ONE of the most practically beneficial acts of the General Assembly of New Zealand, and one for which it deserves the thanks both of the colonists at home and of intending emigrants in the mother country, is the annual publication of a "Statistical Blue Book," showing, year by year, the advance made in population, agriculture, and in trade; and recording many facts relating to the industrial and social progress of the colony eminently useful to all who are interested in watching the rising fortunes of our young Britain of the South. Under the able supervision of the Registrar General, Mr. Bennett, this publication is every year improving in scope, detail, and typographical execution, and bids fair soon to become as perfect a work as the statist could desire to possess. The last volume, issued in 1859, gives us the statistics of 1858, and, supplementing to these the returns of preceding years, shows us the progress made during the last year or two in the various departments of our colonial industry and general advance. It would have been easy to have presented the reader with a mere abridgement of these Statistics of 1858-but a young growing colony like New Zealand sometimes exhibits as great a change, as great a progress, in five years, as an old, full-grown country like England exhibits in five and twenty; so that had I contented myself with merely copying the figures of '58, I might have given my readers a very erroneous and unflattering idea of the real statistical position attained by New Zealand by the end of the year 1860. Having before me the mean annual ratio of increase exhibited in the various items for the past year or two, and having reason to believe that this ratio has, on the whole, been since maintained, I have added it to the returns for 1858, and have thus presented the reader with half a dozen tables showing, approximately, how New Zealand may fairly be expected to stand in population, revenue, agriculture, and trade, on the 1st of January, 1861. There may have been certain disturbing causes which, in certain items, have diminished or enlarged the past ratio of increase; while it is probable that the increase in our emigrant population was greater in 1859 than it was in 1860, or than it will be in 1861-but I venture to think that when we get the Registrar's volume for 1860, it will be found that, on the whole, I am not far wrong in my estimates, and that I have at least given the reader a clearer idea of the true, present position of New Zealand, in "matters statistical," by offering him the following tables, than I should have done had I contented myself with merely placing before him the old facts and figures of the year 1858.* *Since these remarks passed through the press, the Hon. Mr. Stafford, Colonial Secretary of New Zealand, has been good enough to forward me a copy of the "New Zealand Blue Book for 1859," together with some interesting and pregnant documents on the New Zealand War. I am therefore enabled to lay before the reader a more accurate set of tables for the year 1860 than I could have done had I been obliged to rely solely on the data afforded by the statistics of 1858. 340 OUR COLONIAL EMPIRE. TABLE I. SHOWING (as compared with the MOTHER COUNTRY in 1860) the and IMPORT TRADE, of the SIXTEEN BRITISH * In what I regard as the true, or the modern acceptance of the word, we have no more than the sixteen colonies here enumerated. True, in Blue Books and official documents emanating from Downing Street, many little islands and tracts of country under the name of "Possessions," or "Plantations" are classed with "Colonies." But it seems to me that the classing of such little spots of rock and bits of coast as Bahama and Bermuda, Sierra Leone and St. Helena, Honduras and Heligoland, with great colonies like those of Canada and the Cape, Australia and New Zealand, is almost as incongruous as if the naturalists were to class the tomtit with the turkey, or the tadpole with the whale. OUR COLONIAL EMPIRE. TABLE I. AGES, AREAS, POPULATIONS, and " DECLARED VALUE" of the EXPORT Number of Present value of British Population.‡ Annual Exports and Imports 341 Value of Annual Exports £10 £ 6 220,000 3,000,000 14 300,000 1,500,000 5 50,000 120,000 500,000 2,000,000 10 17 Some remarks on the "age" of colonies will be found at page 184, and in putting down the mother country as 500 years old, I think we are making her about the same age, relatively, as that which as been fixed on for each colony. In Canada and the Cape colony there are about a million of colonists who, by descent, are French and Dutch-but, virtually, these people are now British colonists. Nearly three-fifths of this trade is a direct trade with the United Kingdom. 342 OUR COLONIAL EMPIRE. The preceding Table, compiled with some trouble, and which will, I think, be found pretty accurate, may perhaps supply an answer to those short-sighted economists who are fond of asserting that colonies are but national encumbrances costing the mother country more than they are worth. Here, we see that, in three great groups, the mother country possesses sixteen emigration colonies, having a territory twenty times larger than her own, and already numbering a population of nearly five millions of British colonists, who have already created an export and import trade of the value of seventy millions sterling per annum, This trade, created and possessed by five millions of colonists, is only three-fourths less in amount than the whole of the export and import trade created and possessed by the thirty millions of people in the United Kingdom; and it is worthy of remark, that three-fourths of it is carried on by British shipping, and is created by the colonies sending to the mother country raw materials, such as bullion, wool, tallow, oil, hides, bread-stuffs, timber, and copper ores, and by their purchasing of her British manufactures, in return. The trading profits-indeed, glancing at the remarks in the Appendix, we may add, the social and political profits, too,-accruing to the mother country from this vast and rapidly increasing trade are enormous, and she now obtains them at a small cost. In respect to their civil government, the great majority of these sixteen " emigration colonies," like New Zealand, are self-supporting, and while they do not cost the mother country a penny for their government, they offer her a fine field of patronage in the appointment of their Governors and Judges. As to military and naval protection, there are, I think, but 14 regiments and 25 vessels of war* now stationed throughout the whole of them, and as this force is stationed there, quite as much for "imperial" as for "colonial" purposes, it may be said that the cost of guarding and protecting these sixteen vigorous saplings of the parent oak is no more than the cost of the maintenance of a body of some 7000 troops and of a squadron of a dozen sloops *The Army List, a publication which I had relied on as one which would give the stations of all our regiments, was found, at the eleventh hour, to contain no such information. The number of regiments here put down is, therefore, only the number which I assume to be, and which I think will prove to be, about correct. |