HANDS OFF THE PACIFIC.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3374, 26 January 1884, Page 2

HANDS OFF THE PACIFIC.

This is the title of an article in the “ Pall Mall Gazette,” from which we extract the following:—“lt is hands off all round—with the exception of course, of the hand of Englishmen. To Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, and all other “ foreigners,” the whole of the Pacific south of the equator is to be forbidden ground. We do not understand our Australian fellow-subjects to demand annexation, except in the case of New Guinea, but they do demand that while we shall be free to annex when, where, and how we please, all other nations shall be warned off as trespassers. The South Pacific, in short, is to be an English preserve. The French have, indeed—the more’s the pity —got a penal settlement at New Caledonia. Therefore the Australians invite Her Majesty’s Government to make serious representations to France with a view to the abolition of all penal settlements in the Pacific. There is an understanding with France —the more’s the pity again —that neither Power shall annex the New Hebrides. Therefore it is “extremely desirable” that Her Majesty’s Government should seek to tie France's hands tighter in these regions, and at the same time to free itself from so in* conveuient an obligation. As for the proposal to transport the scum of French brutality and crime to the near neighborhood of Australis, there to be turned loose to prey at will on the rest of the world, let that bo resisted by every means in the power of the English Government. That and not less than that is the startling summons that rings across the Southern seas to the Mother Country from her children at the Antipodes.