The Lyttelton Times.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 15, 19 April 1851, Page 5

The Lyttelton Times.

SATURDAY, April 19, 1851.

We publish in another column, a leading article from the Government organ at Wellington, in which occasion is taken, in remarking upon a despatch from Mr. Hawes respecting the disposal of land at Otago, to decry the New Zealand Company and the Canterbury and Otago Associations. Such Companies as these, says the Spectator, " only tend to embarrass the operations of Government." We entirely agree in the general opinion that all colonizing companies, the Canterbury Association included, are inconvenient pieces of machinery : they are mere makeshifts to do what must be done, what ought to be done, what the English people will have done ; and yet what the Government can't do or won't do. We cordially admit that the colonial Government is the proper organ for colonizing New Zealand : but will the Government do it ? Did they begin to do so ? Did the Government found Wellington, Nelson, New Plymouth, and Otago ? Or did its policy foster and strengthen the growth of those settlements ? Did the Government found, or could it in its present form and with its present principles have founded Canterbury ? It could no doubt have thrown open the country, and alloioecl persons to settle who would : but would it have effected an elaborate survey which has enabled the settlers to get upon their land as expeditiously as they could have done in Middlesex ? Would it have made wharfs, built a landing jetty, cut roads, built emigration barracks, made every preparation for the landing of a body of settlers, before a single settler had arrived, or an acre of land had been sold ? In fine, it is not certain that the Government mightjhave founded a colony composed of stragglers from the other settlements, of whale fishers and stock drivers : but would it have persuaded a body of English gentlemen to transfer their homes to these shores, or would it have surrounded them, not only with a great supply of material comfort for a new colony, but with means of education for the young, and of religious consolation for the old, in short with all those appliances of civilized life without which no such colony could ever have been founded at all ? It is strange, but it is true, that although the English are the most colonizing people, their Government is the least colonizing Government. The history of almost every colony which England has sent forth is a series of tales how the settlers have struggled into success, in spite of and in opposition to their Government. This is emphatically the case with the New Zealand Settlements. And when there is no one in the country who does not know that the New Zealand company colonised their Islands in spite of the bitter hostility of the Governor, it is rather amusing to hear now, that such companies " only tend to embarrass the Government." The New Zealand company did embarrass the Goverment —in the possession of one of its noblest colonies. The Spectator, however, says that an especial injustice has been done in respect to

the Canterbury district, in that it is relieved from the burden of the debt incurred by the New Zealand Company, which the rest of

these Islands have to bear. This is simply not the fact. Of all the lands sold in Canterbury, as the Spectator is perfectly aware, 10s. an acre was to have been paid to the New Zealand Company as long as it lasted, to meet the share of those very engagements due from this district. And this is wholly independant of the repayment of the money which has been expended on the settlement itself, which has been provided for out of a further portion of the funds arising from the sales of land. Of the ten shillings an acre which the Canterbury settlers pay for their land, they get no benefit whatever : it is the price of the land. As long as it was paid to the New Zealand Company it was disposed of by them as they pleased : now that the Company is extinct, it is to be paid to Her Majesty's Government, and is available to meet the liabilities which were incurred by the Company, and have been transferred to the Government. But whilst we are compelled to correct the Spectator in matters of fact, we are de- ■ lighted to be able to coincide with it in opinion, the more so when the coincidence occurs from a happy change in the views of that journal. The Spectator is dreadfully that New Zealand should be colonized by Companies in whose management the settlers have no voice, over the appointment of whose officers they have no control, and in the disposal of whose funds they have no responsibility. We most cordially agree with this opinion. The only defence is that it cannot in the nature of things, be otherwise at first. The Association are compelled of course to manage every thing at first till the colony is fairly founded. But they have promised that as soon as it is possible, the settlers shall have the full power of managing their own affairs. But the Spectator would annihilate these Companies because they do not allow the settlers to manage their own affairs and would transfer their functions and powers—to whom ? To the settlers ? Not a bit. To the Government! The Government under Sir George Grey's Constitution! which proposes to manage the affairs of the settlers by a Minister in Downing Street, with" a make-believe popular council in New Zealand to register the edicts of the Governor. The Spectator is a very consistent journal, and cannot mean this. Therefore it is about in future to advocate Self-Government, and to support the colonists in their efforts to obtain it.