THE Jlclu Maitfo Jjentftr AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, MAY 20, ISS9.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9369, 20 May 1889, Page 4

THE Jlclu Maitfo Jjentftr AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, MAY 20, ISS9.

: Three days hence we shall again be celebrating the Queen's Birthday—a day of festivity and rejoicing throughout the world-wide Empire over which Her Majesty reigns. In no part of that Empire will the 24th of May witness a loyalty stronger and more universal ' than in New Zealand. The ties that connect us are the invisible but adamantine bonds of pride and affection. Enjoying perfect freedom and left practically without interference in our affairs by the Government in England, there is no room for discontent, no chance of the friction which a closer official connection would be likely to engender. Throughout Australasia saving Western Australia and Fiji, where the blight of Colonial Office rule is resented as a bitter wrongthe attachment to the Throne and the Empire is without alloy. The day will commemorate also the thirty - fifth anniversary of the first meeting of the free Parliament granted to New Zealand by the Constitution Act of 1852. The Act was proclaimed in 1853, and under it the Parliament met in Auckland for the first time in 1854. The previous struggle had been long and bitter. For eight years Sir George Grey had ruled with absolute power. He came to New Zealand in the midst of a Maori war at the Bay of Islands in the North, and at Wellington and Wanganui in the South. At the end of two years he had subdued the enemy, and the remaining six were years of undisturbed peace. The colonists were few and scattered and did not number 10,000 when this war had ended. There had been agitation by the New Zealand Company in England to obtain selfgovernment for their colonists—an agitation which Earl Grey, as Secretary of State, sought to appease by the charter of 1846. The colony was divided by the Charter into the two provinces of New Ulster and New Minister; each to have its council of two chambers, the one elected by borough councils, the other nominated by the Crown. The suffrage was to be educational. Every man » must read and write in English before » he could be placed upon the electoral roll for the borough councils. Over each province a Lieutenant-Governor, appointed by the Crown and subject to the orders of the Governor, was to preside. An Assembly of two Chambers was provided for the whole colony. The one was to be elected by the Provincial Councils, the other nominated by the Crown. Sir George Grey, looking to the small number of the colonists, their disputed land purchases from the Maoris, and to the enormous influence wielded by the New Zealand Company, recommended the suspension of this Charter for five years. Maoris had no place in it, and he justly held that they would be placed in the power of the New Zealand Company where disputed land purchases covered an enormous area, and over which blood had been already shed. Then began the struggle which, for five years, was continued with ever growing heat. In England, the parliamentary influence of the Company was very powerful. Among its directors , and promoters were members of Parliament and others, influenced by the ! most patriotic motives. Behind them, ' and pulling the wires, were others who ' made the Company one of the hugest, ' most unscrupulous, and most reckless ! land speculations which the Colony has 1 known. The result was a crop of war j and bloodshed directly, and indirectly } the borrowing policy which the colony f has since adopted. During the contest i that followed the suspension of the t Charter, Sir George Grey recommended c various changes in its terms, and ulti- i mately these recommendations led to 1 the passing of an altogether new Act, 1 conferring on the people of New Zea- ' L land the most liberal constitution ' accorded to any colony. Provincial Governments, thoroughly Democratic, 1 were created. They had not only freely- ! elected Councils, but an elected Superin- < tendent as their chief. The Assembly ) was to consist of a Lower House chosen ' by the people, and an Upper House s chosen by the Provincial Councils. This > was the Bill recommended by Governor 1 Grey, adopted by Earl Grey, and pro- 1 posed to Parliament by Sir John Paking- f ton, Secretary for the Colonies in the 1 Tory Government that succeeded that ! in which Earl Grey had been a Minis- ( ter. The elective Upper House was s changed, after a strong opposition from c Gladstone, Bright, Cobden, and other c Liberals, into one of Crown nominees I appointed for life. The reason given i by Lord Derby was that the foundation > might be laid for a House of Lords on £ the English model, a project which all c who knew the colony believed, at the time, to be as fallacious as it has since ' proved. The balance of the Constitu- c tion was destroyed. The democratic 1 and the aristocratic elements were 1 brought into direct conflict, and the C introduction of Responsible Govern- j ment placed both Crown and Legis- - lative Council in the power of the i Ministry of the day. This, added to the c subsequent borrowing policy, completed c the derangement. c Despite these adverse influences the £ progress made by the colony since 1854 * has been wonderful and rapid. The !■ population grew from 10,000 in 1 1848 to 30,000 in 1854. In the [ next twenty years it increased to v 350,000, and in the last fifteen years t has risen to over 600,000. These figures f are exclusive of the Maoris, who nura- g ber some 45.000. Canterbury and Otago g were still infant settlements in 1854, i: and were drawing the sheep to stock E their runs from the older provinces of c Nelson and Wellington. The number of 11 sheep in the whole colony was, however, c little over 300,000. They now number ? nearly seventeen millions. Of horned j cattle there were but 35,000. They now j number nearly a million, while horses, s pigs, and other stock have increased in v still larger proportion. Only 40,000 s acres were fenced throughout the colony, p and of these less than thirty thousand 1 were under crop and grass. The re- - turns now show over seven million s acres under cultivation or sown with grasses of various kind. In 1852 the a revenue of the colony was £75,000, of c which less than £15,000 came from v land. After the Constitution Act of j. 1852 it rose rapidly, and in 1854 was t already £290,000, of which £180,000 a was derived from land. To-day the b revenue exceeds three millions, without s taking into account an additional p million derived from the railways. a What an immense amount of industry, e energy, and enterprise do these figures 1 disclose ! True, we have borrowed much, far _ too much as most of us think, during the last seventeen or c eighteen years. Far better would it c have been to rest content with the s magnificent and solid progress of the previous twenty years. But the reaction 0 produced by the stoppage of a great f\ war expenditure, and the alleged ne- n

The blunders o!\he past are nffin Th |y s tand out as warning beXS" and their light is not likely to & extinguished. A horror of public 25 private debt will, we hope E,° f S 0t the past with us as it P l?as P donl el? where. Iromit there will SDri L !'" trust, a policy similar to the C? settled policy of the American naS? hat public debts shall be li qi ££& by the generation which them on the country. The nobility of our doing so wi ff° S £ doubted by none who study the pa 2 history of the colony, and know iK enormous latent resources. A prudent economy, and a determination t« ' hasten slowly," are all that is nerl sary to bring about the result. Govern" mente must be held to this policy ami adequate checks be provided to keen them within its lines. With the checks, the people who have producer! such magnificent results under cxcen tional difficulties of war and uric tainty in the past, may be safelv trusted to show even greater results now that those difficulties no iorW exist. = r