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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 76

From the Fiji Times, August 18, 1900

From the Fiji Times, August 18, 1900.

Sir,—I send you for publication the letter which I received from the Premier of New Zealand. Mr. Seddon's page 44 letter is very encouraging to all who have supported the movement for Federation with New Zealand. It removes the fears of those who doubted whether the New Zealand Government was willing to federate with us, and it is in line with those who think that the first step should be to obtain freedom from the depressing influence of autocratic rule. Mr. Seddon advises us to obtain self-government and promises us the aid of the Government of New Zealand in any movement for that purpose. I will not stop to discuss the nature of the measure of self-government for which we should ask. That is a detail to be settled in the course of the discussion which must follow on our request for self-government. It is the principle of local self-government upon which we must now insist. The form is a detail to be settled hereafter. We may rest assured that, guided by the advice of the statesmen of the neighbouring colonies, we shall ultimately arrive at that form of government most suited to us. Any measure of self-government would be a great advance on the irresponsible and unsympathetic one-man government under which we drag out our political existence. The raising of taxation, the spending of the people's money, the making of the laws under which, for good or ill, we have to live, would at all events, whatever may be the form of self-government adopted, be more or less under the control of the representatives of the people. The administration of public affairs would no longer be in the uncontrolled hands of a Governor disdainful of the wishes of the people of the colony and careless of local opinion, secure in the belief that he is too far away from the Colonial office for anyone to call him to account. No longer should we be subjected to the humiliation of being obliged tamely to submit to curtly-expressed arbitrary refusals to meet the wishes of the people even in such a purely domestic matter as that which recently formed the subject of correspondence between the Government and myself, as Warden of Suva. The power of the representatives of the people to control official salaries would, at least, have the effect of protecting them from language such as that in which the Governor directed the Assistant-Colonial Secretary to couch his letter to the Town Board. The tone therein adopted towards that representative body, because, forsooth, it dared, in the interests of the townspeople, to repeatedly urge the Governor to remove from the town such menaces to health as the leper and bubonic plague huts, savors of Russian page 45 autocracy, or Eastern despotism, and is unbecoming in the extreme when addressed to men who, though living in a Crown Colony, are yet free Englishmen, and cannot but make us detest a system of government under which it is possible so to treat popular representations for the redress of grievances.

It is time that this colony should be relieved from the incubus of arbitrary irresponsible rule. It is time that the colonists should be accorded a voice in their own government. It is time that we should be able at least to command courteous replies to our wishes when expressed in respect of matters which, rightly or wrongly, we deem of vital moment to ourselves.

Mr. Seddon advises that hasty action should be avoided, in that all will concur.

Let us form a committee to consider what steps should be taken to bring about the desired reform in the Constitution of the colony. The Premier of New Zealand promises his hearty support. Possessing his sympathy, and with the promise of his assistance we may go on without fear of the result.

—I am, etc.

F. E. Riemenschneider.

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