MAKERS OF NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 21, 25 May 1907, Page 25

MAKERS OF NEW ZEALAND

By

H. H. LUSK

VII. JULIUS VOGEL. There Have been tnree stages in the Colonial development of New Zealand, each marked by very special features. The first may be termed the provincial, or federal stage, the second the development stage, and the third the social experiment period. Each stage has lasted, roughly speaking, ftbiut twenty years, the first and latest having been somewhat longer than the middle one; and each may be said to have been more or less fully represented by the figure of a single person. The representative figure of the second stage was beyond all question that of Julius Vogel. There might be some doubt as to any single person fully representing the provincial stage, and, indeed, in the very nature of things it was hardly possible that one man could do so; and there may occur some doubts as to the rival claims of John Ballance, as the originator, and Richard .Seddon as the successful carrier on of the work of social experiment which is still in progress; but there can be no doubt as tn the claim of Julius Vogel to whatever credit is due for the policy of rapid development by means of public works and assisted immigration of which he was the author.

Vogel had no claim to be considered one of New Zealand's pioneers. His connection with the colony dated only from the days of the gold discovery in the South Island, which attracted him, as it did a good many' others, from Australia in search of fortune. He was more fortunate than the rest in finding it, though not as a gold prospector. He was essentially a man of affairs, and he looked at public affairs almost entirely from a financial point of view. Of too large and vivid an imagination to be content with anything on a small scale, there was nothing either of the empire builder, or thq enthusiast for English ideals about him. It may be said, indeed, with absolute truth, of Julius Vogel, that it was accident that connected him with British rather than with German expansion, and with New Zealand lather than with any other country in which his financial and speculative talents might have found a field for their exercise. The destiny of his race, which has made them influential and notable in many countries, but more residents in than actual citizens of any, attended the man who was twice alone, and twice in connection with another, Premier of this colony.

At the time when Vogel began to take part in New Zealand polities the colony was just emerging from the shadows of the Maori war-cloud, which had hung heavily over the North Island for five br six years. The South Island, of which he was a representative in Parliament, had not, of course, suffered in the same ■way, or to the same extent as the North, but it too had felt the pressure of the loans, raised for purposes that were certainly not immediatly reproductive, and it shared in the almost total stoppage of immigration caused by the war Before the warn good deal hail been done by th > Provincial Governments to encourage immigration. Assisted passages had been provided for desirable settlers who had friends in the colony in some provinces; free passages had been offered to certain classes by others; and in more than one land was offered freely to special settlements of agricultural immigrants who were prepared to settle on the land. In this way a steady flow of immigration had been encouraged in most of the provincial districts, until the outbreak of hostilities created n scare which

practically put a stop to the introduction of new population in the North Island, while it cheeked it materially in tho South. It has been the fashion ever since the introduction of the Vogel policy of immigration and public works to belittle the colonisation work done by the provinces, with the idea of justifying the policy which swept away the provinces to make room for a centralised system of government, but as a matter of fact, nothing could be more unjust. The arrangement which placed the administration of the Crown lands in each provincein the hands of thecouncils and executive governments was not only the only possible one at the time, it was also one which was fully justified by results. Among these results the judicious use of the agricultural land of the colony as a means of attracting settlers was undoubtedly the most important, and the fact that different provinces made use of it for this purpose in different ways with success, is perhaps the strongest argument in favour of Sir George Grey’s original constitution. Immigration to the North Island, except that connected with the military settleemnt of the confiscated land in the Waikato valley, had been paralysed in the North, and greatly retarded in the South by war, and yet the record between 1860 and 1867, which included the whole of the disturbed period, was by no means a bad one. It was, in.fact, better than the periad that followed when the Stafford policy of weakening the provincial administrations and encroaching on tiieir functions had come into force. This period of provincial weakness coincides with that in which Vogel became a f.ictor in colonial politics, and to some oxtent this may have been responsible for his opinion that for the purpose of carrying out a policy of rapid development, such as he had in view', it would be necessary first to ignore and then to get rid of the provincial governments altogether. This, at any rate, was the form taken by the policy of which he was the representative. In spite of many drawbacks, among which must be reckoned the guaranteed native ownership of the lands, the cost of transport from Britain, and the fear of native wars, the settlement of the colony had proceeded with at least moderate rapidity during the period ot yrovincial control, which had lasted for eighteen years up to the end of 1870. Up to the end of 1858 the European population had not quite reached sixty thousand persons, about three-fifths of whom had settled in the South Island, but in the twelve years between that time and 1870 the number had increased to fully two hundred and fifty-live thousands, or at the rate of 34 per cent on the mean population. The proportionate increase wus greater in the South Island than in the North, where immigrants were

slow to settle even after the war was over. It was in June, 1870, that Mr. Vogel, then Treasurer in the Ministry formed the year before by Mr. Fox, brought forward his I‘ublic Works policy in Parliament. There was so nelhing eastern about the mind of Vogel, which gave a flavour of Aladdin’s lamp to even so prosaic a matter as a financial statement made by him at any time, but in the case of laying his new policy of Public Works and Immigration before the House the Treasurer excelled himself in this direction. His ancestor Joseph could hardly have drawn a more attractive picture of the results likely to accrue from his great c wrier in wheat for the benefit of Pharoah than he did for that of the New' Zealand colonists, when he sketched his picture of the development and universal prosperity that w ere sure to follow on the adoption of his great financial policy. The figures were so large, compared with the ideas of those days, that almost anything seemed possible, and he found it no difficult matter to persuade both the Parliament and the great majority of the people that, by the simple device of borrowing ten millions, and spending the money on making railroads and importing people to make them, the colony might skip a quarter of a century of slow progress, and suddenly find itself both populous and prosperous. That he fully believed it himself thire can be no doubt in the mind of anybody who knew the man. Vogel could always believe anything be wished to believe —perhaps it would be even more correct to say what he wished to believe he couldn’t help believing—and for him the future of New Zealand depended on its Parliament and people adopting his policy. They did so, readily enough, and the colony started on its career of borrowing which has made it the most heavily indebted community, in proportion to population, in the world at this time.

It would be unjust to lose sight of the fact that there was much to be said in favour of the scheme of allied public works and added population at the time, in Vogel’s hands, and for his imagination —which was essentially that of a gambler—it had all the excitement of testing a new system at Monte Carlo, indeed, but the system had been carefully thought out, and was undoubtedly clever. So long as the expenditure on public works could be confined to such works as were really needed, and as long as the due proportion was maintained between new population and new expenditure, his policy would have borne a criticism that might be called severe: the difficulty was, as might have been foreseen, to maintain these due proportions.

It was a matter of course that it signed the death warrant of the provinces, though, strangely enough. Fox, under whose authority as Premier the policy was brought forward, didn’t see this at first. Under tile original Constitution of the colony tho work of colonisation and land administration fell to

the provincial governments, anil it may be admitted that this arrangement could only be a temporary one. The day on which Parliament passed the statute to give effect to the Vogel policy set a definite limit to the working of the old Constitution. For such a policy it was necessary that the colonial government should have a free hand, and although

the originator of the policy announced no attack on the provinces nr their powers, anybody with ordinary forethought could see what was coining. As long as the settlers looked to their superintendents and councils ns the sources of the practical administration of those parts of the Government that affected them

most, long were they strong; Hie m®-mi-nt the colonial Government stepped t* and practically took uver Lite making of railways and othci public works, wit* all the patronage that went with the®* things, it was easy to persuade tho iiiiui of the people that provincial governments were a useless and costly encumbrance. This, of course, was what happened, and five years’ experience was sufficient to change the Constitution of the colony, substituting u single and highly centralised government for the federated provinces of Sir George Urey. In the case of Julius Vogel more than in that of almost any other of the men who have left their mark on New Zealand’s political history, the work done rather than the ilocr will lie remembered. Putting aside his financial astuteness, and his vivid imagination, there was little to arrest attention about his personality. Neither u powerful nor an effective speaker, he was not a man to attach colleagues strongly, or to obtain a lasting hold on a party in the Parliament or country. His natural destiny was the one which he followed. To map out a scheme of which finance was the beginning, middle, and end, was quite within the range of his special ability; to present it in a form to dazzle and attract a majority at the time was not difficult to him; but when he had reached this point lie could do nothing better for the colony, or more agreeable for himself, than to devote himself in London to managing the financial operations tie had set on foot. How far New Zealand ones him any gratitude may be a question. His policy may be said to have gone far to double the population of the colony in three years, and on the whole the new population was well chosen, and has been valuable. He began a great system of expenditure on public works which has no doubt helped materially to advance the prosperity of the country, but which has induced a habit of finance which is dangerous, and the end of which is not. in sight, even how, which has burdened the people with a huge public debt, and has intioduced here, as elsewhere, at least the first suspicions of political corruption.