Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/364

332 Another point in our favour. The country is wealthy. For its population, not exceeding one million, which includes many non-wage earners, the private and public revenue is very large. But this wealth is fairly distributed. There are a certain number of rich people, but as yet no millionaires. There is capital, a good deal of it, and we could do with more to everyone's advantage, but there are few, if any, of the evils with which capitalism is credited at home. The political cry there, much of it mere cant, of the tryanny of capital falls flat here. The happy result of this may be found in the absence of social envy between the classes. You may see signs of comparative luxury, but the whole community has its share in it. There are no "idle rich." Nor, on the other hand, is there that imaginary equality which the Socialist dreams of. But at present,—how long it will continue one cannot say,—there is opportunity for everyone to succeed and rise in life, which older countries do not afford so readily. In the best sense of the phrase, "Jack's as good as his Master," here. If he is straight-living and industrious, I don't think he envies him. Nor do I wonder at this, as I think of the hundreds I have known who have risen from the status of employée to comfortable independence.

Perhaps your comment on all this may be,—"You speak of material welfare, but what of the spiritual side of life in New Zealand?" In trying to answer that question I must limit myself to my own experience in the South Island, giving you only a very general idea of the conditions of life here which "make for righteousness," or the reverse, but I will not limit myself to the work of our own communion.

There is the great disadvantage of a secular system