To understand these things I hold to be statecraft: to undervalue or despise them is to demonstrate incapacity for its acquirement.

In bringing forward the claims of the native races of Polynesia for British protection, in urging my fellow-countrymen to at least humbly follow, though in different fashion, where German enterprise has led, I speak of no new thing.

Six years ago, in the Parliament of New Zealand, Sir Julius Vogel, K.C.M.G., outlined, in the diction of a philanthropist and a statesman, the ideas of which the concluding passages of 'Coral Lands' are a modest echo.

The salient features of his scheme were these: a. To prevent by anticipatory action the establishment of European communities with lawless tendencies.

b. To develop the self-governing aptitudes of the Polynesian natives.

c. To encourage them to labour and to realise the advantages which labour confers.

d. To stimulate the production of the islands. e. Without bloodshed or embroilment with other nations, to gradually introduce one uniform government throughout Polynesia.

In fact the New Zealand statesman's idea was a politico-commercial organisation, with its head-quarters in that colony, based in great measure on the lines of John Company,' or, at any rate, to gradually approximate to that gigantic corporation.

At the present hour I fear this scheme, in its entirety, is impracticable; though if our sons are true

to the colonising blood which flows in their veins, the dreams of 1874 and 1880 will be realities before many years are over.

There is an old adage, 'Trade follows the flag.' Of Coral Lands it may safely be said that if British capital were systematically and cautiously introduced into its islands, the flag would, sooner than a great many people think, have to follow the trade. Great Britain spent twenty-seven millions in freeing the slaves why should she not do a little, even if it be also a very profitable business, for the people of the Southern Sea?

These people are looking to us for help, and that help can be handsomely repaid.

They may not have been the victims of Bulgarian atrocities,' but what treatment they do occasionally receive the preceding pages and the documents that follow should demonstrate to every thoughtful mind.

What is being done in Fiji can be repeated outside that group. The field is now open, and the harvest is bound to follow. It may seem tall talk, but it is simple folly to shut one's eyes to the manifest destiny of the grand Imperial race to which we belong. Overcrowded Britain needs fresh outlets for the splendid energy of her people. The noblest republic the world has ever seen, that of the United States of America, was created by men with English blood in their veins, and their grandsons have seen the rebellious colonies become a mighty State, with forty millions of English speaking people, and a territory extending from Atlantic to Pacific.

Our penal settlement in Botany Bay has developed into an Australian Dominion, which in company with New Zealand will be the future home of millions of our working-classes. We are just now appreciating the wealth of the great North-west of Canada, and it will be our people that assuredly will reap the rich wheat-fields of Manitoba. Our position in South and Central Africa has not been fully realised by placid stay-at-homes, but unless I am very much mistaken, there is a tendency northward from the Cape of Good Hope; and until we become emasculated, I suppose that tendency will develop and increase in its intensity.

These outlets are mainly for what are called the working-classes, and in the countries I have named, there is room for all and to spare. There is no fear for the future of our surplus farmers and labourers, if they will but seek the soil waiting for their advent.

Coral Lands require a different class of colonists. The rich archipelagoes of the Southern Sea demand for their advancement, not only adequate capital, but intelligence of no mean order. What I have said about the men that are wanted in Fiji applies to the whole Pacific; but I am of decided opinion that in the present state of the outlying islands a hearty cooperation of brains and money on a large scale is the best means of securing, not only a just reward for judicious enterprise, a future for educated men willing to work, and a new field for our manufacturers, but would be the means of preserving and civilising peoples worthy of our care, and of ultimately building up a Polynesian Dominion under the British Crown, of

which even the race which colonised America and governs India might be reasonably proud.

If anybody thinks this a dreamer's vision, let him take a Mercator's chart of the world, and observing the exact position of Australia and New Zealand in regard to the islands of the great South Sea, he will see at once the commercial importance of Coral Lands, and understand the reason why I ask the question, Is nothing to be done?

VOL. 11.

20

CHAPTER XXIII.

LEVUKA TO WATERLOO.

As a rule I am very easily satisfied; I have knocked about too much to be over-fastidious, and I am fonder of the sea than most people are, yet I was inexpressibly glad that I had only one night in ex-King Cacobau's yacht Victoria. We left Levuka about four o'clock one very dull afternoon, and no sooner had we got through the reef than it came on to rain, and when the rain ceased coming down, the wind, to balance matters, got up, and the Victoria being what is called a very wet craft, her deck was neither safe nor comfortable. I am fond of society, and especially do I relish the pleasures of companionship at sea; but when in the cabin of a ten ton cutter, with bunk accommodation for four, twelve passengers have to pass a night in the tropics, you feel almost inclined to wish your nearest and dearest friend overboard. I distinctly remember feeling as the eleven passengers in an omnibus look, when the twelfth appears as a stoutlymade man with a stupendous quantity of baggage, labelled San Francisco, boarded the Victoria just before we left Levuka. Yes, this was the infamy of the