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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7759, 4 October 1886, Page 4

If the gratuitous gift of the Kermadec islets has any tendency to excite a wish for more, it might be worth the while of the New Zealand Government to ask for Norfolk Island. The inhabitants—they are not numerous—seem to desire it. Oar own correspondent, whose letter appears in another column, writing from that charming little spot, says : —"lf we are to be annexed at all, the proper place for us to go to is to where we send what we produce, and whence we draw our supplies, and to where all our letters are addressed—our true mater— Zealand." A question of annexation ap< pears to be disturbing them. A Commissioner and staff of surveyors have gone down there from Sydney, and are playing havoc with the girls' hearts in the island, which appears to our correspondent to be part of the 1 programme, and to have a political significance in view of the ultimate destination of this little Eden of the Pacific. Altogether, the position is an interesting one, and whatever movement is on the tapis with our Imperial instincts of annexation strong within us, we ought to have a finger in it. We had thought that Norfolk Island had been annexed enough, and that it was resting placidly under the benign aw ay of New South Wales, under whose GovernorGeneral it is, as a sort of appanage of the parent of all the colonies, having a code of laws of its own, and a simple form of domestic constitution and judicature, modelled something after the quaint and primitive plan of the Channel Islands. But the islanders are seemingly in a state of unrest, and are apparently indulging political aspirations which may have excited concern in the governing circles in Sydney, and suggested the happy thought of sending down a commissioner with a staff of goodlooking surveyors to bring them back to their allegiance. We do not recommend that we should exactly meet the New South Wales attack in a similar way; though we are sure that we could select from our survey staff a lot of handsome young fellows who could hold their own with the girls against these conquering Ne South Welshmen or any others. But it there is really any movement of attach* ment to New Zealand afoot, it is possible that we ought to meet it on hard politics lines, if we are indisposed to insidiously sap their allegiance by sending down a • posse of nice-looking surveyors with lota . light in their eyes. . , Norfolk Islafld has had a curious htt history of its own. It was origma, yappended to New South Walesindeed a colonising party was sent out to settle it a - week after New South a , became a colony; and . then it was nia a little , penal colony, 5 and detacne from New South Wales, and hitched _ to Van Piemen's land; and then when colony took a respectable turn and " ec * Tasmania, it was again-given back to JNe South Wales, and the convicts were taken away, and it passed with its woodbine cottages and pleasant farms, and all y* improvements and its beauty to i _ interesting descendants of the mutineers of ; the Bounty, , who, soon becoming J 10 ® sick for their native Pitcairn Islan a > nearly all abandoned it in two emigrate o "

r,,o,em„t., and left it in fe "V° Wvfng' Then it was occupied '-d - . tf from Kohimarama, and fh.° d.T rttt. Pacific* aid it » a great resort for whaling ships and its inhabitants, with thoir forests tilled with lemons and oranges and fragrance, bathin* in the balmy atmosphere, spend a lotus-eating kind of delicious existence, and altogether it seems like a little corner of earthly Paradise broken oft from the Garden of Eden and dropped as an "island in glittering seas" right over against Now Zealand as if to tempt us. It is only six hundred miles from New Zealand, and it is nine hundred from the nearest coast of Australia, and eleven hundred miles from Sydney ; and as it is beyond the 154° of east longitude, which is the legitimate limit of the jurisdiction of New South "Wales, and as it comes so naturally into the jurisdiction of New Zealand, it is really incumbent on the Government, if there is any chance.of obtaining it, to take steps to Ihave -1 charming little island and its inter* t inhabitants made 10 wi'tj f us. in „w ew still indulge the aspiration of « New Zealand the centre an ocean d cerfederation Norfolk Island should cer tSSJ be included as a counterpoise on tainiy d Navigators, and the n!t and would be much more naturally administered from the island colony, with which it has so close a commercial and religious relation. We are not advised ns to the lull significance of the annexation proclivities said to exist at Norfolk Island, and which seem to have arrested attention in NewSouth Wales, and to have produced a commissioner and a staff of handsome surveyors, who have come down like a wolf on the fold. But if, as stated, lawn tennis and "at homes" and singing classes are an essential in political organisation in that isle of the west, and if nice men are requisite in order to prepare for the plebiscite, we think we should be equal to the occasion.