THE COLONIAL INTERESTS.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 179, 9 August 1845, Page 91

THE COLONIAL INTERESTS.

[From the Colonial Gazette.]

Where are they ? The manufacturing interests are represented by " the League," and the host of free-traders and semi-free-traders, who alternately use it and grumble at it. The agricultural interests are represented by the Protection Societies. These two great antagonistic bodies have' their mouth-pieces in Parliament as well as out of Parliament, and the very first day of the session their voices were beard. But where are we to hearken for the "stilL small voice" of the. advocates of the colonies ? It will not do to repeat old saws, such as — • " the silent sow sups up all the broth,", and " let sleeping dogs lie ;" and similar recondite elegancies. There is little or none of the broth ' coming the way of the colonies, and the dogs are neither asleep nor silent. The pugnacious' propensities of the League and the Protection Societies dp not find full employment in cuffing and worrying each other. Each has a little supplementary venom, which it allows to run over on the colonial interests. A free-trader cannot speak for five minutes without filling up the gaps in his reasoning with stereotyped phrases about " colonial monopolies;" and your stanch agriculturists would be equally tongue' tied but for the opportune theme of the Canada Corn Bill.

It is in vain for the colonies and those whose interests are bound up with theirs to hope to be left to hold the noiseless tenor of their way, and thrive upon their unobserved, and therefore undisturbed, industry. The humanity-mongers of Exeter Hall would continue to hamper, and embarrass them, though all the rest of the world let them alone. And the two great parties' at present contending for the direction of our commercial policy are equally resolote to turn 'them adrift, in order to render their own cases less complicated. The free-trader will not budge a, step to obtain for the West Indians free trade in labour, or free admission for their molasses to be used in breweries and distilleries. The free-trader will not budge a step to procure free admission for the grain of our extra-tropical colonies to the markets of the mother country. And, on the other hand, the stanchest advocate, of protection will fling the colonies as a sop to the Cerberus of Free Trade. He will give up the protective duties on colonial wool, he will admit foreign free-labour sugars at reduced duties, and then turn round on the opponents of protective duties and ask angrily — " Will younever be satisfied ? I have sacrificed all interests' to you except my owe' — will you have them too ?"

" Aide-toi, et le del faidera" Upon themselves must the colonial interests depend for assistance. And, if they would but be active ' and independent and united, a very formidable body — quite competent to their own protection — they would make. See only what a good fight the West Indians made when they roused themselves last session. Look to Canada — look even to the southern hemisphere — and see how the Colonial Department itself has been dragged from its old accustomed ways, desperately though the Exeter Hallites have been tugging at its skirts to keep it steady.

The population of the colonies far outnumbers the population of Scotland. The banks, in-surance-offices, shipowners, merchants, and others identified with the interests of the colonies, are a numerous and powerful body. ' If the colonies have not representatives they have friends — agents in many constituencies numerous enough to keep ill-disposed representatives in check. Numbers, intelligence, and wealth are political power ; and all these are possessed by the parties in this country whose prosperity is dependent on the prosperity of the colonies. ' Where there is a will there is a way. If the colonies and their friends will but bethink them that any seeming clashing of their interests is as nothing compared with the great stake they have in common — that the false feeling or bad management which injures one injures all — and exert themselves, they are as well able to keep their ground as either agriculturists or manufacturers. We neither expect nor wish to find the colonies exerting a preponderant influence, but we do wish to see them asserting their right" to have their interests taken into consideration when the national policy is discussed.

It was, we think, the Anti-Slavery Reporter that last session taunted the West Indians with seeking to retrieve their losses by parliamentary majorities instead of attention to agriculture. The taunt was unjust. Agriculture is and was sedulously cultivated by the West Indians, and they sought parliamentary majorities only as a defence against the pertinacious persecution which has for long years sought to crush them by parliamentary majorities. What they did then they ought to do constantly, and all the colonies ought to work with them.

The Jews. — The Frankfort Journal says — " The military law respecting the Israelites, published September 26, 1843, has given the com" mune of Warsaw occasion to send a deputation to St. Petersburg to pray the Emperor to give, his Jewish subjects the same civil rights as the Christians, referring to the law of 1817, in which ' it is said that they who profess the Mosaic law, and inhabit Poland, are free from the conscription and military service as long as they shall not enjoy civil rights, and shall be bound to pay to the Polish Treasury the annual sum of 105,298 silver roubles. The reply to this haa not been in favour of the Jews. The Emperor does not recognise the law in question*, the ,• burgess right being a favour of the Emperor. The annual sum is to be paid because tJjejpof, by abstaining from consuming spirituous &pߣfr '. lessen the pnblic receipts." [Punishmen^fcr joining the Temperance Society.] -*■ : **r