The Anglo-Maori Warder. TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1848.

Anglo-Maori Warder, Volume 1, Issue 8, 13 June 1848, Page 2

The Anglo-Maori Warder. TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1848.

"Save us from our friends," must by this time be the cry of the New Zealand company at home. The hordest blow that has been dealt to them for some while past has been from a friendly lnnd, a new ally called into the field; ■nho has contrived, in his headstrong zeal, to compromise every one in any nay connected with him —Lord Gkly, Directors, himself, and al'. The N'ew Zealand Company, as is well lenown, had been long on bad terms with the major part of its own settlers. Complaints had Lien poured into England more and more thickly; reproaches, each bitterer than the last; statements, a little exaggerated, of the universal rum in which they had been involved by the nefarious proceedings and total want of faith of the said Company—strays from many quarters — had been accumulating, until at iast the original land purchasers at Wellington agreed to coucennate then i'oiccs, making a desperate attempt by a conrbiutd movement to pierce the enemy's centre. They addressed a le'.ter to the directo-y, tngued by fjity-lhrce oat of fjity-nir.e original J,~.nd purchasers )et left at Wellington, and by seven out of seventeen at Wanganni, claiming compensation for the losses incurred by them through the non-fulfilment of the Company's agreement. In substance, the letter is not unreasonable ; ill style, am) composition, it is not much to be admired. More might have been made of the bubjeet, but, with the usual colonial propensity to what is called "strong writing," they o»erstated their case, and accordingly raised a prejudice at home against themselves. LurdGuLY u-kes noare of the letter, calls upon the directors foi •' such explanations as luighl aeem good to them" (sic!), end directs Mr. Commissioner Covw ll tJ examine into the allegations of one side, and the excuses of the other. And now comes the marvellous, po.tion of the tale. Mr. Cow nix, it stems, aljiuugh placed in the position of a referee, is unable to judge, for advocacv. He enlists under the Company's banners , rushes at orrce into the thick of the fight, with all the ardour of new compacted partisanship . beai; doun all before him in the first onset; and—like Prince Rupert and his ; hot-headed cavaliers, whose brilliant, but ill-j tuned chains were certain to entail defeat upon the rest of tilth party- —has succeeded in irretrievably damaging the cause he Has soansioas fj l, I:., J. Not ui'ig )ii ih..roi.,;h!y acquainted with New Z<vi:;i.d all .us lirm-e!f. he adopts air. | Ki>vv visn JniMNouvr W.\ki.nn.n tor tutor—a j the ri'.tluing elephant lifts up [he griujng inahotu ualj hi, u'.i.i neck—-finds arguments foi |

I himself, but leaves the other to supply the 1 facts : and retorts tiprrn the memorialists with a letter to Earl Gitr.v, upon the character of I which we shall presently have some comments to make. I On receipt of this at Wellington, coupled w itli his Lordship's entire approval, the wrath of the land purchasers rises to boiling point.— A Meeting is called, and they fire a series of resolutions at the Company's volunteer champion which may yet possibly knock his house down about his ears. We had intended to have analysed the arguments on both sides with cate; but they have been so sifted and riddled —and that with little profit to those - of the Commissioner —that nothing new remains to be said: every point lias been al-eady taken up, so that any present examination of the question on its merits would be nothing more than a. rechauffe from the South. There are some strong points about the resolutions framed at Wellington in answer, which are better drawn up, upon the whole, than the original letter of demand for compensation. The fourth, iu particular, by which ' the cogent arguments and pathetic remon- | strances once addressed to Parliament by the I Directors themselves are seized upon by the, settlers, pressed into their own service, and ' made to support their cause against the Company, is admirable. But this we pass over, togethet with the question of characters and credibility, which ought never to have been raised on cither side, betw ecu the Southern settlers, and Mr. E. J. Wakefield; together vviththe-stricturesupon that gentleman's usual habit of life whenupthecountry, where he was nicknamed " toa" by the Natives; merely observing, that the outcry now raised upon those immoralities come with a bad grace from those who had already treat- ; ed them as meie amiable weaknesses, when he was actually residing among them—to arrive the sooner at the two most prominent points in 1 the case. One is of grave import, being no less than a distinct and specific charge of fabrication ' against the Commissioner. We give it in their own words, .not choosing to link ourselves up with so serious an accusation;" that this meeting have perused with extreme surprise the following words, given by Mr. Covvell as a quotation from the prospectuses or land-orders of f the Company—' Take notice, that we do not , mean to guarantee the title to the land we are now going to sell, and which you are now go- ' ing to buy ;' inasmuch as such words do not appear in any prospectus or land order ever issued to the first purchasers -. but that this. Meeting feel that they may safely leave to others the task of characterising such an interpolation in the terms it deserves; and, also, 1 I of estimating the weight due to the statements ■ j of one who, while clothed with the office of her ■ Majesty's Commissioner, could be guilty of • such a fabrication." ' i We have neither prospectus or land-order I before us; but still think that we can perceive ! where the hitch lies. Each party seems overanxious to find an opportunity of charging the ' other with deliberate untruth, and pounces upon an ill worded sentence with feline rapacity. ; i The charge will assuredly be presently ex- ' plained away ; for it is not to be credited, that : | any man, of ordinary capacity, would \enture > ■ on a fabrication, with the certainty of detection staring him in the face. It is no longer then I I a question of morality or high feeling, but of : I common intelligence, reminding us of a chaI racteristic saying attributed to Col. Wakefield ' I himself, who once observed, w itb the liuJ ex--1 quisite inecognition of principle, against a perI sou he disliked, " That man tells more lies in : j one day, than any prudent man would in a year." - I From this let us pass on to the Commission - [ er s prime discovery -, his great mare's nest! j his cheval de bataille ; his Archimedean locus ') standi ; the fulcrum of the lever by wliich he oveithrows the whole memorial. '• Unluckily for themselves, the memorialists, by way of making the most of their case, estimated the capital which they brought with them into the colony at from one to two miliums sterling. " 1 have you now," quoth the | triumphant commissioner. I '* Forsooth, a great arithmetician I He jumps at the statement, and forthwith, • in the spirit of an accountant, proceeds to calculate how much they must have bought apiece. Assuming the sum of £1,300,000, as the basis oi his figuring, he says, that he is " left to conjecture the number of capitalist's settlers com--1 preheuded tmdei the uoid we. Tins pronoun i may be, and in strictness it is, confined to 1 thirty seven out of the fifty five signers of this letter; jet, they may intend to embrace the 1 whole number of the original emigrating capii tcilLt., settlers, (independent of the laboiircis and of thoie purchasers of land oiderswho ' have not vet emigrated) now resident in Wel- ; lington and Wanganui. in winch case it may ; extend to 150, or, by doublirg this number m I older to alloti for those who have left the colony, or are dead, it may be liberally interpreted to comprehend as many ai 300. "In the first case, it will siiike your Lordship that the) represent themselves .is hav ing brought ort on an average tile mi'iiense sum of ! £IO,OOO each; m the second,that of .£IO,OOO, j and in the thud case, that of i' 5,000." I From which conclusion he draws a second

conclusion, that none of the representations of the settlers are entitled to any credit at all. " Nothing," said Canning, " is so fallacious as figures, except facts." The quihble is on the use of the pronoun we. The memorialists, as any fair reasoning man must see, ivith some degree of carelessness as- : sumed that they represented the settlement. Even in that case, we are satisfied that the statement would still prove incorrect, although by no means so gross a misrepresentation asMr. Cowell would have tortured it into. The probability is, that they had talked themselves into a very honest conviction of such being the fact; that like Duke Antonio in "The Tempest" they had " made sinners of their memories." It is curious, too, that the estimate should have been originally made in England, sanctioned and adopted by the Company itself, when there was something to be gained by admitting it. The whole report considered 011 its own separate merits, does not impress with a favorable idea of the talents of the Commissioner. It is ill-written—cramped and confused in style, with a very disagieeable tone of special pleading, a pettifogging anxiety to snatch at small advantages, on the face of it. There is a sort of flippant insolence about it, besides, an illdisguised desire to play the bully, which does not speak much for his good breeding. He seems altogether to forget that he speaks of persons, many of whom, according to customs of society, are entitled to take rank far above himself, having most completely committed himself and his official position, in the random attacks-that he lies hazarded upon them. In short, the letter is evidently not the composition of a gentleman. The difficulty is to understand how Lord Grey himself could have been beguiled by it. That over-hasty approval will be a heavy blow to his Lordship's reputation for sagacity, and can only he accounted for by that infatuation in favor of the Company, which must ultimately prove a millstone about his neck, and sink him. His tenure of office is probably becoming more nncertain; day by day. The succession of rebuffs that he has met—the Protest —the New Zealand Charter—his Currency crotchets, becoming more and more unpopular at Home, not to forget the last direct hit in the teeth about the Kawau—if they make no impression upon himself, will certainly make no slight one upon his colleagues. So far as these colonics are concerned, his administration has, been hitherto one succession of failures,'and has shown us no reason to suppose that he is likely to have been more successful in his experiments upon the rest.