THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, March 22, 1845.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 159, 22 March 1845, Page 10

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, March 22, 1845.

Journal! become more neceiiary v men become more equal, and individualism more to be feared. It would be to underrate their importance to iiippoie that thty terra only to tecure libtrty : they maintain civilization. D« TocaDKViLL*. Of Democracy in America, to. . 4, p. 203.

The Southern Cross of February 15 contains a long article on the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on New Zealand affairs. Its object is

to bring into discredit that sensible and lucid document.

The writer first objects to the composition of the Committee itself, which, according to him, was adopted with the view of exonerating from blame all parties at home concerned in the proceedings to be examined by it. The Whig members were introduced to excuse the policy of the Colonial Office when their party was in power; Messrs. Hope and Cardwell to defend the Colonial Office ; and the Conservative members to see that Lord Stanley's government escaped direct censure. He assumes that all the Whig members were advocates for the New Zealand Company, including Messrs. Hawes and Roebuck (Radicals), the latter of whom was an opponent of the Company. But it is in this very composition of the Committee that we find the reason the Report is so valuable. On this account is it that it overlooks persons and parties, and criticises general policy with such a fair and even hand. For our part, we care little *who is or who was to blame, so that the policy pursued throughout be shown with sufficient clearness to have been erroneous, and condemned with sufficient decisiveness. And this we think the Report does. We are quite willing, nay, think ourselves most happy, to have obtained so valuable a result at the cheap cost of the escape from censure of those who were in fault. If, on a mutual understanding that no one was to be blamed, the majority were induced to concur in denouncing the error and declaring what was right, we repeat that the benefit has been cheaply purchased. And this accounts for the remarks being, in the writer's words, "general on past errors," a mark, we think, of wisdom in any case, however caused. For its not being " specific on future remedies," it seems to us the Report itself gives sufficient reasons.

But the writer appears to think that the Committee, in its endeavour to screen the Whig Colonial Minister, has done so at the expense of- the late Captain Hobson, on whom he passes, for anything we know, a well-merited eulogium, and which we read with very different feelings from those excited by the encomiums the Southern Cross has latterly lavished on the living Governor. We do not wish to oppose a writer engaged in so generous a woik as that of defending the memory of the dead. But we think he overrates the censure of Captain Hobson, implied in the condemnation of his policy by the Report, and at the same time underrates the degree in which the report attrihj^es the cause of that policy to the Colonial Office. It distinctly states that Captain Hobson " acted under instructions he had received," in concluding the condemned treaty of Waitangi. And the instructions aSte attributed to the fact, that the perception of the difficulties created by British dominion not having been asserted much earlier (as far back even as 1829) led to the belief that the only mode to avoid them was by some such arrangement.

That Lord John Russell or the Governor of New South Wales may not have paid sufficient attention to the difficulties then attending the assertion of the Crown's title to all waste lands, is probable enough. But the reasons given in the report for concluding that neither of these officers could have been of opinion that the treaty acknowledged the ownership of the natives in waste lands in the sense put upon it by Captain Hobson are unanswerable.

The writer attributes " ignorance" of New Zealand and its natives to the Committee and people of England, because the Report argues that Captain Hobson ought to have " taken immediate possession " of all waste lands on his arrival ; an " unjust and rash " attempt, which would have been attended with unexpressed " results," obvious to all out here. But the words, " taken immediate possession," are made to imply something very different from what the Committee recommended. The Report says that the stipulations of the treaty and the subsequent proceedings of the Governor " firmly

established in the minjjU* of the natives notions they had then but very recently been taught to entertain " of their ownership in unoccupied land ; and proceeds to state that "if a decided course had at that time been adopted, it would not have been difficult to make the natives understand that while they were secured in the land they pecupied and might want for their own use, the rest was to vest in the Crown." Of course Captain Hobson must have been supported by an imposing force fo take decided measures of any kind. But while actual " possession " of all these waste lands neither would nor could have been taken for centuries, except nominally, the prompt suppression of the native expectation of a continual supply of gold from the sale of these lands would have led to their acquiescence in their gradually being taken and occupied, or at least bought at sums so trifling as not to be much worth consideration to Government. At that time, however, there would have been nothing rash, as at

no time can there be anything unjust, in even taking possession by force of lands neither occupied by nor of any possible use to savages. But it should always be remembered, in speaking of Captain Hobson's want of force, that, had he not committed the great mistake of going to the north to found rival settlements to those already established in the south, instead of at once proceeding to govern the latter, for which he was sent here and alone required, he: could have had at once a body of militia formed of the settlers, quite sufficient at that time, with a small force of troops, to have carried out the policy recommended. One mistake forced him to fall into another.

The paragraph which disclaims on the part of the Committee any desire to recommend that the Governor be " peremptorily ordered to assert the rights of the Crown as they believe them to exist," but that he should have these rights clearly explained

to him and be directed to adopt the necessary measures, this writer calls " truly excellent and most jesuitically expressed." That it is truly excellent, he might have asserted without irony ; that it is jesuitically expressed we cannot see. If Captain Fitz Roy had acted on the principle recommended, or Captain Hobson, either of them might have secured the co-operation of the missionaries and settlers, with little doubt of the success of their measures. The Committee could not foresee how much more difficult Captain Fitzßoy was making any peaceful settlement of these difficulties, by weak concessions at the time they were writing. But we maintain they showed their good sense in supposing that the adoption of a line of policy founded on the principles they advocated was all it was advisable for them to recommend— leaving the actual measures in their detail to bo decided upon by either the Colonial Office or the Colonial Government. If the Colonial Office can treat with contempt th<* recommendations of such a Committee as to general policy, it could do so with directions as to particular measures. If it cannot do so with the former, we are secure of the latter, which will naturally flow from them. The writer again charges the Committee

with great ignorance of New Zealand and its natives for recommending " a militia to be formed from the settlers, from which natives are not to be excluded." The latter clause should be understood as referring to a future time, when, as we may hope, the Government and the whites will be properly respected by the natives. When that is the case, there will be nothing absurd in the notion. But, as we said before, the Committee did not know to what a state our imbecile Government has brought us.

We do not see any other remarks that much call for notice in the article referred to; and indeed we have not been very zealous in our defence of the Report in those we have alluded to, as it seems rather preposterous to fancy so careful a production of such a Committee of the House of Com-

mona in need of succour from attacks of the colonial press.

We are happy to learn that the party of gentlemen who undertook an excursion to the Wairau district, in the beginning of the present month, by way of the French Pass and Queen Charlotte's Sound and thence overland by the Wairau Pass, Motuaka and Wai-iti ridges, &c, to Nelson, returned safely on Thursday last, much gratified with ! their trip, and highly impressed with the value and importance of the whole of the Wairau district as an appendage to the Nelson settlement. An interesting feature in their journey occurs in their having explored a portion of Queen Charlotte's Sound but little known excepting to the natives and whalers in that neighbourhood, and traversed a pass from Waitoi, at its western arm, to the Wairau plain, at a point where the Tua Marina joins the Wairau river, and close by the scene of the late calamitous conflict. A gentleman who formed one of the party Las promised us a more detailed account of this portion of the Sound, which shall appear in our next number.

Child Drowned. — On Sunday last a little boy about twenty months old, named Malcolm, was drowned in the Maitai. The child was at play on the bank of the river near Halifax Street, in charge of some children a little older than himself, from amongst whom he was suddenly missed. Immediate search was made, but the body was not found until the following morning, when it was discovered a short distance down the stream on a shingle bed.