THE LONDON "SPECTATOR" ON NEW ZEALAND AFFAIRS.

Press, Volume XIV, Issue 1881, 26 April 1869, Page 3

THE LONDON "SPECTATOR" ON NEW ZEALAND AFFAIRS.

The "Spectator " of the 6th February says :

Wβ print elsewhere a very simple, but we believe, very trustworthy account of recent events in New Zealand, and their causes. On account of its length we have omitted the writer's own plan for preserving peace, which, is to import English military settlers, who will be stationed on the frontier in fortified farms of fifty acres each, given freehold on condition of service. If that suits the Colonial Government, and they will add, as the writer says they will, good wages for a year, and a free passage, they may pick and choose among ten thousand healthy youngsters in the "Western Isles alone. The fighting would be only an attraction, and the islanders are too gaunt to be nice to eat—a mode of burial which the volunteers seem to dislike. Our article of las,t week on the New Zealand war has been attacked by several contemporaries—especially for its assertion that England owes any sort of pecuniary reparation to the colony for her blunders in governing it. Some of those who criticise us do not seem to know much of the history of England's recent management. The truth is, that during the whole term of Colonel Cameron's command there, the colony was permitted no power in the regulation of military affairs—even" its own volunteer levies were under the Com-mander-in-Chief—• yet nothing at ail was effected, and a contribution of £50,000 a year taken from its resources to sustain the utterly helpless policy pursued: That policy issued in nothing but disaster and overwhelming debt, and for the disaster the colonial authorities are assuredly not responsible. It would be absurd to say that we ought always to pay our colonies compensation for our blunderings when we have intended to do our best. But when a dependency ie in the anguish of such a struggle as now afflicts New Zealand, and people begin to talk of the need of military help, it is just as well to point out that it was military help, and the irresponsible military administration which was a consequence of thafc help, which led up to the present catastrophe, and that while we cannot do woree than meddle with the colony's military administration or responsibilities, we owe it at least far more in the way of reparation than we owe to other colonies to whom pecuniary guarantees have been accorded.