So, King Edward having granted her petition, His Excellency the Governor, Lord Plunket, at eleven o'clock on Thursday morning the 26th of September, 1907, read in public His Majesty's Proclamation, and New Zealand ceased to be a Colony and became a Dominion.
And what of New Zealand's future? The only possible answer to that at present is in the words quoted at the head of this section. God in His wisdom hides the future from our eyes, but it is allowable to construe the future from the past; it is permissible to infer what will be from what has been, and it is only reasonable to admit that none who know New Zealand's past ought to have any well-grounded fears for her future. What she has done she will do again yet more perfectly: what she has not done, but has a mind to do, she will accomplish.
Less than seventy years ago New Zealand, like her own peculiar birds, the moa and the kiwi, was unable to fly; but, like them, she could and did run very fast. Then, as in the course of years—and few enough of them—her wings grew, she did not hesitate, but accomplished flight after flight, each more daring than the last, until her pinions, like those of the albatross of her own seas, now bear her untired whithersoever she will.
"Ab actu ad posse valet illatio!" What New Zealand has done she will do. Even if she never attain to the position which Sir Joseph Ward seems to consider should be hers, and become the actual as well as the natural centre for the government of the South Pacific, she can still soar as high in her proud independence, and perhaps higher, if she ever strive to attain to Sir Joseph Ward's ideal, "a true Dominion in the head and heart of her own people."
What New Zealand has done she will do. It is not yet seventy years since Captain Hobson, in presence of a few white folk, read his commission as Lieutenant-Governor of islands which were declared to be a mere extension of the boundaries of New South Wales. Wellington was not yet founded; Auckland was yet to be born; the Crown and the Company were for a time to divide the house against itself; the good will of the Maori was still to win and, since British sovereignty had not been declared, other claimants for possession had to be baffled.
Yet with all these drawbacks and difficulties New Zealand was able not to struggle on, but to leap boldly from childhood into a youth which was fortunately vigorous, since in this phase she had not only to adjust a quarrel here and there, but to fight for her very existence. When the doors of the temple of Janus were at last shut after nearly thirty years of intermittent war, New Zealand set her feet firmly upon the high road of industrial progress and strode forward; nor has she since looked back.
Is it likely that with the knowledge and experience she has gained she will do less than she was able to do when she had everything to learn? The idea is inconceivable.
No. New Zealand accomplished much in her weakness, and in her strength she will accomplish more. If she has made good laws, she will make yet better and continue to legislate, as she has always done, not for the benefit of one class or section of the community, but for the common good. If she was able to hold her own against the strong, brave race she dispossessed and reinstated under better conditions, that "baptism of fire" shall avail to teach her how to arm against the jealousy of nations, older, it may be, than herself, and envious of her vineyard. Has she not already fought nobly for the Motherland, and shall she not know how to defend her own? More than once, indeed, she has been styled the "Britain of the South." What if Sir Joseph Ward's haughty assumption of her right to rule the South Pacific by virtue of geographical position be some day so fully recognised as truth that she shall acquire the right by the might of added moral superiority?
If that day come, will New Zealand be happier? That waits to be seen. Yet she should in any case be happy, even though she mount not one step higher than that to which she has attained. Climate, soil, position and natural beauty, laws, social and commercial success, all unite to feed her hunger for happiness, and to satisfy. Save that Man must ever sigh for something which he has not, what more can she crave than that which God has already given her? Even now she may most fitly sing in a full-throated burst of rejoicing: