MR. OSEBA.[Pg i]
MR. OSEBA’S
LAST DISCOVERY.
By GEO. W. BELL
(Col. BELL, Seven Years U.S. Consul,
At Sydney, Australia).
The conspicuous happiness and prosperity of a people, are the best evidences of benign rule.
WELLINGTON, N.Z.:
THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES CO., LTD., PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS.
1904.
[Pg iii]To the People of New Zealand, the most
advanced community among men, the
Author dedicates these erratic pages....
ERRATA.
Page 87, line 27, read “manor,” not “manner.” Page 150,line 18, “£168,849,381,” not “£120,981,599.”—Later Year Book.An experienced and painstaking friend has called my attentionto several typographical errors, and a few immaterial ones ingrammar. These faults I deeply regret, but considering my ownimperfections, I am glad they are so few and so immaterial.
“Teach me to feel another’s woe,
To hide the fault I see.
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.”
A NOTE.
Many regard the usual “preface” to a book as ofquestionable value, but custom may justify the continuanceof its use.
I had long been a student of Anglo-Saxon history,but until I went to Australia in 1893, I had seen littlehope for a realisation of the higher aspirations of the race.
Being an individualist, a democrat of democrats, Ihold that the unit of society is its basic factor, and, whilein those far-off lands, I saw a vague recognition of thistruth, I also saw a mergence of democracy into socialism,that failed to satisfy my definitions.
I came to New Zealand in early 1903, on a lecturetour. I was well received; and, as I could never remainin a place over night without inquiring “who started thetown,” and for what purpose, I began an inquiry into thesituation.
I had heard and read that this colony was “submergedwith socialism,” and “given over to the falsehood ofextremes,” so I studied the literature, I mingled with thepeople, I attended the parliamentary sittings, and—tooknotes.
I found in the Press, a broad independence; in thepeople, a sturdy self-reliance; and in the statesmen, afeeling that they were the chosen servants of the public,by whom a ripened sentiment was to be clothed in theforms, and vitalised with the force, of law.
I found that what the uninformed derisively-called