It is to be hoped the country is not to become part
of the Australian colonies--a labour land, and a land where loose money
in the hands of a few capitalists is to enter in and make enormous
fortunes, sacrificing the natives and everything else. If the Imperial
Government is afraid of the expense, I think that can easily be avoided.
Annex New Guinea, and save it from another power, who might harass our
Australian colonies; administer it for the natives, and the whole
machinery of government can be maintained by New Guinea, and allow a
large overplus. We have all the experience of the Dutch in Java; I say,
accept and improve.
"It will be said that, as a nation, Britain has never tried to govern
commercially, or has not yet made money out of her governing; and why
should she now? She does not want New Guinea. Why should she go to the
expense of governing? Her colonies may be unsafe with a country of
splendid harbours so near in the hands of a foreign power, and the people
of that country need a strong, friendly, and just power over them, to
save them from themselves and from the white man--whose gods are gold and
land, and to whom the black man is a nuisance to be got rid of as soon as
possible.
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