oldest of these is. as a State, a more iufanfc, and must need guidance and help. _On the part of a Government which says that heavy taxation cripples a nation, which ifc never did, and never can do, presuming there are industry and activity enough to earn money, ifc seems now to be pleaded that the colonies arc very troublesome, and thafc as they are virtually selfgoverning and self-taxing, they should be self-supporting ; that thoy should not come upon the British tax-payer afc home, and they should not look for defence from home when engaged in a quarrel. On the part of the colonies ifc is urged, that although they are afc a distance, they are still subjects of Britain, governed by British laws, many of them under governors appointed by the Crown ; that they have all the rights of Englishmen : thafc in case of war at home they would share the danger with us, and help us if tbey could ; that in case of Canada, which is our nearest and most expensive aud hazardous settlement, the colonists would be first attacked ; and thafc indeed they have been many times attacked, aud have loyally defended themselves, and have beaten their foes. They again urge, as we have shown in a previous article, thafc if they have been an expense to us, they have also saved us much by relieving us of a surplus population, and by becoming excellent customers for our manufactures. Morever, they plead, and we plead with them, thafc a great country must nofc and dares not look afc tho money it spends, in a miserly and cheeseparing way ; thafc what Lord Bacou said is perfectly true, that money musb sometimes be made to fly to get more ; and that, liko manure, it must bo spread aboufc to fertilize the ground. Let us add that, while some politicians always affect to wonder at the huge resources of the American United States, the United States of England have just as many resources, and are just as large, if they were only wisely united, and that, as tho Northern States in the late war spent eight hundred millions of pounds sterling (for which they went into debt, rather than let a portion of unfriendly States escape them), so, if that was wise in them, ib would bo the utmost folly in us fco let such fine islands as Now Zealand, or so splendid a con fcincnfc as Australia, drop from our grasp. We arc almost as noar to them, in point of time, now that tho Suez canal is opened, as America is to her distant States ; nor aro those colonies, because thoy are surrounded by seas, less valuable to a maritime nation than if surrounded by land. Wo havo every reason to draw closer tlio bonds of union botween our colonies and ourselves ; even as receptacles for our superabundant population, who find themselves afc home with Englishmen and British subjects, their valuo to us is beyond price. On tho other hand, England has a right to demand of her colouios a reciprocity, and to ask of them, not as a favour, a tenderness towards her. A combined action on the part of the Mother Country and the Colonial Governments might make emigration a natural relief to an over-populated island, and a most valuable nourishment and auxiliary to new and almost empty lands. A propor minister, elected from men who, like Mr. Childcrs and Mr. Lowe, havo spent many years in tho colonies, should make himself acquainted, not only with tho wants of tho colonists abroad, but with the state of our over-teeming population at home. Emigration should no longer bo left to mere chanco, or the untaught aud unguided work of the people themselves. How many a noble _ fellow has thrown away his life, and the lives of his wife and children, by emigrating to spots bought up by swindling agents, and advertised as Edens, merely tomakemoney , — Edens liko thafc described by Mr. Dickens, where swamp and malaria sowed their death seeds in the rocking night, to bo gathered in the morning. If the Government party will think only of saving itself trouble, and of taxing and shifting the taxes ; of shutting up dockyards, and

starving working men, merely to save a I few pounds ; if it will shut its ears to the cries of the poor, and shift its duties upon benevolent societies and philanthropists, who are often misguided, — then we say, that whatever " party " ifc may be of,— Tory, Whig, or Radical, — itshouldbedrivenfrom power withscornandderision. England was nofc built up by such men as these,— men who evade responsibility, and who are not regular doctors, but quacks. We live in great and and in serious times. We have thousands of true men who can do the work : aud the pretenders who would drive the noble ship upon the rocks, who will nofc help the suffering crew, and who do nofc know how to steer, had better be sent below as useless landlubbers, who have usurped the captain's place while he slept in calm weather.