THE EDINBURGH REVIEW ON "OUR KIN ACROSS THE SEA."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9325, 30 March 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW ON "OUR KIN ACROSS THE SEA."

A few days ago we mentioned in our English news that "Our Kin Across tho Sea," by Mr. J. C. Firth, had formed the subject of an article in the Edinburgh Review. We now make somo extracts from tho article itself. Tho writer begins by giving a brief resume of tho celebrated book of Do Tocquoville, and then proceeds Let us land with Mr. Firth from a magnificent steamer which crosses _ the Pacific Ocean from another new world in Australia, and places him in the midst of the fierce energy, the wealth,the splendour, and the vice of San Francisco. Mr. Firth brings with him none of the prejudices of France or Europe. He boasts that he is an Englishman to the core, but a colonial Englishman. His real country is New Zealand, where he has played an honourable part in mercantile and public affairs; but his Australian patriotism does not lessen his regard for the British Empire. He views everything with bhe eye of a .New Zealander, and his criticisms are the more valuable a3 his standard of criticism is purely Australian. America, for this traveller from the far east, or rather west of that continent, is to be found in the great valley stretching in one grand plain between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghany chain, watered by the great streams of the Missouri and the Mississippi and their confluents, blest with a soil of rare fertility, and with a substratum, in many places, of coal. In that vast and fertile basin he discerns the future of the American poople, for it is capable of supporting countless millions of human beings. But of the Eastern States, which are most accessible to travellers from Europe, he says not a word. Not a word of the exhausted lands of New England, of the philosophers of Boston, and the splendour of New York. He even asserts that the Americans have lost the character of a maritime people, which they retained as long as they clung to the Atlantic coast. In his eyes the great movement to the west is the leading feature in American life, which will ultimately govern the destinies of tho nation. The cities ho visited appear to have been Chicago, Denver, and Utah He sees Union in the rear, and passes in silence over all that previous travellers have noted. The point of sight of America viewed from the Pacific coast to the centre by Australian eyes is nesv and original, and it is this which gives a peculiar value to Mr. Firth's observations.

Wo shall pass lightly over his not unfriendly, though somewhat humorous_ remarks, on what he saw of American usages and manners, differing probably from what he would have met with in the Fifth Avenue. It may be true that knives do not cut, that waiters do not wait, that nobody says " Thank you," that the cars are dusty and the railways tedious; no doubt to Mr. Firth these things are better done in New Zealand. ' But he qualifies these censorious remarks by a handsome tribute to the hospitality, courtesy, and good sense he everywhere met with in tho States.

These considerations suffice to show that the causes of the actual conditions of the American people and the sources of their future progress, whether for good or evil, must be sought elsewhere than in the townships of New England, where M. de Tocqueville found them. A more recent explorer, like Mr. Firth, seeks the solution of what ho terms " American problems" in the material condition of the continent, and. in a more prolonged experience of the peculiar democratic institutions of the nation. And here we first encounter the general. question, whether the purely elective avstem, based on universal suffrage, does or does not tend to the establishment of good government, which is the end of all political organisations. The experience of the United States, and more recently that of France, returns at least a dubious answer. The uncontrolled majority of votes at elections frequently recurring does not always represent the true opinion or tho true interest of the nation. Large classes stand aloof and are not represented at all. The result at the moment is arbitrary and absolute ; but it is attended by an extreme mutability and reaction, fatal to a consistent system of policy. Above all, the electoral machine is liable to be worked by means destructive of true liberty and of public integrity. Tho reviewer vehemently opposes Mr. Firth's notions on the Chinese question, and in regard to economic laws. After making long quotations from what Mr. Firth states about tho Irish in America, tho reviewer says:— One other jwint which most forcibly struck Air. Firth is the laxity of the administration of tho law. The laws and codes of the United Suites leave little to be desired, but the administration of the law is for the most part in the hands of magistrates and judges elected by universal suffrage in the several states. The Federal Courts are not elective, and the judges of those Courts are universally respected. Crimes and outrages, we are told, through political or monetary influences, go unpunished, or the punishment is so long deferred that, when it is finally inflicted, the public has forgotten both the criminal and his crime. Nothing is more surprising to an English observer .than that many months should have elapsed between the sentence and execution of notorious criminals like the assassin of President Garfield and the Chicago dynamiters. Punishment loses half its effect when it ceases to be prompt and peremptory. It is a very serious evil of the popular character _of existing governments that the democracy is frequently inclined to sympathise with tho criminal rather than with the law.

The notico is a very favourable one throughout, and is important when appearing in a magazine of the rank of tho Edinburgh. Tho conclusion is as follows :—■ Mr. Firth is himself an ardent colonist and a strong protectionist, but he looks forward with prophetic enthusiasm to the possibility of a confederation of the English-speaking race all over the world, based on what he terms "community of interest." We wish that we could believe with him that the common interests of tho empire and its dependencies would in the end prevail over the separate interests of the component parts, But, as far as our experience goes, the prosent current of opinion flows in the opposite direction, and every fraction of the empire thinks much more of its own paltry interests than the common welfare. Not without an effort an insane attempt to disintegrate the United Kingdom has been defeated, and there are those who tell us that Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are, or ought to be, independent provinces under the Crown. Lord llosebery says that the federation of the empire is a causc for which a man may be proud to live, or even to die. We hope he may live to perfect the work. But we are ourselves of opinion that those vast colonial territories and scattered isles will, for the most part, work out their own diverse conditions of government and society ; and we are content that England, the mother of them all, should have given birth to this great progeny, and that she should retain their gratitude and loyal allegiance by interfering as little as possible in their internal affairs. A book like this of Mr. Firth's is of valuo, because it brings before us the fresh and original opinions of a cultivated citizen of these colonies on political questions affecting many other countries, and we therefore recommend it to our readers. But the inference he draws from what he saw in America are singularly unlike those which Mr. Bryco has arrived at in his great work, recently published, on the American Commonwealth, and we shall endeavour in our next number to en tec .more fully on the subject.