The Wanganui Chronicle AND PATEA-RANGITIKEI ADVERTISER "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1893.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11866, 17 October 1893, Page 2

The Wanganui Chronicle AND PATEA-RANGITIKEI ADVERTISER "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1893.

Phybicai. deterioration, says the Hod. J, W. Fortescue, in a recent number of the Nineteenth Century, must follow the transplanting of Englishmen and the sons of Englishmen from their own rigorous climate to that of sunny New Zealand. Tbe Englishman, he contonds, in the product of his fogs, but put him under a blue sky, and the sunshine will soon take all that is .English out of him. As summarised in tho Review of Reviews, Mr ForteßCue says : — " l*ew Zealand if more like England than any of our possessions, although ths latitude is more that of Italy than of England. But although it has been peopled quite recsntly, and is continually fed by a stream of emigrants from the Old Country, tbe inhabitants are rapidly undergoing a process of alteration, they are being dis-Englished in respect to mental characteristics. Ihe young New Zealander3 aro Ion? and slender, they are acquiring a colonial twang, and are picking up a hideous Cockney dialect and an abominably coirupt pronunciation. The New Zeiland character is modified by tho New Zealand sun The born and bred New Zoalander has a delight in existence for itself. Under tboir blue skies life is brighter and happier to them. They cease to be restless, gloomy and anxious, and become cheerful and light-hearteo, more like the Southern races of Europe. Then again they have no winter such as ours to teach them endurance, providence, industry, and a certain crude but valuable brutality; hence it conies to pass that already the dominant characteustic in New Zealand is a certain joyous frivolity, a cheerful assurance that everything must either be all right or comt, right of itself Eooner or later, and that meanwhile nothing really matters v 6 rymuch. There is no hard winter to bring home to people the coES-quencea of extravagance, reckle'sness, and neglect of work as in England : and therefore the penalty paid for them is much lighter. Her people will be-as, indeed, they already to a great extent are — cheerful, warm - hearted, pleasure-loving and optimistic. Mr ForteEcue is much rougher upon the people of Australia, where he says "the heat is so great aa to destroy much activity in work, and in Sydney the people have a limp appearanco, painfully resowbling that of the degenerate whites m

Barbadoes. His opinion 'is that the white man will abandon the attorapt to cultivate Australia without coloured labour, and that the Australian democracy will import coolies and live in comfort on th.? labour of the coloured men ; " and he adds : " That th« white man, so pampered and softened, will degenerate phvsVally I have no doubt whatever, i,,r lia jvill grow idler and idler, and less inclined to the physical exertion that alone caa keep him in vigour." Put briefly, Mr Fortescue's contention is, that fogs are better than sunshino for producing strong, active, vigorous men. , We think it would be hard to prove that fogs are good for any kind of mon. Neither do we believe that extremes of cold are better calculated to produce strong, healthy, and vigorous men than extremes of heac. A medium climate is the best, hut the physical configuration of a country and the character of the land has as much to do with producing vigorous inhabitants as the climate has, It is not the cold of Switzerland and of Scotland that baa built up their tough and brawny men : it is the necessity of trudging up and down their country's steep hill sides, through, the cold, that has made the mountaineers and Highlandmen the men they are. New Zealand, before an Englishman had over set foot upon it, had produced a race with whom, either in physique or in mental force, the average Englishman could not compare. It is true that the Maoris of to-day have degenerated — but that is not the fault of either the climate or the country. Broad-shouldered and stronglimbed, of greater average weight than either Englismen or colonials, they lack staying power. But the reason is, that they take little exercise and do little work, not because the climate is too trying, but because their wants are few, and tlmy have little "need to exert themselves. In the old fighting days every man was a warrior; every man could endure hunger and thirst and privation, take his part in long, forced marches through rugged country, impassable to their pursuers, and when surrounded by vastly superior numbers die at their posts like heroes, men and women together. The land in which Fiich a race could thrive and grow strong and powerful is not likely to contribute lothe degeneracy of Englishmen or their descendants. It may signify nothing, but it is worthy of note in passing, that it is | the warm North Island in which the Maori race have thriven, and not the cold South. Climate, as we have said, is not the prime factor in producing men. Let anybody travel in the warm districts north of Auckland, and he will find that where tha soil is good and the means of living abound, men are limp and lazy j but that where, as in Albertland, labour is a necessity, because of the poorness of the land, men are active and strong. We cannot refrain from quoting Mr Proude as against Mr Fortescue. The former incurred the dislike of many a New Zealander because of the uncomplimentary things he said against us ; but he differs in toto from our latest critic in regard to the kind of men that he considers such a country as ours is calculated to produce, In his " Oceana "he says : — •' In New Zealand there are mount jin ranges grander than the giant bergs of Norwayj there are glaciers and waterfalls for the hardy, hillmen ; there are the sheap-walks for the future Melibcous or shepherd of Salisbury plain; there are the rich farm lands for the peasant yeomen ; and the coasts, with their inlets and infinite varieties, are a nursery for seamen, who will carry forward the traditions of the old land. No Arden ever saw such forests, and no lover ever carved his mis. tress's name on such trees as are scattered over the Northern Island; while the dul» lest intollect quickens into awe and reverence amidst volcanoes and boiling springs and the mighty forces of nature, which seem as if any day they might break their chains. Even the Maoris, a mere colony of Polynesian savages, grew to a stature of mind and body in New Zealand which no branch of that race has approached elsewhere. If it lies written in the book of destiny tbat the English nation has still within it great men who will take a place among the demigods, I can well believe that it will be in the unexhausted ro'.l and spiritual capabilities of New Zealand that the great English poets, artists, philosophers, statesmen, soldiers of thofaturo will bo born and nurtured."