Untitled

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6828, 5 October 1883, Page 4

There is an extraordinary amount of international jealousy in regard to the annexation project, and if the colonies are to be practical on the subject they have to take this fact into account. It is certain to have due consideration at the approaching confereß.ce, both as affecting what we desire" from the Home Government and the action of the colonies themselves. Where there is manifest rivalry and a disposition to put obstacles in the way, the mere | hoisting of a flag would hardly be recognised evidence of annexation, and the task of in some sorb garrisoning and governing could not afford to stand over for our future conve:aienee. The Pacific Ocean—with its surrounding countries, its interspersed archipelagoes, its commercial and colonising opportunities—is of late years attracting a great deal of attention in Europe and America, and perhaps it is only natural, as human nature goes, that the chief maritime nations all round should exhibit through the Press a certain jealous feeling, and may possibly also exercise some diplomatic persuasion over these proposals of .the Australasian colonies. But in whatever degree it may delay, all that siort of thing cannot hinder the inevitable. The islands of the South Seas are bound by the force of circumstances to be'conjoined to the communities winch furnish in the main their white inhabitants. These colonies are situated close by, with already an energetic yhite" population of some millions, and they now send hundreds of settlers to those islands, and will soon send thousands for the units, or tens, o:r fifties who come there from Europe or the United States. It does not need, second sight to foresee that, even without present action on our part, most of the Polynesian and Melanesian Archipelagoes must after a while be confederated with Australia and New Zealand, for the same reason that Te:tas was practically a territory of the United States, before it became so formally and. officially. „

France is the only other Pc-wer than England which holds islands in the Pacific south of the linu, and what does the possession amount to ? A naval or military or mercantile post; not a oolony, or at any rate not really a French colony, for in Now Caledonia, where alone colonisation seema to be going on, the great majority of the free settlers in the rural parts are not Frenchmen. As we explained on a. former occasion, the farming; class in France does not emigrate, because the fine climate allows the peasant proprietor to cultivate those peculiarly profitable crops •which we know of here as " novel industries." No doubt after the transfer of Alsace in. 1871 there was a certain emigration from that province ; but that or any other occasional emigration from rural France is not obliged to cross the - ocetui to distant lands—it has only to croiss the narrow sea to Algeria, a colony near at hand, and .with abundaut room for settlers, as in a region extensive as France, and with grea : : varieties o£ surface and climate there are yet littlemore than three millions of -inhabitants, native and Europea.n. Even in Algeria the great majority of the rural settlers are of other nationalities than French. For the reasons we mention —the great profit of agriculture in France and yet the fact that there is no redundant agricultural .'population), the French cannot in the present day create colonies in the real sense of theword. They have been trying the experiment of making a penal settlement of New' Caledonia. Tha 1 ; is an undertaking which should not be persevered in anywhere when the neighbouring countries cease to be wilderness and become populous. But intitead of dropping the experiment, now that theAustralian colonies are growing so fast,, it was recently announced that the French authorities were tliinking of an immense increase of their deportation of criminals—were intending, in fact, to make New Caledonia, and, it was rumoured, some other South Sea Islands, their principal penal stations. The French Government have* been doing very mad things this time back, but they now appear to see the wisdom of mending their hand on this point, for according to a telegram in our columnson "Wednesday, this scheme of convict, settlement in the Pacific i 3 to undergo l modification.

_ Spain ovas north of tlie Line therich Philippine Islands, ar.d the Oarolin and Ladrone groups, of trifling importance. Holland flank;; the Central Pacific with her fine colonial dominion in the Indian Archipelago. Russia, looming in the far north ol: the ocean,. much Jess likely to be i\ bugbear in the next generation than she has been m the present; the means of bridling her are rising near at hand, in Chinaand Japan. The revolution in the military and naval circumstances of those two long secluded empires is one of the most important of the many important changes which are biking place I m or around the Pacific. The humiliation inflicted on China by l;he successful assaults of foreign nations, along with the new ideas then introduced, originated the Taeping rebellion, which spread over an' immense circle of the provinces,, and" continued thropgh 8 long series of years. . The Government; ~

it last put down the rebellion* because at las* ]?"" . •, Tn or.in"3 to obtain Th " the help or .European g ftnvprn<?trenHh thus exhibited dj the Govern (i fiuter bflrrbfiri&'HSj 1 1 If orp now consolidating central authority m P re P a J a central offensive, for tions, de e f ore jg ne r S . Gunfuture con Qhinese invention. as the compass and printing, but these inventions had all, to be carried to Europe before they could be rendered of practical account. And if China is now going ahca< J> and P nises to become one _ of the most formidable of empires, it is only by get**Ft srisrsifis electricity, wbic*, root as well as branch, belong to the (Caucasian race. It is easy to foresee that Ghina, in the next generation, is {Ljy to recover the Amur country from Itussia, as she has recovered the Suldja country—that on the Pacific seaboard she is pretty certain to drive the Muscovite back into frozen Kamschatka. Indeed, it is hard to say what may not happen as to all Eastern Siberia and much of Central Asia, when we consider that there the native inhabitants are Mongolian, and in that quarter that Russia's base of operations is far off and China's comparatively near, and when we remember the wealth of the Chinese Empire, and that its population is supposed to comprise a fourth of that of the whole globe, we can judge what its armies be •when they have the European discipline and mechanical appliances they are now fast getting. In the vicinity of a Power like that, Russia will not long retain the open seaboard she seized in the hour of Chinese weakness, and without an open seaboard she cannot be a maritime State, not to speak of being a naval Power in this ocean.