SIR ROBERT STOUT'S VIEWS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5357, 7 September 1895, Page 6

SIR ROBERT STOUT'S VIEWS.

To the July number of the Asiatic Quarterly Review Sir Bobert Stout, K.C.M.G., contributes an interesting paper on "New Zealand," to whioh he prefixes John Flake's eulogy of the colony as "the land of eternal spring." Sir Bobert has marshalled a vait amount of valuable statistics in a very attractive manner and interspersed some pithy and suggestive comments of the New Zealand©™ as a whole. He says: ""Whatever faults we have we are certainly a Jaw-abiding people, and not having large cities, we no doubt escape many of the viceß always prevalent when people are crowded together." Sir Robert regards the political and social experiments bb, perhaps, the most interesting matters of the colony; but incidentally he seems a little dubious as to the result of the recent labour legislation. Whatever the result of these experiments, says . Sir Bobert Stout, " New Zealand is eminently fitted for the breeding of what is called the Anglo-Saxon people. It lacks the summer heats of Australia and the United States ; it has no cold winters j and the qlimate has been termed by an American 'an eternal spring'— a phrase that characterises it very well, yet it lacks the continuity of a Continental climate. Our future who can predict P We are still drawn by chorda of home associations to the mother land. Her literature is our literature ; and though the papers and journals of the United States are extensively read, our feelings are Britieh. Whether the loose confederation that now exists will bear the strain of war, or whether the futnre will, see an English - Bpeaking federation that will weld England, America and Australasia into one in heart and one in aim— the uplifting of humanity — who can tell P For us in the colonies our (,86k is clear. It is to do what our hands find to do, to promote civilisation as best we can, hoping and believing that in the future peace will triumph, and a peaceful federation take tho place of hostile nations."