SEPARATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2524, 4 February 1869, Page 3

SEPARATION.

I fa VOUR OP THE LYTTELTON TIMES,] „ H y r,EA£ Strange Williams,—You have had ! ° Dluc ' l our '"'"day 'hat I have !orae to make myself acquainted Im,' V . OUr rath « long letter. As it is, I fear your CODflno m y se '* t0 ma ' n '> ne * hi ; r r ent ' leaTin S Beveral salient points opportunity d ™ h t0 not:oe t0 anolher > feß! l am surprised at the smallness lenL, l - ° aße ' ou hase your argument for lav l0 " on 'he Maori difficulty, which, you t i promises to last to the end of the ceny y ears l° n ger, and will add li !b ' a to our peace estabthuttti. . y no means say, of course, '"'hat on' 618 not bing dse in your letter; but to mp you refer to appear °fnofn nten^e d by you as makeweights, Is it J^uT' 688 I^'B ar R um ent is sustained, ttill . e > 'hen, that the Maori difficulty £.34 oon lrt y years ? And is an addition of satiqf.m! year t0 our establishment a It sen r^.reason for separation ? of t|,„ ® 8 ""Possible, at the first going off ' tbirty v J l "! lent ' 'hat the Natives can last P'es°nf h!" *> er '»* or « a ' 'he rate of their t a c eff j||? cr ® Be (one-thirdin ten years), the and certoini yearß obviously be extinct; tion at thp i character of their populaas to Ma „ . cenßUß ' 8 by no raeans such ' lnpe o£ a muell ' on f? er give* the m' j En f>'> B h census usually 51111 the (iJu w omen in equal numbers, twptho J h°tb ßexea as man y aß this hs. r - a as many more; and ri| e of inn, 818 we main tain at home a slow l he fi».!re T;, Here ' 0D the other hand, men, 12,353 women, The w 9,857 chil<3ren of hoth sexes, nndTtlil" a /® ® ne " BtiV enth fewer than the ° ne- fiftli ff. w „- ( \ of hoth sexes about 1,110 *lll bppnl ?l D 'he women. The boys a rß n „T thenext generation of adult s Her, one-third of the present And I).! . iHalltlJ, 8 It has beenunderW'I e bc en ennfi the actual hostilities One i to a ' ew on 'y of the "4 hare hpp n °j • Ie Maorisof the North 8 "wn admitted on all hands to be

of approved fidelity; and, as to the rest, it is too late surely, when - the-waris already,-as you express it, ".rapidly, dying out," to fall back upon the fears of their possible conduct which 'jire entertained at Jhe : commencement. They have refused to .take' the opportunity which our negligence gave them, and.whjch, with your peace establishment once set on foot, can never ocour again. The political probabilities are against their troubling us. We have been terribly alarmed, it is true; but in the result it has appeared already that the dangers" and difficulties of this war are perceptibly a different tiling to deal with from those which led to the campaigns of Generals Cameron and Chute, 'l he 1 expense, I infer from your letter, will perhaps'he onetenth. I admit fully that it is by no means yet a mero question of local police. I ; think your peace establishment is at present essential, and will for some years be desirable,; But you shew no cause for supposing .that when another ten years have passed it will; be required any longer, and when the Maori difficulty is once a question of police, the,' argument for separation is at an end. Then as to the peace establishment. You say: there must be an armed constabulary of 500 men, costing £BI,OOO a-year, of which! only £47,000 cm be sjiared from the colonial revenue, leaving a deficit of £34,000. Where is this, you ask, to come from ? Well, perhaps I do not understand your estimates, but it seems to me that you consider yourself in a condition to find it all from the Middle Island. After paying everything, as it appears to me, which we pay now, you give us a Governor and his civil list extra,and then particularly call our attention to the " saving of £35,000 a-year," the capitalised amount upon which you suggest may be " handed over to the North Island in discharge of all further obligations." That we ought to p>y this amount, or anything like it, is a result which I do not collect very clearly from your letter; but, at least, lam entitled to the benefit of your figures to show that we can pay it. Then, if lam to consider whether the liability to this payment is a satisfactory reason for separation, I can hardly see my way to that conclusion when I find you proposing to have separation and pay that too. It may be said, no doubt, that it is not the mere matter of a peace establishment, but the constant liability to aggressive war that you wish to be quit of. A good deal upon this point, I acknowledge, is to be found in your letter. Put, after all, do not the views which you are putting forward rest really on the dogma that in disputes between civilised and semi-civilised races the whits man is always in the wrong and the dark skin in the right ? As a general principle, I take leave simply to disavow this utterly. As a rule, I believe the best man will be the civilised man, and I leave " the noble savage" to be found by the novelists who have created him. In the present case, the debates in Hansard appear to me to show one thing—that t.he present war arose out of the attempts of some disaffected natives to disturb the settlement of the last —a settlement which, it appears to me, we had no option but to maintain, and which it now appears we shall maintain successfully. The real chances of war depend ultimately upon the extent to which the less civilised race is persuaded of its nselessness; and certainly the withdrawal of the Middle Island from the struggle is hardly likely to expedite this conviction.

Themere currentof our argument drives me again upon the question I stated at the outset,and of which I cannot but look upon your letter as one long evasion—"ls Canterbury free from all responsibility for the present native war; or must she, unless with the stigma upon her of repudiation, bide the cost?" You make no provision for the cost of the war, and you argue indeed that I am stopped, so to speak, from raising the question, as I should thus admit, you say, that the influence of Canterbury in the affairs of the North had been injurious. Pardon me for saying that this is a sophism unworthy of the rest of your letter. You are not a North Islander, tired of the extravagance of the South: you are a Southerner wishing to leave the North man to pay the bill. He does not see, as you do, the "enormous moral benefit'' you propose to do him, of cutting him adrift in the midst of the storm. Unless you mean that Canterbury has 110 responsibility for the present war, or are prepared to let her pay her share of its cost, the policy of your party, call it what they will, is Repudiation.

How can you possibly disconnect Canterbury with the war ? Independently of the general political axiom—a most sound one, I am sure,you will agree with me—which holds every portion of a legislnture responsible for the acts of its majority, Canterbury took the lead in sending away the English troops. And if there is any faith to be placed in Hansard, it was Canterbury which prevented their being replaced by a colonial force. Just after the wholesale con flscation which followed upon the late war, Canterbury created the military opportunity for the discontented natives; and she is the last, certainly, of all the provinces of New Zealand which Her Majesty's advisers at home will allow to repudiate responsibility for the consequences. You are in this dilemma: Either you mean immediate separation, repudiating the war liabilities; or you mean separation after they are paid up, and when the evidence is against you as to any further liability existing that is worth it. Will your party tell us at what date they mean separation to begin ? Your friends seem to think that they have nothing else to do but to unite the Middle Island on the question, and so carry it through the General Assembly, in order to ensure the success of their measure. Indeed I think they are very much mistaken. This is a question upon which, according to the separationists, the North and South Islands have vitally conflicting interests. Upon such a question I have no hesitation in affirming that the Queen's advisers in England will require ample evidence that separation is determined on and its terms agreed to by a united majority of the members of both islands. The historical precedents are certainly with me, and what little I saw of home politics satisfies me that if ever your Bill does get home for her Majesty's assent, it will matter nothing what party is in power as to the principle which will govern them in dealing with it. This brings in fresh consideration on the point of time. Out of the ten years which are to intervene before we may leave the Maori question to the police, how many will it take you to get the North to consent to your measure, and after that to get her Majesty's approval ? Certainly, on the most favourable supposition, not less than five. And is it really contended that we are to separate from the North Island for fear of risking a five years' annual liability to £34,000. which, after all, it seems, we are to pay the North whether or no ? Surely the c«e for separation, if it really be honest; is homoeopathicallv small. Your friendly satire in regard to the sentimental policy I need not, I think, discuss for the present; nor can I, you will see readily, accept your equally friendly invitation ; to assist in removiug the obstacles to the attainment of your object. Lejeu ne vaut pas la chandelle. And were it otherwise, I have too keen a recollection of how we fought politics at home t»be disp sed to link myself to an association which, on it < first public challenge, is disavowed by its own advocate, and whose leading members seem to be able to do no more for their cause than to go on signing a declaration, every one of whose principles has been long ago either contradicted by facts or by your own letter. Your obedient servant, CHAB. J. FOSTER.