OUR LONDON LETTER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6288, 12 January 1882, Page 5

OUR LONDON LETTER.

I [from our special coktjbsfoxdent.T Lon'don", December 1, 1881. HOME POLITICS. The Home politics of the month, so far aspublic speaking is concerned, have been sufficiently, bald. The moors hare all beett shot over ; members have returned from the continent—from America—from the sea, where they have been yachting—and are everywhere entertaining their constituents witntbo two views of the political situation. Naturally, much of the speaking is mere wind, the explosive force of which has beett much increased by ifc, retention, throughout the session, in the case of the " mechanical majority of membsrs, who were compelled to consider it their duty to vote rather than' speak. It is not, as a whole, entertaining reading, consisting, :l3 it does on the Liberal side, of unmixod laudation of the Laud Act —the single work of the last session y. on the Conservative sido, of unmixed depreciation. ' You. will not tiiiink me for wading through it in all its manifestations. Besides, the really authoritative utterances are conGhed'' to the remarks of Mr. Gladstone, at the Guildhall; Mr. Bright, at Rochdale ; Mr. Goschen,'at Walford and Harrow; Eiirl .Spencer, and the Attorney-General, for the Liberals ; and of Lord Salisbury, Sir RichardCross, Sir Stafford Northeote, the ex-Attorney-General, aud Lord George Hamilton for the Conservatives. The subject still in dispute is Ireland—as it may well be, considering the condition of all classes there. Mr. Gladstone's address at the Guildhall leaves matters where they were when he recently addressed the electors at Leeds. He told the guests of the Lord Mayor that the country had entered on "a-, great crisis"—a struggle between the representatives of law and the representatives of lawlessness. The Executive had to be strengthened because, as matters stood atthe opening of the last. Parliament, it \va» not strong enough to enable it to discharge its primary duties to the throne and thecommunity. It was strengthened aud the law was improved. With what result ? He would not anticipate the future, or even, look forward to it with very sanguine fidence. But at least, by using the increased powers, and developing the improved, law, sedition was being put down, and the. law itself—the Land Act—was being fully observed by the people of Ireland. As for theIrish population who would not take advantage of it, and wiio declined to pay its rent until Parnell and the prisoners were released, "they are not the impoverished portion of the community, but are generally those who are well able to fulfil the engagements into which they have entered, and. who have been but partially and for a. moment corrupted, or at least, tainted in their views of good faith and honour by the evil instructions of those who should .have given them better lessons." To have heard Mr. Blight's opinion upon Ireland after his axiom, that'" force is no remedy,".would have been highly interesting. It happened, however, that Mr. Bright's speech was made on the occasion of his 70th birthday in the town of Rochdale. Naturally he turned aside from the view of a strong Executive, of which he is one of the leading advisers, and looked back upon his past achievements in connection with free trade. Compared with the "condition of Ireland question," free or fair trade has for the moment lost its significance. In a short time it is sure to come up in greater foroe. Here and there strong manifestations are mnde of a desire to return to a limited form of protection. Mr. Bright, therefore, was iu his element in exposing the fallacies o£ the position. The cry for protection he reduces briefly to the desire on the pact of the landlords to keep up their rents. "But it comes to this, as far as I am able to judge, that unless by some means you can stimulate greatly the products of the soil by increased capital, increased skill, and increased industry, there is no remedy whatever for the embarrassed condition of the fanners except by a great and permanent reduction of the landlord's rent." In connection with that subject Air. Bright pointed to a growing tendency in the counties—the increasing cost of labour. "It is worse in quality, because the youngcr people, finding that they have no tie to t!ie soil, that they can never become anything bua labourers, with very low wages, are leaving the rural parishes in which "they have been born. They are emigrating to the great towns in the neighbourhood, and not a few of them are emigrating to the countries across the ocean. The result is that our landed system, with its great estates and farms,- cuts ofF the labourer almost entirely from the possibility of becoming either a tenant or an owner of the land, and as he has no object in remaining here, he goes away." I quote these remarks because thej' arc understood to contain an indication of the course English land legislation may tnke, at the direction of "Mr. Bright and the Radicals. Not only, that is, will free trade be conserved in its entirety, hut facilities will be given for the sub-ilivision of land, aud for the creation of pendant-proprietorships, so that this migrating and emigrating population may be retained on the laud.

On the other hand, Mr. Goschen, none the U-ss authoritative tli.it he happens not to be in the present Cabinet, as if foreseeing what is to grow out of the alteration in the landsystem of England and Scotland, with the vast masses of the peasantry ignorant and discontented, confines himself to speculations about local self-government. There is too much centralization, he contends, too much work and responsibility thrown upoa the chief departments of the Executive, Let the counties be trained to manage their affairs in suuh a way that every labourer shall know the processes and reasons for local expenditure. In that way they will be trained to take their part in the larger work of governing their country, through their votes, when the time comes in. which they will be actually included in the working of tlie Constitution. So far as Conservative reference is made to these authoritative statements of the Liberals, it takes two directions. In the first place, with reference to Ireland, it is said that the state of anarchy is practically due to the Government. Iu the second place, with reference to the English land question, it is denied that drastic measures are required at allnothing more, it iscontended, than relief of the local burdens of the farmers, and, if possible, fresh readjustment of tariffs. As yet, the weight of these charges does nqt'seeih to have been much felt throughout' the couDtry in the shape of any .tendency towards political reaction. At its strongest the charge in connection with Ireland,- as stated by Lord Salisbury, is this—When the Conservative Government went out, it was ' well understood that Ireland was on the fair way to rebellion. Lord. Beaconsfield did not hesitate to make his election manifesto obnoxious by saying so. . But when the Liberal Government came in, they ignored the state of Ireland, and allowed even the Peace Preservation Act to lapse, without seeking a renewal. All that year, especially during the autumn and winter months, cruel outrages were perpetrated, and rents were not-paid. What was done? Nothing. Government, in order to conceive and apply a, land measure, ignored the agitations of Mr. Parnell and his crew. The outrages went on, the rents remained unpaid all through the spring of this year. The agitation being favourable to the project of Government in connection with their legislation, it was not suppressed; it was actually fostered for a preconceived purpose.

Whether that contention will be likely to seriously move the constituencies has not yet definitely appeared, though the Govern. Lnt nominee at Stafford was" ousted by a Conservative. After the amendment of the forms of procednre in the House of Commons has been secured, the arrount of attention to be bestowed on the English land question ■will, perhaps, determine the length of life to be bestowed upon Liberalism. In the Imoantime, if the Irish Land Act is Jfiving a.. •foretaste of what is to happen here, there are hard times in store for the smaller Engl ish landowners. Subscription lists have ■ been opened in Dublin »nd London in order! to assist impoverished owners of land in •Ireland. Many ladies have been reduced to needlework and other similar employments ; and in the meantime the Land. Commissioners, appointed under the Act, are through Ireland, cutting down, on brief examination, all rents ten, twenty, thirty, fifty per cent. And when Mr. Parnell comes out of prison the agitation will •commence as fresh as ever for rents "at prairie value." THE FRENTCH INT THE PACIFIC. Your opinions in connection with this subject have raised a wide discussion in circles interested in the opening up of the Panama Canal. It has been seen, not perhaps f»r the first time but certainly for the first time ■with any deep concern, that British interests have been strangely neglected along the route from Panama to New Zealand. At present, however, the subject divides attention with the operations of the British North Borneo Company, who, much to the disgust of the anti-colonial separatists, have had a Royal Charter granted them, which, it is anticipated, will have the effect of ultimately annexing an island "twice as large as France," says the Spectator, "and inhabited by at least two millions of people, in every stage of civilisation, from the Malays of Sarawak, who sit on juries, to savages lower than the Veddahs or Andamanese." With an annexation of that sort definitely in view, it is pretty generally held that England, at least, has very little right to say anything to any European neighbour who goes ia for a career of conquest in the Pacific. The situation is well grasped by Mr. Coutts Trotter, •who gives his view of it in the Times, explaining it from the intelligence received from a resident "in those parts." He asserts that Captain Renard visited the Srincipal islands in the Austral and Hervey troups, telling the people that, now that Tahiti is French, they must divert thither their present trade with New Zealand, which ia worth £50,000 a-year. But what one feels himself entitled to ask is that " the matter may not be lost sight of." Here is the Tiew of the Glasgow Herald—an organ of great influence in Scotland, edited by one of the faireat journalistic observers of the day, and circulating in a community much connected with New Zealand by commerce. I believe it expresses the current views correctly enough, it brusquely : —" We have, on several occasions of late, pointed out how the old French fever for colonising had broken out once more, and had manifested itself alike in trying to form a port which shall be a rival to Aden, and in hoisting the Freuch flag with great ceremony over the island consecrated by the blood of Captain Cook. It may be relied upon that when the Panama Canal is made there will be a scramble for the spoils of Polynesia. It is, too, quite in accordance with the precedents of her history that France should be first in the field, before Britain, Russia, the United States, and above all Germany ; but ■whether according to these same precedents she will be the first, not only to enter the field, but to be driven out of it, is a very different matter. French aggression looks big in print, especially in the print of the panicstricken New Zealand Herald :— ' The greater part of Eastern Polynesia is under the French flag—namely, the whole of the Marquesas, Tahiti, Moorea, the numerous islands called the Dangerous (Low) Archipelago, Ravaivi (Vavitao), Tubuai, and Rapa (Oparo). The Leeward Islands, the Hervey Group, Bakatu, Rimatera, and Penrhyn Islands are as yet free. But the latest intelligence from the Leeward Islands is that by sharp diplomacy the French have just succeeded in getting possession of the valuable island of Raiatea, and are now threatening the independence of the neighbouring islands of Huahine and Bora Bora. The evident intention of the French is to absorb every island eastward of Samoa, and thus limit the natural expanse of New Zealand commerce. The money value of the trade of the now French islands may be estimated at £150,000 per annum. There is not a suitable harbour for a coaling station for steamers between the coast of South America and New Zealand (in a direct route), excepting the Leeward Islands but is in the hands of the French. Even the solitary island of Rapa, formerly used sis a coaling station by Panama steamers, has not escaped annexation by the French.' In regard to this terrible picture, however, one or two observations must be made. The French are greatly given te gasconade, and the hoisting of the tricolour on an island does not mean the actual possession of it. Then, again, it has been a sort of rule with history that where the French sow, other nations, particularly our own, are in the habit of reaping. Thirdly, the Panama Caual is not yet made. Fourthly, there are such things as international treaty obligations, and France has pledged herself not to 'aggress , in Polynesia except within clearly defined limits. In the last—and perhaps not least—place, there is such a thing as international morality; and it is hardly decent for people with beams in their eyes to cry shame on those who are only afflicted with motes."

"A CHEQUERED CAREER" is the title of the last book upon colonial life. It is full of entertainment for Home readers, being -written in a rattling and ■vigorou* style, telling the story of an Eton lad who tried his fortune in Australia and New Zealand. He had 15 years of it altogether, beginning on a sheep station in New Zealand, in the Napier district, where he was greatly charmed by the Maoris. Failing among the sheep, he decided to try the gold diggings of the Middle Island. But he was unfortunate, and started off as cook's mate on a coaster to the Buller River, after working for 2a an hourat unloading the ship. Then came experience as a butcher, a packer, superintendent of a canteen, livery stable man, groom, travelling agent, &c The descriptions of scenery a.re remarkably ■well done. The writer does not say who he