The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, 22ND SEPTEMBER, 1888,

Southland Times, Issue 9973, 22 September 1888, Page 2

The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, 22ND SEPTEMBER, 1888,

If compliments to one's country were the oae thing needful, we New Zealandere should be the happiest people on. the face of the earth. Every new visitor seems to vie with his forerunners (these are the days when men mn to and fro, whether knowledge is greatly increased or not) in expatiating upon the beauty and tke fruitfulness and the general incomparableneesof the colony, Their expectations are always exceeded,*nd words often fail them to express their admiration of what their eyes behold. Nor is there the least doubt that New Zealand is a charming country. With skies Italian (even here in Southland we can sometimes show an azure which Itaiy migbt envy), and such a marvellou& variety of scenery, ranging through all gradations from the sublime to the beautiful, and presenting all kinds of beauty and sublimity (there is a charm even about our brown tussock), it is little wonder that strangers speak about it in hyperbolical laDguage. There is indeed no finer or more desirable country under tbe sun, Borne of our visitors too'refuse to believe in tbe depression. They tell us they can ace no signs of hard times . We seem all to be in the height of prosperity. " Look at your rosy checked children," they say, "as they come tupping out of school, all scrupulously clean aud tidy, well fed and well dad, blithe i S of heait and Hihe of limb, contrasting so strongly with the ordinary run of school children at Home. No, no ; there can be no distress to Bpeak of in a country where there are no neglected miserable looking children." Our visitors persist in seeing everything; in ro»e colour, and it may be that New Zealaiiders are alter all a great deal better ofi than they imagine, The fact probably is that they are only experiencing the difference, commercially speak.ng, between heroic and unheroic tiiies. There was first the gold boom, and then tke public works boom, and now tke colony is euffeiing a reaction, which would nevertheless be considered a very enviable kind of prosperity by the people of any European country. Mr Weßtgarth, one of our latest visitors, says he can discover no proper evidence of the much and long talked of depresiion, and that the working classes have high wages and comfort on every aide, But though a. stranger may judge from a cursory view as to the general condition of a country, he cannot be expected to know anything of those exceptions which exist everywhere, even under the most favourable circumstances, There is very little abject poverty in New Zealand, and that little is generally the result of, or associated with, incurable vice ; but there is a great deal more hardship than a casual observer wonld suspect from the outward appearance. The i depression is not altogether imaginary. It has disoiganised the whole economy of the country, and Ifc has driven and is still driving hundreds of willing workers from our •hores. In such a atate of matters a large' amount of suffering of one kind sad another, . however unnoticed it may be, is simply in- ! evitable. The hero of the Excursion says of a purticular period ia t*e history of England | '" Many rich Sank down as in a dream among the poor, \ ! AM of the poor did many cease to be. ■ I The population of New Zealand has certainly ! not been thinned by death from starvation, though, a» has just been said, we have lost, through migration, a comiderable aumber oi j 5 euf tm? beit paella (best pt^lt ia the bee* I

sense — not the society sense) ; bat of very -many it may be said that they have sunk down aB in a dream among the landless and the penniless. The extraordinary prosperity which the colony enjoyed for a few years was in great measure a factitious and not a genuine prosperity, and the time was bound to come, when this would be demonstrated beyond the possibility of a doubt in the actual experience of the colonists. The riches, which so many believed they possessed weie purely imaginary. At last the bubble burst, and they found they had baeufliving in a.dream, and bb in a dream they sank (a large proportion of them at least) to their original level, their wealth having melted away " like snaw when it's tbaw." When anything goes wrong with one, it is human nature to blame something or somebody. It is the fashion at present to blame the Government, and, in a minor degree, the loan companies, for all the misfortunes that have befallen the colony, "We have been shockingly misgoverned " exclaim the excapitalists, or rather ex-imaginary-capita-lists; " one Ministry after another and one House of carpetbaggers after another have only succeeded in bringing us nearer and nearer the brink M ruin," This is the kind of thing which ia heard whenever the public affairs ars discussed ; and the jeremiad is usually wound up with a wish for a dictator. "If we could ouly suspend or abolish the Parliament, and get the Queen to send us a capable Governor, we should soon be on our feet again." The contempt with which our politicians are spokeu of by all classes ■ knowa no bounds, It is coolly taken for granted that they go up to Wellington merely for their own honour or psiSfii, and that tke public good is the least of (Ueir c&res. We need scarcely say that this ia,not quite just to our representatives. The present House is certainly not a very brilliant oue. It contains few, if indeed any, exceptionally able men, as the composition of the Government shows clearly enough. But it ia .ihe elect of the people. And if it be said that the people elected the best they conld get, the rejoinder is that whether they are good or bad they are practically under the control of the electors— to gay nothing of the fact that the quality of the representatives at any particular time will be pretty sure to represent, amoDg other things, the general political character of the people, the character of the supply being determined in the long run by that of the demand, in other woras, had the electors all along nude conscience of c_oosing the best candidates, they would have had no reason to complain of ' their present representatives. " Like people, like priests," is an old saying ; and, "like electors, like representatives," would be equally true, New Zealanders in wreaking their wrath on their Government and their representatives, forget that they are a self-governing community, and that they are themselves responsible for the misgovernment which they so loudly denounce. When they cftll for a dictator they are only like children crying for the moon. But the fact of the matter is that they are almost always under the power of a dictator. They appoint representatives, pledging them to this that and the other thing, and then let them do as they please ; and the representatives, as a rule, fellow the Government tj do as they please, i.e., to act despotically for the time being. Hinc illae. lacrimae ! There is no question as to the fact of the misgoverment ; we have a poor Ministry and a pool House ; but tke public commit a mistake when they lay the blame at, the door of the Parliament instead of their own. The enormous public debt, which is pressing the life out of the colony, was incurred not merely with the consent, but, we might almost say, at the clamorous demand of the people at large. There is no doubt about it, Ambitious or unscrupulous politicians may have brought forward proposals to borrow and go ahead heroically, but they simply formulated the wishes of the public, who vociferously applauded their schemes. If this beautiful country then, wbich excites the admiration of all who visit it, has been brought to the verge of ruin, the evil bas been done by the people as a Whole, and not tnartly by the politicians. The politicians have no doubt, done their share of the mischief, but in dong it, they only carried out the desires of their masterß. It is in yam to ask for a dictator, or for the suspension of Parliament. The proper thing to suspend i» local jealousy and local greed ; and the proper thing to ask for, a general unselfish desire for the public good— a genuine public spirit, instead of the wretched localism which dwarfs the minds of the. people and retards the progress of the colony. Then would New Zealand soon be as prosperous as it is beautiful, and no longer a byword among the nations for extravagance aud debt.