TO THE EDITOR OF THE “DAILY NEWS.”

Sir,—Few people, except those whose minds prejudice has closed against the plainest teaching of experience, will fail to conclude from the correspondence between the Colonial Minister and the Governor of New Zealand, a portion of which you lately gave us, that our Colonial system must be changed, and that soon; whether the change they prefer be the simple and obvious one of political separation, or the less simple and obvious one of a federal union, the working plan of which has not yet been put forth, between two nations at opposite sides of the globe.

In the case of New Zealand, as of other dependencies, that which is officially styled the “Empire” is patronage to a few, but to the nation expense, weakness, humiliation: while to the Colony it is a protection which cannot last for ever, and, so long as it lasts, stifles self-defence and kills the root of national virtue.

With danger lowering on our own shores, with the war income-tax almost hopelessly fixed upon us—with France mistress of the destinies of Europe, and trampling international rights under her feet—with the defence of the Canadian frontier on our hands—with a cotton famine to cripple our resources as well as to afflict our people, we are keeping up an army of 5,000 or 6,000 men, at an expense of more than half a million, to carry on a war against a horde of naked savages in New Zealand.