Interview with Mr Christie Murray.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 437, 3 April 1890, Page 2

Interview with Mr Christie Murray.

When in Wellington, Mr Murray was interviewed by a Post reporter. Explaining in the first place whet brought him to the colonies, Mr Murray said—“ The fact is that I needed rest. I have been hard at work for 15 years, and my friende advised me that I could very well pay my expenses by lecturing in the Australias. It was with this idea that I came ont. I did not intend to have lectured iu New Zealand, but I was persuaded to do it. You can judge what I think of this colony from the fact that though I reached it two days before Chrismas, I have been wandering about the Lakes and Sounds and other resorts in the South Island ever since. Now I intend to see as much of the North Island as I can possibly find time for: after which I shall visit the West Coast districts, and hope to be able to spend a couple of winter months camping at Lake Te Anau, though I had originally intended to stay only two months hero in all.

CULTURE IN NSW ZIiHSD. One of the most remarkable things about New Zealand, to my mind, is the advance it has made over Australia with respect to culture—the knowledge and love of books and art. In Dunedin I found mare people who cared about such matters than I did in the whole of Australia, and I am not speaking without the book, for I spent four or five months in the other colonies, and was almost everywhere. My opinion is confirmed, too, by my friend Mr Santley, whom I met ia Christchurch."

OVER MODEST COLONISTS. The proneness of New Zealanders to depreciate their colony has struck Mr Murray rather forcibly. ‘ They are,' he says, • altogether too self depreciatory. They decry their own country—talk almost apologetically about it, as if there was something about it that needed a good deal of explaining away. Now, I’ve seen quite enough of it to oonvinoe me that that is not in toe slightest degree necessary.' After alluding to hia wonderful good fortune in the matter of weather—only ten days of rain out of three months—Mr Murray spoke in disapproval of the action of those writers who had come ont to the colonies with the idea of forming an opinion about them, but after dodging about for a week or two haa gone Home without having really seen anything. For his own part, he does not purpose returning until he has gained clear and something like permanent views. He does not see that anybody could form an absolutely sound judgment of the position of the colonies in the time at his disposal, or that he can himself get more than a surface view, but he wants to dip as deep into everything as he possibly can. New Zealand audiences seem to him more receptive and kind than Australian audiences, who do not seem to care about what may be brought to them. There ia amongst the Australians a class who think they can get whatever they want in the way of artistic and intellectual entertainment without meddling with any professors of art and intellect who come from Europe. That this is not so he is emphatically convince!, and he finds that ths J Australian lettered class is neither so 1 numerous nor so active as that ot Now ’ Zealand.

THE COLONIES 4ND THE MOTHER OOUNTXT. Taking up a magazine that lay on ths table, Mr Murray gave hia views as to Sir Julius Vogel's article on ths right of the colonies to secede, in which our ex-Premier claimed that England must make it known definitely that the colonies have no right to a separate national existence. * I can't yet say about New Zealand, but I am certain that it that sort of thing were applied to Australia there would be an immediate attempt at disturbance of the ties that bind the colony to the Mother Country. The people of Australia are now in a curious state—very much the same as that through which the Americans were passing about the time when Dickens visited them. They are in what you may call the hobbledehoy phase. They haven’t yet got to national proportions. They are nervous end anxious about themselves, and as to what is thought of them. If they are not praised they are extremely angry, and rile up horribly, but curiously enough it yoa do praise them they think you are trying to humbug them. Of coarse that over sensitiveneu will wear away in a little time, but that's the stats ths Australians are in at present.*

DESTINY OF THE COLOWIIB. The Federation question is one which Mr Murray has studied for years, and it was that more that more than anything else that brought him to the colonies. But for it he would probably have gone to the United States instead. Complete federation, he thinks, is as certain to oome u it is oertaia that the sun is in heaven. "I think,” he says, *' that I see a good deal beyond it. The colonies will federate—will ask for a nationality—not just yet, of oouree, but by and bye. It will he given by the Mother Country with the freest heart in the world, and after that, I believe, they will federate with the Mother Country on equal terms. That may, of oouree, be no more than a dream, but it is mine. My great hope is that the whole Englishspeaking race will federate one day, and join together to police the world—tost is to keep peace in it. No one of the prowling Powers dare touuh a weak state, or seek to aggrandise (tacit at the expanse of a feeble neighbour, in the faoe of such a oomUnetion at the Angle-Saxes petyi* would present,