The Press. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 1869.

Press, Volume XIV, Issue 1883, 28 April 1869, Page 2

The Press. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 1869.

Of all the London newspapers the one best informed on colonial affairs, especially those of New Zealand, is the Spectator. Most of the papers, when they write about the colonies, only succeed in making a conspicuous display of their ignorance ; but the Spectator still maintains a good deal of that interest in and careful study of colonial matters which so eminently characterised it in the days of Mr Bintoul. In its issue of January 30 there is an article headed " False and true help to New Zealand" which deserves especial notice—the more so because the Spectator, with all its occasional crotchets, is a pretty faithful exponent of the advanced Liberal cast of thought that may be expected to prevail in Mr G-ladstone's Cabinet, and to animate the relations to be established between the colony and the Imperial Government. The writer begins by remarking that, though the immediate cause of the late melancholy disasters in the colony lies in the hand-to-mouth system on which the defence administration has been carried on, the evils of that system must be traced to their true source, the conduct of the Colonial Office. The Imperial relations with New Zealand have been one long series of acts of vacillation, depending on no intelligible principle, and erring alternately by haughty censure and indiscriminate help. Enough of money and resources has been squandered to have freed the colony from its difficulties twice or three times over, but in a form so radically wrong that the so-called help has been a positive injury. The following passage shows a remarkably clear insight into the state of affairs within the colony, and puts very plainly the real objection to the employment of the Imperial troops in ' New Zealand. The writer understands why in the long run it will be the worst thing that England could do for the colony, and does not, like most Englieh journalists, rest his case on the purely selfish ground that it would be expensive to the mother country. " And now illadvised English journals are crying out that we ought to begin the old, old confusion over again, send out more military help, which would only prevent the colonists from doing for themselves what no one else can efficiently do for them, — more military help which they will have no power to control, —more military help which is not the sort of military help they really want, and would prove to be a mere temporary makeshift, postponing the organization of a permanent defence, and certain to be withdrawn, we suppose, directly the immediate pressure was over, and the only occasion which could awaken the colonists into proper measures of selfdefence had passed away. * * * The English settlers capable of bearing arms in the Northern island alone, though they do not outnumber the armed Maoris, are yet their real superiors in military power. If we teach them that they must rely on themselves, they will rely on themselves. Nothing could be better than the beginning they made some years ago, when the great quarrel between the colonists and the commander of the Queen's troops occurred. Had the defence system been as well kept up as it was then commenced—had not a shifty administration prophesied smooth things in the vain hope of reconciling the Southern island to the expense of a defence system in which it was not interested, —had even common vigilance been maintained in recruiting the volunteers, seeing after their discipline and sobriety, and giving them officers whom they could trust, we should not have had the recent humiliating defeats, and their awful consequences in the shape of the massacre of the 10th of November. But the truth is that the New Zealand Colonial Q-overnment has not been playing a straightforward game in this defence matter. It has been counting on the chapter of accidents to favour its policy, instead of providing against a chapter of accidents that it ought to have assumed as more likely to be unfavourable ,* and has relied on the one regiment still left in New Zealand in case the worst comes to the worst. This is the policy which has brought upon the colony this terrible catastrophe. And we do not hesitate to say that it is the fickle and hesitating conduct of our own Colonial Office which has in very great degree led the colonists into this foolish and shortsighted course. If we want to begin the same disastrous cycle of mistakes over again, we cannot do better than send heavy reinforcements of troops to tide the colonists over the season when they would, otherwise initiate a new and wiser era,—and then withdraw them again directly our spasm of sympathy is pact, and their happiest momet ? f S p a lon § P llll * and strong pull, and puU altogether is past also." Ine Spectator however is of opinion

that if England is willing to assist New Zealand in its troubles she enn do so in a manner as unobjectionable as effective. To send troops would be to encumber the colonists with a force not suited to their purpose, over which they would have no control, aud would inevitably lead to a clashing of the military with the civil power. But assistance given in money would be exposed to none of these drawbacks. " The true difficulty in New Zealand," says the Spectator, "is financial. The islands are dreadfully indebted and consequently overtaxed. The Southern and richer island, which contains no natives, is sick of bearing the burden of the defence of the English settlers in the Northern. * * # * We can relieve the colonists from one overpowering difficulty by either guaranteeing their debt, so as to enable them to reduce the interest, or by paying them down a lump sum to aid them in the negotiation between the Southern and Northern settlers, and to compensate them for our admirable initiative bungling, and instructions in bungling. Either the guarantee or the lump sum would be most gratefully received in New Zealand, and would be the appropriate close of the era of meddling in their system of defence." Some of our contemporaries profess themselves unable to see any difference between England fighting the battles of the colonists for them and assisting them to fight them for themselves. The difference is at any rate plainly perceptible to the Spectator, which evidently does not consider acceptance of aid of the latter kind as inconsistent with genuine self-re-liance. Eor our own parts we do not believe that the English Government will consent to assist the colony in either way. But under any circumstances we cordially agree with the concluding remark of the writer we have been quoting, that to recommence the old system would be a great and disastrous blunder, that it would " entrap the colonists once more into leaning on a support which is sure to fail them in the hour of need, and to blind them to their own shortcomings, their own wants, and above all, to their own powers."