THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 1901. THE COMING CORONATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11949, 25 April 1902, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 1901. THE COMING CORONATION.

The date set for the Coronation of King Edward VII. is rapidly approaching. With its approach public interest throughout the colony, as throughout every part of the Empire, is being roused to sympathetic action. The preoccupation of New Zealand with martial affairs, occasioned by the deep and widespread feeling that the time bad come to make a concerted and vigorous effort to bring the South African struggle to a triumphant conclusion, has delayed municipal preparations for celebrating Coronation Day with the patriotic feiwour of a loyal people. Since the New Year, in the short space of three months, no less than three thousand men have been raised, mustered, equipped and despatched for Imperial service, a contribution which is equal to fully five per cent, of the eligible manhood of the colony. Such activity of volunteering has naturally pi-evented the direction of active attention to the great event to occur in June, but the latest of these contingents—which we may with some confidence hope will be the last to be required of us in this particular war— well on its way and we may now turn with unburdened minds, to Coronation preparations. For although a very large and representative number of colonials will be present in London and there join with our fellow citizens at Home in hearty and spontaneous acclamation, the great mass of our people, of every class, must rejoice in their own place. We hope to see Auckland take a leading part in giving fitting celebration to this historic happening, so that we may not only display for the passing day our devotion and attachment to the Throne and person of our hereditary chief, but may make the occasion of it live long in the memories of our own citizens and of the many thousands of country settlers whom appropriate rejoicings will bring into the city. It will occur almost on the anniversary of the memorable wel-

come given" to the son and daughter of our Sovereign, and it is easy to prophesy that the same enthusiasm will; again' be aroused, although it may not be marked by such a tremendous gathering, t

To the colonial people at large and to New Zealanders in particular this: Coronation is one of peculiar import and deserving, of much more than ordinary recognition. When Victoria was crowned, this fair colony of ours was flotsam amid the waters, was counted among the flagless islands of the Pacific, was the home of independent tribes and only known at occasional ports to whalers and adventurers. This will be, therefore, the first . Coronation' 1 at which a Sovereign of Britain has claimed the fealty of this Britain of the South. And it will be more than that: it will be the first Coronation at which a British ' Sovereign has formally■ and by title acknowledged the British overseas. It will mark the changing status of British citizenship, will denote the acceptance by the Crown, and by the constitutional guardians of the rights and liberties of the United Kingdom, of that broad and generous conception of nationality which has been the best and most enduring work of the great Victorian era. There is yet much to be done, and many changes to be cautiously wrought out, before the old order of national governance gives place to the completed Imperial organisation in which the Aucklander and the Londoner, the men of the Waikato and the men of the Clyde, will be accorded the same duties and endowed with the same powers. But the place so quietly won by the womanly genius of Victoria is now to be acknowledged before all the world by her son. By sixty and more years of just and patriotic ruling, she made herself felt to be Queen by every one of her colonies and thus held her Empire together through long generations of growth and change. What she made the Empire remains and passes in trust to her heir. No more will British Kings be crowned in the narrower style and dignity of monarchs whose counties are girdled by the Atlantic. King Edward VII. will be more than King of the United Kingdom; he will be King of the ever-expanding Britain overseas. The Crown has long taken the lead in the national expansion and Imperial organisation of our race. The formal declaration and acknowledgment of this in the monarchical title will make of the coming Coronation an occasion especially deserving of colonial enthusiasm and destined to be regarded as long as our history endures as one of the epoch-marking dates.

This loyal and intelligent percep-1 tion by our' ruling family of the latent instincts and hardly articulate purposes of the British peoples has enabled our constitutional monarchy to out-weather without difficulty the storms of the Nineteenth Century. It goes without saying that no other ruling House is so firmly and so securely established, for the deservedly popular Scandinavian kings are menaced .by the ' dangerous proximity of powerful and unscrupulous neighbours. The strength of our monarchy, as the amazed world has reluctantly recognised, as the recent Royal tour so dramatically demonstrated, as the South African war is so effectively proving, lies in the conviction of a free and practical people that it is an essential part of that system of governance which secures to them in every part of the world the liberties they cherish and the prosperity they desire. This conviction makes every man of British blood a King's man. It is so universal and so unanimous that there is no tendency whatever to change the monarchical for the republican form. We are so conscious of the stability of our monarchy, so satisfied with the institutions it crowns, so ready to rally round it and to fight under it, that we are continually inclined to forget the debt of gratitude which we owe to the personality of our Sovereigns. Yet who shall say what might not have happened to our Empire, what schisms and disruptions might not have shattered and sundered our nation, had Victoria been a George, had the Throne fallen by inheritance into liohenzollern hands 1 And who would not feel doubtful of a fortunate and happy issue to. the Imperial problems which confront us in every part of the world, if we had not witnessed and experienced, had not tested and proved, the tact and devotion of King Edward VII i We are not a people that is easily ruled or easily satisfied; we are the very reverse. That we are so completely satisfied with our monarchy, so unaccustomed to separating it from our nationality or of considering its prerogatives as something apart .from our liberties, may well cause us to show our personal affection for our King, as well as our instinctive pride in our Crown, on,the occasion of the Coronation.