The Nelson Evening Mail. MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 1867.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 199, 26 August 1867, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 1867.

The life of a people offers many points of similitude to the life of an individual. No man profits very much by the example, the counsels, or the warnings of his immediate predecessors. And it is the same with communities. History is full of lessons, but they are systematically disregarded. An actual experience of the experience of the evils of this or that line of policy, or of this or that form of Government, or method of administration seems to be absolutely necessary in order to their meetiug with acknowledgement in the first instauc?, and with alleviation or removal in the second. So that wheu men are disposed to take sombre and desponding views of the course which political events are taking at this or that period ot the early history of a British colony, such misgivings should be qualified and corrected by the reflection that the circumstances that inspire uneasiness are the aberrations or] excesses incidental to institutions in their immaturity, and to a state of society in which the elements | have not had sufficient time for consolidation. "The wild oats of its public life" are being sown, in fact. / Those who mistake a temporary indisposition in the body poliiic for a chronic malady or organic disease, overlook two most important considerations; one of which is the present, and the other the future composition of colonial society. With regard to the first, it must be remembered that we are but " a fortuitous concourse of atoms.' We came from all j parts of Great Britain and Ireland, aud have met as strangers ; bringing with us moreover, those uational, sectarian, local, political, or class prejudices which we inherited or acquired in the mothercountry. .-._, The tendencies of each iudividual are rather towards isolation from, than fusion with his fellows. Old ties of .kindred, neighborhood, and amity have been broken up, and have not been replaced by new ones; for these" are not so readily formed in. manhood as in youth, while some of them are. necessarily weaker in a jvbei-o no locality is venerable;.in "itself, or interesting, from old associations,^ than in. the /parent 'State. Moreover^ not a few of us look upon the latter: as ; bar home, and are not- 'entirely ,

reconciled to the idea of transferring our allegiance from- the old land to the new. . But if we look to the future, we may forecast a totally different state of things. In a very few years a native-born generation will have arrived at manhood, will assert, its place in public life, and will make its influence felt, socially and politically. It will naturally he attached, and strongly attached, to the soil which gave it birth. Hundreds of men who have been form-follows in our public schools, who will have contracted life-long friendships, acquired s ; milar habits of though c ami feeling, and been accustomed to act in concert, will then come to the front and "push us off our stools." They will be free from most of the prejudices of creed and caste, which arc so strong in the mother country, and from the taint of which few emigrants have escaped; and they will approach most political questions with minds exempt from that bitterness and that &troDg party bias of which most of us, who have taken an active part iv political life at home during the last twenty or thirty years, must be more or less conscious. Nor is it unreasonable to anticipate that political controversies will be conducied with less acerbity by a nativeborn generation than by those who now engage in public business. Much of the admirable tone and temper which characterise the great pirty contests in the Imperial Fail iainect may be traced not only to the diguity and good-breeding of English statesmen, but to the fact that, although occupying different benches in the two Houses, they were schoolfellows at Eton, Rugby, Harrow, or Westminster, graduated together at Oxford or Cambridge, pulled together in the boating clubs, and frequented in early life the same cricket-grounds, tennis-courts, &c. Like cases may be expected to operate in producing like effects, allowing for differences of degree, in this countiy. We do not know whether the important part which the native youth of this colony will be called on to play, when they appear upon the stage of public life a few years hence, has sufficiently impressed itself upon the minds of those to whom their education has been intrusted; but the subject is one which hears so directly upon the future welfare of the colony aud on the development of its institutions, that it unquestionably deserves to engage the serious attention of those gentlemen. Time and events will show how far they have availed themselves of the opportunities afforded them of inculcating sound maxims of government, healthy principles of political science, manly aud honorable sentiments, and robust habits of thought. In the course of the next teu yea^s we may expect to see one moiety of the members of our various legislative bodies composed of Anglo-New Zealanders, while they will doubtless form no small portion, of ourfuture municipal and shire councils, as well as of other public bodies ; aud be fully represented at the bar, in the pulpit, and in the civil aud military services. As a necessary consequence, our public policy, our forensic eloquence, our pulpit oratory, our municipal government, and our social life, will receive their impress from natives of the colony, and an altogether new direction may be given to its history. We shall also witness, in all probability, the formation aud growth of what, for want of a better adjective, we must call a " national" character ; concerning which speculation at the present moment, however interesting, would be altogether premature and ineffectual.