[Illustration: _MR. OSEBA._] MR. OSEBA'S LAST DISCOVERY. By GEO. W. BELL (Col. BELL, Seven Years U.S. Consul, At Sydney, Australia). _The conspicuous happiness and prosperity of a people, are the best evidences of benign rule._ WELLINGTON, N.Z.: THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES CO., LTD., PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS. 1904. _To the People of New Zealand, the most advanced community among men, the Author dedicates these erratic pages...._ _ERRATA._ Page 87, line 27, read "manor," not "manner." Page 150, line 18, "£168,849,381," not "£120,981,599."--Later Year Book. An experienced and painstaking friend has called my attention to several typographical errors, and a few immaterial ones in grammar. These faults I deeply regret, but considering my own imperfections, I am glad they are so few and so immaterial. "Teach me to feel another's woe, To hide the fault I see. That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me." A NOTE. Many regard the usual "preface" to a book as of questionable value, but custom may justify the continuance of its use. I had long been a student of Anglo-Saxon history, but until I went to Australia in 1893, I had seen little hope for a realisation of the higher aspirations of the race. Being an individualist, a democrat of democrats, I hold that the unit of society is its basic factor, and, while in those far-off lands, I saw a vague recognition of this truth, I also saw a mergence of democracy into socialism, that failed to satisfy my definitions. I came to New Zealand in early 1903, on a lecture tour. I was well received; and, as I could never remain in a place over night without inquiring "who started the town," and for what purpose, I began an inquiry into the situation. I had heard and read that this colony was "submerged with socialism," and "given over to the falsehood of extremes," so I studied the literature, I mingled with the people, I attended the parliamentary sittings, and--took notes. I found in the Press, a broad independence; in the people, a sturdy self-reliance; and in the statesmen, a feeling that they were the chosen servants of the public, by whom a ripened sentiment was to be clothed in the forms, and vitalised with the force, of law. I found that what the uninformed derisively-called "Socialism" consisted chiefly in a series of co-operative measures, that seemed to promise, not "nerveless socialism," but the most sturdy democracy civilization had ever produced. In my reveries, I reviewed the old books; I re-trod the path of human progress; I re-measured the struggles and the achievements of the Anglo-Saxon race, and, comparing the environing conditions with the social forces now at work, I wrote.