Hoist the Flag.

Even Tonga has not yet been definitely annexed, and it possesses in Yavau a large and safe harbour in a part where harbours of any kind are rare, and it is a conceivable that if annektion be long deferred some complication may arise that may make it difficult. This in what happened with the New Hebrides. We laid the foundations of the trade in the New Hebrides, and before 1880 there was not a Frente subject in the group, which everybody then regarded as practically a British possession, as indeed it actually was at one time. Now, through the happy policy of "letting alone," the French settlers own most of the land, and claim most of the rest; trade is three-fourths French, and in the future, as far as can be seen, will probably be French altogether. The case of Samoa, which Germany got hold of be-canse the bulk of the 'trade, moat of the alienated land, and the majority of the European population were German, is still fresh in our memories, and though these conditions do not as yet obtain in Tonga, and Germany has renounced her "rights" to these in lands (if she ever possessed any!), still, delay may be dangerous, and the wisest policy surely is to hoist the flag at once.