NEW SOUTH WALES AND NEW

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1904, 15 June 1892, Page 5

NEW SOUTH WALES AND NEW

ZEALAND.

In the course of an interview with a reporter of the 'New Zealand Times,' Dr Grace, M.LC, who has recently returned from Sydney, where he had been attending the annual meeting of the Australian Mutual Provident Association, said :— I found a very general feeling of alarm prevailing amongst certain classes of society as to the effect of our radical measures in politics. At the same time, I was amazed at the gross ignorance which was manifested as to the precise character and degree of these radical measures. On every convenient occasion I took the greatest trouble to explain that for the most part they were merely a kind of brulurn fuhnen—a sort of political hurly-burly. I sought to impress on their minds that there was nothing so very dreadful as they imagined in our radical measures,

But why should our Radical measures cause alarm in New South Wales, which surely cannot be directly affected by them ? — Well, they were alarmed because they imagined they would prove ruinous to us, and that the probability of our example being followed over there would involve them in ruin also. They lelt this example to be pernicious and destructive to the State.

And you tried to disabuse their minds of these fears ? — Yes, I took every opportunity of carefully impressing upon them the exact effect of our Radical measures, and I showed them, for instance, that as we had a large agricultural population settled on the land and no large cities, the measures which appeared to them to be ultra-radical did not affect us so much as radical changes affected them, owiug to the aggregation of their population in large cities. At the same time, I found the prevailing opinion with regard to this colony was that it had got safely past difficult times, and was now on the rising tide of prosperity. I also observed everywhere what I thought to be jealousy of New Zealand, its people, its products, its climate, and its progress. It all arises from the character and extent of our food productions, and from the offence we have given them by refusing to federate. In this connection I may mention one circumstance that seemed rather peculiar to me. I took advantage of the large public meeting of the members of the Australian Mutual Provident Society to demonstrate the financial soundness of New Zealand, and I gave as an illustration the fact that the A.M. P. Society had loaned in this colony a sum of L 878.115 over a period of twenty years, and had that aggregate amount now out on loan, and that during the entire twenty years we in New Zealand had not a shilling of interest in arrear, nor lost a sinyle shilling of the original capital. I challenge the whole world to produce a greater evidence than this of commercial morality and financial soundness amongst a people. Yet in spite of the fact that reporters from all the Sydney papers were present, and notwithstanding that my speech was in reply to an attack made upon the solvency of Npw Zealand, the Sydney ♦ Morning Herald 'never published the reply, contenting itself with the baldest reference co my remarks. A few days later I saw an exhaustive leader in the Sydney ' Morning Herald ' regretting that New Zealand was about to become the dumping ground for the criminal classes of England, and demonstrating this proposition by a series of arguments inaccurate in principle and detail and betraying the utmost ignorance of our land laws. I could not help feeling that if an important paper like the ' Herald ' in a great city like Sydney neglected to publish our defence when our position was attacked on its public platforms, there was every | reason for us to look askance at federation J proposals, I