COLONIAL POLICY.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume I, Issue 26, 26 December 1861, Page 5 (Supplement)

COLONIAL POLICY.

(From the Aucklander, December 9.) In an old country, where the foundations of Government are settled ; where political parties have assumed their principles and maintain them ; their banners, and fight under them ; their leaders, and esteem it a disgrace to desert them ; it may be interesting to speculate and to conjecture what new measures shall be brought forward, or hv what policy the Whig or Tory party shall stand or fall: but how vain it is to indulge a thought, or to hazard a speculation, or to dream a dream, in a new colony, where every new Governor esteems it a master stroke of wisdom to reverse the policy of his predecessor ; tvhere every mushroom statesman, rejoicing in the sunshine of representative royal favor, has yet to learn his political catechism, and to acquaint himself with the distinction between legal and moral justice, and where the system of “ pre-emptive purchase claims,” made the instrument of ruining many an honest man in one period of despotic rule, may, dressed up in a new form, and presented in a. more shining dress, become the effectual instrument of inveigling

the simple, of acquiring popularity, ami of preparing fresh trouble for unwary settlers. But we will not now indulge in speculations, or attempt to shew, at this time, any apparent or suspected resemblance betwixt the delusions of pre-emptive right, and the proposed power of leasing land from the natives. It may be that our old Governor has returned amongst us to rectify the wrong, to make crooked things straight, and to establish our quaking colony upon the settled foundations of Maori supremacy and Pakeha subserviency. This, however, is our conjecture, and if we are wrong let the wise instruct us, that the members of our colonial Ministry are the automata which are set in motion and impelled by the one strong will, as helpless as the chessmen upon the board, which have no representative power apart from the one living mind which controls and employs them.

Query,—is our Governor a Napoleon, whose banner is glory ; or a Wellington, whose motto is duty; or a Wilberforce, whose polar star is benevolence ? In the pursuit of our conjecture, we are at liberty to suppose that the changes which have taken place at the North indicate changes wnich are yet to take place at the South ? If so, will not places soon be so plentiful that tiie market will be glutted, and that it will be necessary to advertise for the able and accomplished men who may be with difficulty persuaded to accept the golden fruits of office ? Our New Zealand, made famous through the wide world, shall yet glory in her native princes and illustrious native statesmen —in gorgeous native Kings and no less gorgeous Queens —in palaces and pomps transcending those of our poor Queen whilst British placemen minister to their honors and sound abroad their fame. But if this promised policy is to be carried out, we need not conjecture, we may assert, that it will be the fault of Potatau and his princes if he does not become rich as Croesus, and if they do not amplify their estates until they rival a Marquis of Westminster, or surpass a Duke of Sutherland. Do we envy them their coming wealth ? No, hut how do they acquire the spoil ? Does it argue a mind off its hinges to question the natural rights of Maories to lease or sell lands which they have never occupied, even as hunting grounds, upon which they never set any value until European rulers taught them to claim and to prize them, and about which they would have been at this moment at rest, if other policies than righteous policies bad not been employed to raise up a Maori aristocracy, and to stay the progress of European civilization.

la conclusion we ask whither are we drifting ; the hard-working settlers of this province have already had their wages changed ten times, and we can see nothing hut change yet to come. We are contracting Provincial debts, General Government debts, and we know not what debts besides. In the hour of our peril, which is sure to come, we may he called upon to pay them ; where then will our friend the Governor be ? And when Sir George Grey is. gone, and the soldiers are gone, and the ships are gone, who will then have the courage to say to a Maori claimant, “ this is mine.” The answer will he, “ This land is ours—Potatan claims it; these cattle are ours—they trespass upon our land ; these goods are ours, take up your pikaus and he gone.”