THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, February 22, 1845.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 155, 22 February 1845, Page 202

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, February 22, 1845.

Journals become more necetsary as men become mor* equal, and indiWdualitm more to be feared. It would be to underrate their importance to suppose that tliey terv* only to secure liberty : they maintain civilization. Us Tocqdivill*. Of Democracy in America, vol. 4, p. 202.

" Wise men profit by the experience of others, fools by their own." This old aphorism would probably embrace more truth were it expanded into a shape like this : — the wisest men profit by the experience of others, the less wise by their own, fools by none at all.

His Excellency the Governor has incontrovertibly shown that he is not to be placed among the first of these classes, for not only would he not profit by the experience of the settlers he came among, but rejected it immediately, and almost insultingly, when they proffered it with good will. His recent proceedings in the north seem to promise us the satisfaction of placing him in the second class. We hope most sincerely that no deficiency in decision, no relapse on his part into his old conciliatory weakness before the object he has undertaken be effectually attained, may force us into the rudeness of ranking him with the third class.

The Maories indeed seem determined to furnish him with ample store of experience in the right way of governing them ; or rather, in the ill effects of the wrong way of governing them. Johnny Heki suffers no pause, no break to occur in his entertainment. He serves up his dishes hot and hot. Hardly has his pupil time to " chew upon " one hard lesson, before he gives him another. In the dialect of chop-houses, he keeps preparing " one and one to follow."

Our readers will remember his effective lecture upon political economy. How, with no other argument or figure of speech than an axe and a pole, he produced in the mind of Government the firmest conviction of the exceeding beauty and desirableness of freetrade. At every thwack some port flew open — some protective duty fell with every splinter. What an invaluable ally would he be in England of Dr. Bowring — what would the Anti-Corn Law League give for him to send about the country, and make his axe and pole itinerant ! Really, we think Captain Fitzßoy has undervalued him at fifty guineas. If he secure him at that price, he will make a profitable thing of it with the League.

But the axe and pole have done more than this. As they swept clean out of the gubernatorial brain the arguments and crotchets in favour of duties for the protection of manufactures, so have they the cant and sentimentalities which inculcated mock-duties for the protection of aborigines. Johnny Heki has twice since cut down the Bay of Islands pole — in illustration of the effect of temporizing with savages. The lectures were as convincing as before. The Governor has at length determined on trying coercion. But the adventurous lecturer himself is to experience the first effects of his lessons upon the government of Maories ; just as Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum, •when Perillus had presented him with the brazen bull to torture his subjects in, had the inventor himself first clapped into it and roasted whole, to try how it would answer. Kings and governors, you see, are sometimes very dangerous pupils. " Wae's me, for Johnny Heki now!" for though Johnny has resorted to the tv quoque style of retort, and offered a thousand acres for the head of the Governor, we cannot but think that " they'll ruin Johnnie !" Johnny

ha 3 had his last game with Government. Like a gay young blade at a country fair, he contrived ior some time to knock down the sticks "they as regularly set up, the prize at the top invariably falling into his possession — cheap tobacco, free trade in Maori slave-girls, &c. But Government, finding it a losing game, has come upon him at last for the pence he should have paid for his throws — and we hope means to get them. We should mention that others had undertaken the same task — of teaching Government ; their principal method of ratiocination being robbery of houses and stripping of women. They opened their school at Matakana — still nearer to Auckland. Parehoro, Mate, and Kokou, are the professors for whose capture £50 a head is also offered ; and the suspension of the Queen's right of pre-emption is removed as far as regards the lands belonging to their tribes. There will be a pretty imbroglio with respect to land sales soon.

Well, " coercion " is to be tried at last. This is what "the Protectors" have brought us to, after all. This is the result of that wonderfully profound system which, on Captain Fitzßoy's arrival at Wellington, the settlers in their memorial declared "they feared was founded on erroneous principles, arid had not tended to promote good feeling between the natives and colonists ;" an opinion distinctly expressed to Captain Fitzßoy a year ago, and the correctness of which is now so unanswerably demonstrated by facts. And what does the Governor now think of his dry, contemptuous reply to these, his rightly-informed and well-intend-ing advisers ? his sneering profession of sorrow " that you fear the establishment has not tended to promote good feeling ;" the high-sniffing self-complacency with which he declared that "of tue correctness aud wisdom of the principles on which the establishment of the protectors is founded, lam perfectly satisfied." He has been guided by these precious protectors, by these "wise" and "correct" principles, and the outcome is, his flag-staffs cut down, houses robbed, women stripped and insulted, and a price of 1,000 acres of land put upon his own head.

Truly, these protectors and their principles have had fair trial. They have had it all their own way — have occupied entirely the ear of Government (whispering into it their wretched advice, like the toad at Eve's), have vilified and denounced those who gave more honest counsel, acted on sounder " principles," and have arrived at the necessity of coercion, after having increased all the difficulties of effecting it, and evoked and excited into activity every feeling and passion that will aggravate its needful severity. Is any more confidence then to be put in them ? They have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Fact has declared against them. Their sentence and condemnation will be read in sterner characters than these Babylonian ones. Their " Mene, mene," will be written in blood.

It will read well, truly, in history. Posterity must have a wide gullet to swallow all the truth that will be told it. How an almost bankrupt colonial Government wasted the few thousands or hundreds it ground out of its handful of impoverished subjects, in paying men of narrow mind and " limited education," to protect a whole nation of armed and warlike savages from that handful of peaceable settlers ; and how these protectors of the strong against the weak, who had to pay them for their illoffices, contrived by a degrading system of submission to insult and reward fc.r outrages, to bring upon these savages the very evils of military coercion they were pretendto protect them from, and that in fewer months than they took hundreds from the exhausted treasury in payment for {heir mischievous interference.

And to give the finishing dash to this reckless riot of all absurdities, it will have to be added, that the " coercion " was commenced by a sentimentally philanthropic Governor, who a year previously had pub-

licly pledged himself, in case " coercion and harsh steps, as all forcible measures must ba," could be authorised by the home Government, " respectfully to tender his resignation of her Majesty's commission." Credite posteri — but if you do, as we said, yo\i will have large swallows.

In "that history, too, will have to be narrated, in its long catalogue of most melancholy imbecilities, another incident of which we believe our readers are not fully awareSpeaking last October of the first " arrangement " with Johnny Heki, we expressed our misgh ing of the genuineness of the submission of the natives who gave up their muskets. We gave utterance to a suspicion of their being " some collusion about the matter — of the thing being in some sense or other got vp — of the submission having possibly been induced by previous intimations from missionaries or others in the secret of the Governor's intentions, that pardon for the outrage and redress of their so-called grievances was to follow such submission." It was a mere guess then, from the character of the parties engaged in" the affair, and the mode in which Government had always deal^ with the natives. But we confess, even after all this, we were somewhat surprised to learn from good authority that this was actually the case ; nay, more, that the chiefs were actually promised that their muslcels should be retxirned to them, if they would for form's sake give them up ! We believe Mr. Clarke, the Chief Protector, was the negotiator of this miserable arrangement. But only think of the kind of judgment, of the degree of knowledge of human nature, nay, of the quantity of manliness and honesty that must be posses ;ed by people who could gravely and openly go through this farce, and expect, we will not say good consequences to come of it, but to be able to avoid the ill consequences it must necessarily produce. Think of the policy of thus proclaiming your weakness to savages ; of putting yourself in this humiliating attitude before them ; of leading them to believe you could deceive your own people by the shallow artifice you got them, the savages, to participate in ; of the respect they must afterwards entertain both for governors and governed — for such shams, and pretenders, and mummers ! Who wonders after this at the " reward for the Governor's head ?" But credile posteri, we say.