schoolmasters, lawyers, and journalists, pushing agents, resourceful engineers, steady-going and often prosperous farmers, and strong, quick, intelligent labourers.  Of the “self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control” needful to make a sound race they have an encouraging share.  Of artistic, poetic, or scientific talent, of wit, originality, or inventiveness, there is yet but little sign.  In writing they show facility often, distinction never; in speech fluency and force of argument, and even, sometimes, lucidity, but not a flash of the loftier eloquence.  Nor has the time yet arrived for Young New Zealand to secure the chief prizes of its own community—­such posts and distinctions as go commonly to men fairly advanced in years.  No native of the country has yet been its Prime Minister or sat amongst its supreme court judges or bishops.  A few colonial-born have held subordinate Cabinet positions, but the dozen leading Members of Parliament are just now all British-born.  So are the leading doctors, engineers, university professors, and preachers; the leading barrister is a Shetlander.  Two or three, and two or three only, of the first-class positions in the civil service are filled by natives.  On the whole, Young New Zealand is, as yet, better known by collective usefulness than by individual distinction.

The grazing of sheep and cattle, dairying, agriculture, and mining for coal and gold, are the chief occupations. 47,000 holdings are under cultivation.  The manufactures grow steadily, and already employ 40,000 hands.  A few figures will give some notion of the industrial and commercial position.  The number of the sheep is a little under 20,000,000; of cattle, 1,150,000; of horses, 250,000.  The output of the factories and workshops is between L10,000,000 and L11,000,000 sterling a year; the output of gold, about L1,000,000; that of coal, about 900,000 tons.  The export of wool is valued at L4,250,000.  Among the exports for 1897 were:  2,700,000 frozen sheep and lambs; 66,000 cwt. cheese, and 71,000 cwt butter; L433,000 worth of kauri gum; L427,000 worth of grain.  The exports and imports of the Colony for the year 1897 were a little over L10,000,000 and L8,000,000 sterling respectively.  It would appear that, taking a series of years, about three-quarters of the Colony’s trade has been with the mother-country, and nearly all the remainder with other parts of the Empire.  The public debt is about L44,000,000; the revenue, L5,000,000.  The State owns 2,061 miles of railway.

[Illustration:  A RURAL STATE SCHOOL

Photo by BEATTIE & SANDERSON, Auckland.]

Socially the colonists are what might be expected from their environment.  Without an aristocracy, without anything that can be called a plutocracy, without a solitary millionaire, New Zealand is also virtually without that hopeless thing, the hereditary pauper and begetter of paupers.  It may be doubted whether she has a dozen citizens with more than L10,000 a year apiece.  On the other hand, the average of wealth and income is among the highest in the world.