NEW ZEALAND AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2135, 24 October 1867, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND.

(From the Times, July.) We may profitably employ the brief interval of rest which the suspension of the discussion on the Beform Bill at length affords us in casting a glance at what is going on in the rest of the world. It is well we should be reminded, as Mary wrote to Elizabeth, that the kingdom of the whole world is a great deal larger than the realm of England. We therefore turn with a certain feeling of freshness and relief from the bitter criminations and recriminations of our leading statesmen to those vast dominions beyond the sea so gratifying to ous national pride, however grievous they may be to our national Exchequer, Among those dominions which embody these two qualifications in the greatest degree we may select New Zealand. There is no colony of which we have in many respects more reason to be proud, and none which has tugged more heartily and successfully at the purse-strings of an indulgent parent. What we have paid for native wars in the course of the last twenty years we do not know, and perhaps it is better for our peace of mind we should not know. We have been content to sit down with : the loss mainly because we received the assurance that the future should be unlike the past. How we came to be responsible for them may be easily explained. The original Constitution of New Zealand, enacted by Parliament in 1852, d»vised a policy with regard to the native tribes peculiarly calculated to injure alike the mother country and the colony. While the fullest power over their own local affairs was given to the colonists, the whole management of native affairs, the foreign policy of the colony, was intrusted to the Governor alone. So long as this Constitution was in force we clearly had no right to call on the colony for any contribution towards its military expenses. If we did not allow New Zealand a voice in determining her relations to the natives, if we, separated from her by the diameter of the earth, insisted that we could do better for her in those delicate local matters than she could for herself, we had no right to complain of having to pay for our folly. But such a state of things did not and could not last. The Governor soon found that it was quite' impossible to separate native from domestic policy. He acquired the habit of consulting with and deferring to the Colonial Ministers on native affairs, and the conduct of them had virtually passed from the Home to the Colonial Government before the Duke of Newcastle formally renounced it. From that time our duty to pay for the native wars of New Zealand absolutely ceased. Had it been otherwise, we should have run a very great risk of perpetual wars, since the commissariat expenditure might well be a greater object of desire to the colonists than a native war was an object of apprehension. Besides, we were in danger of being made the instruments of working great injustice. A native war ends in confiscation, and that confiscation, by the heart-burning it occasioned, laid the foundation of other wars. It was not fitting that Queen's troops should be employed in guarding lands obtained by such means, nor was it right to add the stimulus afforded by such a protection to the greed of land, which is one of the besetting sins of all new settlers.

. Moved by these weighty considerations, Mr Card well, most. wisely, as we think, determined' to recall the great mass of our troops from New Zealand, leaving only a single regiment, which was to stay so long as the colonists applied £50,000 a year to native purposes, and as many more troops as the colony chose to pay for, after the example of Australia. This reasonable course was steadily opposed by tiie Governor, Sir George Grey, He delayed sending away the troopt;, and even now, two years and a half after a peremptory order was despatched from home, the forces in New Zealand are not yet reduced to the single regiment Mr Oardwell agreed to leave. This was the state of things which Lord Carnarvon found on his accession to office, and he very properly determined to put an end to it: The resolution was right, though we cannot think Lord Carnarvon was happy in the means which he adopted. The Governor, having apparently set himself to thwart the Imperial policy which he was sent out to represent, should have been at once recalled • but Lord Carnarvon adopted the milder but less defensible expedient, as it appears to us, of taking away from the Governor the absolute disposition of the forces, and Testing it in General Chute, the military commander. The troops not having yet returned from New Zealand, Lord Carnarvon inquired of the Duke of Buckingham the reasons for this delay, and received the strange answer that the information he sought would be prejudicial to the public service. As the question seemed to be simply one of obedience to orders, Lord Carnarvon felt himself justified in persevering, and at last drove the reluctant Colonial Secretary to answer. Whether it be that there is something behind which the Duke of Buckingham is afraid to tell, or whether, as we rather think, he did not know his own case, certain it is that no one could have been more at a loss for an explanation. The Government had been carrying on the policy of withdrawing the troops from New Zealand, with certain exceptions. Those exceptions were made, in accordance with the policy of the Imperial Government, with regard to the native force and the land question. The Duke did not say what the exceptions were, nor what the policy was. The only exception we know of was that ot the 18th Regiment, With the same happy ambiguity the Duke stated that the return of the troops had been delayed by various causes. We only know of one—the determination of Sir George Grey to thwart the policy of the Government of which he is a servant. A despatch had been received since Lord Carnarvon's directions had reached New Zealand, but in it the Governor expressed no opinion, and consequently no further action had been or could be taken on the matter. Why not? The despatch of Lord Carnarvon was peremptory. It did not ask for the opinion, but required the obedience of the Governor; and if he does not obey orders, the proper course is, we should think, not to wait for his opinion of their propriety, but to give him an opportunity of expressing that opinion at head-quarters by recalling him at once. As for the future, there is no reason to expect that a departure from Mr Cardwell's policy will "be thought necessary by the Government, and matters still rest on a hypothetical basis—that is to say, a clear policy has been laid down, orders issued and disobeyed, and Government has no answer to give as to the course it is about to take under circumstances so peculiar. We do not wonder that the House of' Lords was dissatisfied at this exhibition of Ministerial weakness. There is no question on which the public is better entitled to ask for information, for while this delay is permitted we are, in defiance of the determination of our Government and the orders of Colonial Secretaries, allowing our troops to be used in a quarrel in which we have no concern, and from which we have long ago determined to withdraw.

In reference to the above article, the following letter, signed Robert J. Creasy, appears in the Times

Sir—Will you kindly permit me space to say that no one has the interest of Great Britain more at heart) or has worked harder for the furtherance of that interest under trying circumstances, than Sir George Grey; and that, when an explanation of his conduct is afforded him, you will fiud the article in your paper is undeserved. It is, I' hope, conceded that a British Governor should be inspired by higher views of imperial interests than merely mercenary and temporary ones, and that at such a distance a Governor should have a wide margin of discretion granted to him. Permit me also to raise a suggestion whether the colonies might not be better understood, more serviceable for emigration, less costly, and a greater bond of unity and power to the Crown, if they were represented more fully and correctly in Parliament,