THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9134, 16 August 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 1888.

It is Jin old saying that in free countries Legislatures and Governments are no better and no worse than the public they represent and act for. But hydraheaded as is the spectacle of mismanagement in this colony, and flagrant as are the abuses connected with our rail-way-making, pier or harbour building, educational arrangements, and so many other public matters, it is impossible to suppose that the qualities which constitute public spirit have been naturally more deficient in the people of New Zealand than in colonists elsewhere. New countries cannot possess the patriotic sentiment like old ones ; they have not had time for it to grow ; but if New Zealand, compared with most young communities, makes a particularly poor figure in public spirit, there must be special reasons for it. One reason undoubtedly is that it is not a single colony but a conjunction of colonies, with different natural circumstances, and therefore with different interests, whether real or sometimes only fancied, and so they do not pull together heartily for the common interest. Even before the provinces were welded tightly the only School of Agriculture was established in the South, where it was not so much wanted and still has few students, because the only husbandry possible down there is already familiar to Britons, whereas if established in the North, where the climate admits of the high-paying novelties, a School of Agriculture could be of real service. Again, for the introduction of some or other of the most promising of such novelties, which might become here important industrial staples, we repeatedly asked for some Government co-operation or encouragement, and at a time when the colony was lavishly borrowing money which was in great part wasted. But the only encouragement atiorded in this line was some little orlicial help for silk production, and the site chosen for the purpose was in the South Island, instead of in the North," where the climate would be more suitable. These jealousies are extremely short-sighted as regards' the general interests, for although New Zealand runs through thirteen degrees of latitude, with not only varieties but contrasts of climatic circumstances, yet the country after all is not so extensive but that the effects of any great improvement at one end wculd soon beneficially pervade the whole. The development of the half-tropical resources of one part of New Zealand, with the contingent industries that would be thus called into existence, •vouid soon help to spread wealth in the other provinces likewise. But not only in such matters, but in public works, in any expenditure of public money, or for Government co-operation in whatever form, the same invidious disposition is manifest. Perhaps the rivalry of our cities is really more responsible than provincial jealousies for substituting for public spirit in New Zealand what we may almost term parochial feeling. It is certainly no blessing to Australia to possess enormous cities, unduly collecting population in town life, but the fact that Melbourne and Sydney and Adelaide are each at once the capital and port of its particular colony, saves Victoria and New South Wales and South Australia from the jealousies of division of interests which in this way hamper the public policy of New Zealand. Here, by reason of the insular position, we have four cities in rivalry. Does anybody imagine that the impudent attack by shareholders of an opposition company on our quickest and most economical mail service could'have grown to anything, or have been put forward at all, but for the knowledge that it would be backed by the jealousy of Auckland being the port of call ? Of course these internal difficulties, all this confusion of interests, furnish a fruitful soil for the abundant log-rolling and intrigue characteristic of New Zealand politics, and now become so much the normal state of things as to be transacted with ingenuous candour ; and aesthetic Mr. Vincent.Pyke was really an illustrative figure, as we heard of him the other day on the floor of the House, with merry countenance and nosegay in hand, presenting a flower for the button-hole of each of his supporters as the emblem and token of reciprocity.

Where publicaffairs, the business of the colony, are viewed as of inferior consequence, it would be odd if they could get properly attended to. How much of genuine and needful public work has been got through in the session now drawing to a close? Yet it was demanded and confidently expected that at this critical juncture time would not be wasted as in preceding sessions. It is hard to change from bad habits, and although many constituencies are content, under the spur of depression, to sacrifice log-rolling, too many of their representatives have not proved as ready to consider only the public weal. Then why should the display of our exhibits at the Melbourne Exhibition, just as was the display made for this colony at the Kensington Exhibition, be a bungled aftair ? Surely the muddle in the one case might have served as a warning against its repetition. In this great mercantile age it is a wise thing for a new country to make a proper fa'gure on such occasions, as the. principal Australian colonies always take care to do ; and by their show at Kensington they have established a lucrative demand for their wines and fruits, two of their staples which had previously no place in the English market, Then it is also the great colonising age. Never before was there such an uprising of the nations in the form of emigration — such a movement from the old world to the new. The vast prairie-region of America has come fco be so dotted with farms and towns and crossed by railways that the countless herds of buffaloes which,

a dozen years back, used to traverse it backwards and forwards in annual migration have suddenly disappeared ;' and it is an extraordinary fact, a phenomenon of the period, that of the millions of those animals, so lately seen every year, no more than a couple af thousand, it is believed, now survive in the glens of the Rocky Mountains. When settlements have spread even to the repulsive Polar plains outside Manitoba, and when Australians are incurring the expense and trouble of irrigatingtheirarid wastes thattheyrnay be planted by the orchardist and the wheat-grower, let nobody tell us that a country so naturally attractive as New Zealand would not be a favourite resort of the emigrant, if it were not for the drearily stupid mismanagement of its affairs. There is a growing consensus of opinion that our legislative and administrative machinery must be cut down to half the present size ; and if the object be not thus effected, that other reforms must be introduced. But as Disraeli, among the various spokesmen on this subject, once said, " The corruption of Parliament is only a reflex of the public corruption," so constituencies, if they require public spirit in their representatives and rulers, must not fail to set the example themselves.-