OCEANA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9179, 8 October 1888, Page 11

OCEANA.

[A Review, by J. C. Firth.] lI.—NEW ZEALAND. It would have saved Mr. Froude from a good deal of adverse and angry comment if lie could have spent more time in New Zealand. Unfortunately his engagements prevented his seeing the South Island, with its marvellously fertile wheat fields, its busy cities, its magnificent scenery, and from experiencing the genuine hospitality which is as characteristic of New Zealand as of any Australasian colony. The worst affront you can offer to a man, is to pass him by. No matter whether time or circumstance prevents your having the pleasure of making his acquaintance, he cannot forgive- you your innocent dilemma, and he acts accordingly. Nevertheless this is what Mr. Froude says of New Zealand :-— " The climate of New Zealand ranges from that of Naples in the Bay of Islands, to that of Scotland at Foveaux Strait. There is abundant rainfall ; there are great rivers, mountains, volcanoes, a soil luxuriantly rich, a splendid clothing of magnificent forest. So far as the natural features of a country tend to produce a. fine race of men, New Zealand has the advantage of Australia. Australia, too, has hills and rivers, woods and fertile lands, but unless in the heated plains of the interior, which are sublime in their desolation, it has nothing to touch the imagination, nothing to develope varieties of character. In New Zealand there are mountain ranges grander than the giant bergs of Norway; there are rich farm lands for peasant yeomen, and the coasts, with their inlets and infinite varieties of fish, are a nursery for seamen, who will carry forward the traditions of the old land. The dullest intellect quickens into awe and reverence amidst volcanoes and boiling springs, and the mighty forces of nature, which scorn as if any day they might burst their chains. Even the Maoris, a mere colony of Polynesian savages, grew to a stature of mind and body in New Zealand which no branch of that race lias approached elsewhere. If it lies written in the book of destiny that the English nation has still within it great men who will take a place amongst the demigods, I can well believe that it will be in the unexhausted soil and spiritual capabilities of New Zealand that the great English poets, artists, philosophers, statesmen, and soldiers of the future will be born and nurtured." Landing at Auckland, our traveller notices a common spectacle as follows — " It seemed as if the people were so well off that they could afford to lounge about the wharf like idle gentlemen. They were well fed, well dressed, and well humoured, with rather more republican equality in (heir manners than I had observed in Australia, but nothing rude or offensive." Mr. Froude is no lover of the large cities which are springing up like mushrooms in all the new lands to which England sends her sons. Melbourne contains nearly onethird of the people of the colony of Victoria, and Sydney about the same proportion of the inhabitants of New South Wales. In New Zealand we are not so bad, four of our largest cities absorbing about one-fourth of our people. In older countries, where land is nob within the reach ot labourers or of people of limited means, the growth of cities is more of a necessity. But in the Australasian colonies, where land is to be had for the asking, there is no such reason for this sinister development of cities. What is the reason? Is it the love of luxury and pleasure; the increase of effeminacy ; the desire to live by scheming instead of by honest labour ; the preference for being somebody's servant rather than for being our own master. Is it that " farming does not pay," because of the enormous over-production of cattle, sheep, and wheat—the stock products of English and colonial farmsan over-pro-duction stimulated, if not created, by England's one-sided Freetrade policy, a policy which is sacrificing the producers to the consumers all the world over, wherever an English telegram or an English steamer can find its way V In such a colony as New Zealand, with a climate and soil capable of growing all sub-tropical fruits to perfection, as well as all fruits of temperate climes, together with a variety of possible products of the land, limited only by the skill,

- ability, and industry of the cultivator, this p flocking of the people to the towns is with- ■ out excuse. Thirty years ago people came J to New Zealand mainly to get what they 3 could not get at home, a bit of land of their ? own. ' Then there were few roads, hardly a school, . and many difficulties. The settler of those . days had often to cut his way through 3 the forest, sometimes at intervals, had to a defend himself from hostile natives. Now, fc the colony is covered with roads, railt ways, and schools, and yet, one of the last 1 things people dream of in these days is to 3 settle upon land of their own. For such a " condition of things the low values of ordinary f farm products are partly responsible ; the 3 fatal "borrowing policy ". perhaps, still " more so. 1 For whatever reason, the old Anglo-Saxon e "earth hunger" appears to be dying out s amongst us. Such a condition of things is i pregnant with evils of many kinds. If only " adversity can bring us back to the old love ' of the land, with its hard work, its frugal 1 ways, its simple pleasures, its homely enjoyments, its manly independence, then, by I the adversity through which we are passing ■f we shall be the gainers. 1 Such a keen observer as Mr. Froude hit 3 ' this blot on the present phase of colonial development in words so just, so truthful, 1 so full of warning, that we shall make no apology for quoting them at length. He says : — i "The English race should not come to i New Zealand to renew the town life which - they have left behind them, with a hand-to- ! mouth subsistence as earners of wages on 3 improved conditions. They will never grow t into a new nation thus. They will grow : into a nation when they are settled in their J own houses and freeholds, like their forefathers who drew bow at Agincourt or trailed ' pike in the wars of the Commonwealth ; when they own their own acres, raise their 1 own crops, breed their own sheep and cattle, i- and live out their days with their children 1 and grandchildren around them. Fine i men and fine women are not to be reared in ■ towns, among taverns and theatres and * idle clatter of politics. They are Nature's 3 choicest creations, and can be produced I only on Nature's own conditions : under , the free air of heaven, on the green earth, 3 amidst woods and waters, and in the whole* - some occupation of cultivating the soil. ■ The high wages are the town attraction ? now, but it cannot remain so for ever. The > young men bred in such towns as Auckland 1 will be good for little. Country children alone can be reared up in simple tastes and ; simple habits ; can be taught to obey their ' parents and speak the truth, and work \ in the working hours, sing and dance > when work is over; and end and begin > their day with a few words of prayer to : their Maker. All this is out of fashion I now. The colonics are not alone in their • ways. In England, in France, in Ger- ' many, in America, the town and its plea- ' sures are the universal magnet ; the news- ' paper and the debating club are the mental " training schools ; and obedience, and truth, . and simplicity do not flourish in such an ■ atmosphere. Is this centripetal tendency > to last for over, or has our kind schoolmis- ; tress Nature provided for us some rude i awakening ?" 1 Mount Eden, with the splendid panorama to bo seen from its summit; a railroad journey through a pretty English-looking country, through forests, over uncultivated but fertile lands; bad government and borrowed and wasted millions, call forth from Mr. Froude both wise observations and i strong but kindly animadversions. As he i travels through the Waikato country, along- - side its noble river and over its fertile and 1 uncultivated plains, he exclaims— ' " What a country New Zealand might | not become, what a population it might i bear, what a splendid race of Southern . English might be reared in this still desert ! treasure-house of agricultural wealth, if . it were wisely ruled? Two Houses of Legislature, 100 members in all, each receiving'2ooguineas a year wages for three months of the year), each with an eye to his ; own interests, and returned by constituen- , cies equally keen for their own ; the power ' virtually in the hands of labourers and workmen jealous of immigration lest it should lower the rate of wages; influences at work everywhere which we need not call corrupt, because the most respectable of us in the same situation would probably act in precisely the same way—is not the happiest conceivable form of government for a people not yet numbering much over half a million. The result is, the soil is left waiting for the ploughman's hand, an enormous debt still fast accumulating, and rich and poor gathering like flocks of gulls above the carrion in the big towns. A wise governor, a wise president, if he had full authority, and was not troubled with the necessity of conciliating Parliamentary interests, would surely manage thing's better." Sooth to say, there are great numbers in New Zealand who now hold similar opinions, though not very long ago—two years or so—it was considered rank heresy in Mr. Froude to utter them. A despotism would doubtless be the best form of Government for New Zealand for some years to come—if we could be sure of getting the right kind of despot—but there is not much chance of that; as we have made our bed so must we lie in it, reducing as much as possible the number of our bedfellows, who buzz and bite us in a way which is doubtless great fun to them, but death to us. If New Zealand can reduce its tormentors —who talk much and tax more— by two-thirds ; and reduce its huge Circumlotion office with its regiments of secretaries, treasurers, collectors, and clerks, with their deputies, and their deputies in the same proportion ; if some Hercules would sweep out our Augean stable of railway mismanagement, would reduce our gigantic educational expenditure by keeping the infantile scholars at home with their mothers, and send the cider scholars off to work, we should save half the money we now expend in teaching our children " how not to do it," and in unfitting them for living healthy, useful lives. Well may Sir. Froude exclaim, "It is disgusting to see, on one side, a beautiful country opening its arms to occupation, holding out in its lap every blessing which country life can offer ; and on the other, cities like Auckland, crammed like an overcrowded beehive, the bees neglecting the natural flowers and feeding on borrowed sugar." The " borrowed sugar " is exhausted now, and the people of Auckland and other New Zealand cities are suffering a recovery from the surfeit, and slowly coming to their natural senses. Drones there are amongst us in abundance. The "borrowing policy" is responsible for most of them. Before the advent of Sir Julius Vogel and his "borrowed sugar," there was hardly an idle person in the colony ; nor was there a pauper. Not long ago " the unemployed" were numerous enough to dictate the rate of pay and the place where they would work. In point of fact, during the last few years we have been breeding a degraded class who don't work, and who won't work when work is offered. These people all own a vote, which they hold like a rod in pickle over the back of a Government without "backbone." Such a condition of things is only possible in countries where Democracy has run to seed, or gone mad. Stern necessity, in the form of " no funds," is the remedy immediately available. A general advance in the price of farm products all along the line will, before loner, do much to complete the recovery. We cannot follow Mr. Froude in his charming rambles amongst the wonders of the volcanic country, amongst noble forests, beautiful ferns, lakes green and blue, amongst glens and waterfalls, accompanied by the dusky children of nature, the merryhearted Maoris. Nor can we climb with him the lace-fringed steps of the White Terrace, nor bathe in the crystal baths of the Pink Terrace, nor stand on the brim of its central seething cauldron, "and gaze enraptured, as through an opening in the earth into an azure infinity beyond. Down and down, and fainter and softer as they receded, the white crystals projected from the rocky walls in the abyss, till they seemed to dissolve, not into darkness, but into light. The hue of the water was something which I had never seen, and shall never again see on this side of eternity. Not the violet, not the hare-bell, nearest in its tint to heaven of all nature's flowers; not turquoise, not sapphire, not the unfathomable ether itself could convey to one who had not looked on it, a sense of that supernatural loveliness, of that inimitable purity." Alas ! neither Mr. Froude nor any of earth's children will ever again behold "that supernatural loveliness." For, a few months after Mr. Fronde's visit,

I in the early morning- of June 10, ISS6, I the stupendous volcanic eruption of Mount Tarawera occurred, accompanied by violent earthquakes, many-coloured volcanic lightnings, incessant thunder peals, and an awful overwhelming roar, .as if heaven and earth were coming together. Maori villages with a hundred of their dark-skinned dwellers were buried in the fiery storm. Noble forests, lovely glens, and the beautiful Terraces were forevei destroyed. In two short hours, the fiery mountain hurled forth more than a thou sand million tons of volcanic dust anc 1 debris. When the horrible uproar had ceased, and the awful darkness had disappeared, by reason of the settling of the denso cloud of volcanic dust, the blessed sunlight once more appeared, and there silently rose over the spot where the Pink Terrace once had been, a majestic column of snow-white steam, rising upwards and upwards until ib reached a measured height of 22,000 feet, illumined, not by the lurid gleaming of volcanic flames, but softly tinted by the rosy sunlight of a peaceful morning, as if Heaven itself had raised this majestic pillar of cloud— the tinted bow set in the heavens of old—to witness that the Master of Nature had once more set bounds beyond which Nature's mighty forces might not pass, telling feeble, helpless, affrighted man that he could once again breathe freely. There is a pathetic interest in Mr. Froude's description, in its being the latest and the best of all the glowing pictures of the weird beauty of some of Nature's choicest masterpieces, the like of which we shall see no more. Mr. Froude was naturally touched by the picturesque Maori silently but surely fading away before the blessing or the curse of our "civilisation." Ho looks back regretfully "to the Maori warrior as he was before the English landed in New Zealand, brave, honourable, and chivalrous. Like Achilles, he hated liars 'as the gates of Hell;' fire ; water had not taught him the delights of getting drunk ; and the fragments which survive of his poetry touch all the notes of imaginative humanity— the lover's passion, the grief for the dead, the fierce delight of battle, the calm enjoyment of a sunlit landscape ; the sense of "a spiritual presence in storm or earthquake, or the solemn stillness of the star-spangled midnight sky. the germ of every feeling is to bo found there which has been developed in Europe into the finest literature and art; but the Maoris, as we had seen them, did not seem to have derived much benefit from the 'blessings of civilisation.' . . . Like the Red Indian, the Maori pines away as in a cage, sinks first into apathy and moral degradation, and then vanishes away." We now come tea chapter of " Oceana " which, amidst many wise and warning sentences, contains sentiments utterly alien to the honourable determination to pay their debts— amongst the population of the colony of New Zealand during Mr. Froude's visit— determination which still animates them. These sentiments, which 1 will not apologise for terming atrocious, are not those of Mr. Froude any more than of the colonists. They are but the wild vapourings of a fool, the dishonest ideas of a knave, which, had Mr. Froude but enabled us to bring home to the man who uttered them, the culprit would for ever have been unable to face the honest scorn of men, who whatever their mistakes and faults, have never yet had their fair escutcheon degraded by the bar sinister of " repudiation." We think it extremely unfortunate that Mr. Froude should have permitted the dishonest opinions of such a fellow to have stained his pages. It is the old story, " a man cannot wrestle with a chimney-sweep without getting blacked." Careless readers of " Oceana " at first confused Mr. Froude's opinions with those of the oblique-minded person who interviewed him. These vile sentiments were afterwards echoed by malignant enemies of New Zealand, as though they were the opinions of the colonists. Yet, not a word in " Oceana " affords the smallest grounds for supposing that any such opinions were attributed to the colonists by Mr. Froude. Butitdoes not need aphilosopher or historian to stand in the street and call out, " mad dog !" "mad dog 1" to create a false alarm. Any thoughtless fool may use the words; no matter, the unthinking crowd rushes hither and thither, every man echoing the charge, and the poor dog —less mad probably than his pursuershaving had a bad name given him, we know what usually follows. Long ago these silly and selfish utterances of Mr. Froude's informant have been rightly put down as the vapourings of a man destitute of common sense and common honesty, and as in no way reflecting upon the honour of New Zealand colonists. Mr. Froude's opinion that the safe limit of borrowing by New Zealand hail been reached is now the settled conviction of the vast majority of the colonists. As New Zealand—in an evil hourwas the first to initiate the borrowing policy in the colonies, so it has been the first to suffer from the inevitable recoil. The cloud of a great depression has swept over the colony. It still hangs there, though now owing to the general advance in agricultural and pastoral productsthe cloud is beginning to lift, and to show its silver lining. A resolute determination is abundantly manifest to stop Government borrowing, and to reduce Government expenditure. A rigid private economy has been enforced upon all classes. The lessons of adversity will not be lost upon the people of the colony. The errors and the losses of the past have been a bitter, yet salutary experience, and though New Zealand colonists may have been foolish in notbenehting by the experience of others, they are not unlikely to be made wise by their own. They have been too enthusiastic, probably. With a buoyant spirit, natural to these Southern climes, they have done the work of SO years in 20. This present generation of colonists have been animated by an Imperial spirit, which has made them courageous enough to lay heavy burdens on themselves, from which those who follow them will derive the chief benefit. They have believed in their country, not too wisely, perhaps, nor yet too well, but they did not sufficiently realise the fact that, while the burdens they took upon themselves were present and real, the advantages to come from them necessarily belonged a good deal to the future. They are paying the penalty. They have no intention, however, of quailing under their burdens. They have no need to do so. For they know that they and the land they live in are equal to the strain, heavy though it be. They are not ignorant that they have already exported forty millions sterling of gold as the first fruits of a metallic wealth as yet only in the beginning of its development; that their fertile soils yield heavier crops of wheat than any country in the world, excepting perhaps England and Belgium ; that their country is neither cursed with fiery droughts, nor chilled by icy winters ; that their well-grass-ed pastures keep double the number of sheep per acre, and that their sheep probably yield double the weight of wool to those of any other colony in the Empire, and—England, perhaps, excepted—than any othei country in the world ; that their forests yield an abundance of timber unsurpassed for its general excellence ; that their climate is unrivalled for its beauty and healthfulness, showing a death rate far lower than any other colony or country. Well may Mr. Froude say of such a country "that it is destined to be the future home of the greatest nation of the Pacific." The prediction made of the future of Victoria by the late Mr. William Howitt, in the midst of the terrible collapse after 1855, that, "A colony which has many millions of acres of fertile virgin soil can neither sink nor suffer long, if she have only fair play given her. She has within herself the elements of an invincible vitality and under the energetic hands of Englishmen will march on towards a great future," has been more than fulfilled. ' If a similar prediction be to-day made regarding New Zealand, a colony equal in "area, with greater natural resources, and with a better climate than Victoria, it will as certainly be fulfilled, and fulfilled too in the not very distant future. Departing from New Zealand Mr. Froude continued his journey homewards, across the Pacific, across the the Great Republic. For his views of American Democracy—its doings, its dangers, and its destiny—we must refer our readers to the pages of Oceana itself.