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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8987, 27 February 1888, Page 4

The selection of Mr. Wakefield, the editor of the Wellington Press, to edit a New Zealand Official Handbook, about to be issued by the Government for the purpose of the Centennial Exhibition, has given occasion to the indulgence on the part of the Wellington Post of an exhibition of pitiful jealousy that would be very amusing if it were not so discreditable to the spirit of NewZealand journalism. Than Mr. Wakefield there is not a more brilliant writer in New Zealand, or one more fitted to do justice to a work intended to place New Zealand in a correct and telling light before the eyes of strangers ; and to say, as the Post does, when deprecating the selection of the editor of a rival paper, that " there are plenty of officers in the Government service quite competent to have done the work as well," displays an incapacity for distinguishing between artistic and job work in literature as discreditable as the spirit of professional envy and chagrin manifested is unworthy of journalism. The absence of an official and authoritative work, giving information about the colony has been for many years of incalculable disadvantage to New Zealand. There has, it is true, been a plethora of books on this most fertile subject; but, while some of them have been deliberately misleading, and others, though honest in their object and treatment, have been weakened in their effect from having been brought out in connection with some one or another New Zealand enterprise; and others, issuing independently, have been largely romancing as being merely made to sell, there has always been a demand for some reliable book of information, bearing the imprimatur of official authority. The work issued some twelve or fourteen years ago as an " Official Handbook," edited by Sir Julius Vogel, and compiled and written by various authors in the several provincial districts, was admirable in every sense except for its bulk and consequent expense ; and had a smaller edition of that work been issued as an annual every year since then, and made available for distribution in England, we venture to say that the benefits to this colony would at this hour have been very great. A work with a similar name was since then issued, in two volumes, by the Government; but, being about as popular and interesting reading as a dictionary, it has hardly answered the purposes which it is most desirable to serve, and it is certainly time that a work of an interesting and readable kind should be made available to meet the stream of American and Canadian literature in the form of pamphlets, fly-sheets, books, and periodicals with which the United Kingdom is flooded, if New Zealand is to have any share of that best class of settlers,

a supply of which would I*l, to the colony. eas 'eblood The special and immediitn » the work is, of course, in the fop for having an authoritative Sf? handbook, with the object of a/li pular representing New Zealand at tW? bourne Centennial Exhibition T this purpose no less than for diS'h 0r in England, instead of a " drv J! 0n compilation from the conioiW a" of red tape and sealing-wax a ? f ort book such as we might exp4t wlf graceful and piquant pen of Mr & field, would be exactly the J&S 6 " and, as the Government have thr -n ; trations on hand, the cost wifr a mere bagatelle compared > advantage it may be to t) no , ttle The Post says :—"lt is d, ° ful that, when the Government 06 ' der the plea of poverty i 3 Ji UR " old and faithful servants into l? streets, the public money should hS expended in the engagement J * already well-to-do literary man tn I a fancy hand-book." The spiHt of sonal chagrin that dictated such statement needs no comment r eleemosynary character here riven ? public work, as a sort of refuse f or t destitute, and the inability to con id ° good work, as the primary consider.are eminently characteristic of vim ' commonly considered to be the tone '• Wellington sentiment, but the journ! that could give indulgence to so palmf' professional jealousy has evidently fo' 6 gotten what is due to its position U." Wakefield is eminently qualified forth"' work of bringing out a book that will do credit to New Zealand. and J anticipate the very best results fm 6 this project on the part of the Govern 11 ment.