[From the Spectator, March 15.]

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 176, 19 July 1845, Page 78

[From the Spectator, March 15.]

OVa COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION, FAINTED BY ITSELF AND ITS FRIENDS. The debate on New Zealand makes a valuable display of official and parliamentary notions about governing colonies, and it is worth while to pick out a few specimens of these antediluvian fossils from the ground newly broken in the eruption. The Colonial Office manages the colonies; but it does not hold it essentially needful to keep itself informed of what is actually done in its domains. The most extraordinary events have taken place in New Zealand ; but tlie Colonial Office remains in an ignorance still more extraordinary. The private settlers at Wellington manage to keep everybody here informed of what happens with tolerable regularity. The dealers at Sydney learn from the Bay of Islands what occurs. By such channels we know all about the issue of Captain Fitzßoy's assignats, the occupation of Russell by savages, the sending for troops to crush those invaders, but the cession of customs-duties at Russell to please them instead — all the world knows these things : the Colonial Office alone ignores them, and knows of nothing but the sending of troops, the very item in the whole round of the news that means little and came to nothing. Captain Fitzßoy has not sent home any statement on these points; some "accident" has prevented him. It is remarkable that the accident should happen precisely at a moment when he is committing flagrant violation of orders — changing the currency in the teeth of a standing regulation.

The Colonial Office avows its sense of morality. To prove that it has broken faitb, Mr. Charles Buller calls for correspondence respecting an " agreement" between Lord Stanley and the New Zealand Company. It is not an "agreement," says Mr. Hope, but only a "promise;" an "agreement" would be binding, a "promise" is not; call it no more than a " promise/ and you shall have it. Mr. Buller is surprised at this gentlemanly distinction: we should have thought that he knew the Colonial Office better than to be surprised. The Prime Minister is told that a colony is deplorably misgoverned, ruin and anarchy resulting. Do not, he sharply answers, speak rudely to Lord Stanley, my colleague. Your colleague, he is told, sent out the man who is doing all the mischief. Well, he replies, how was Lord Stanley to know that he would be so mischievous? what interested motive could Lord Stanley have had in the appointment ? Sir Robert seems to think that if Lord Stanley is not proved to have appointed Captain Fitz Roy for a payment in money, or some party patronage, he is acquitted of blame. The prospering or suffering of thousands of colonists — what that has to do with the question he cannot imagine. Captain Fitzßoy has his ardent vindicators : he is a worthy gentleman — " benevolent," " amiable," endowed with " the best qualities of social life," of " chivalrous generosity," regardless of pecuniary interest — distinguished in every quality that does not belong peculiarly to the station. Doubtless. We believe these statements in their fullest sense, and in Spite of startling inconsistency in appearances. But he is all the more dangerous. Folly becomes perilous when it borrows the hallowed garb of virtue. Captain Fitzßoy is constructing great roads all over New Zealand, " paved with good intentions." He is proved by bis acts impulsive, changeful, rash to recklessness. The pride of over-righteousness so absorbs his sense, that the " amiable " and " chivalrous " man deigns from his higher position to put intolerable insults upon gentlemen, such as he himself would scorn were he in bis semes. That overrighteousness is his disease: be went out to New Zealand with a mental reservation: he went, not to govern as official Governors do, but with a crotchet, a fancy to achieve some unexpected triumph for bis friends the missionaries — not, as he has avowed in the colony, " to govern some thousands of intruders" the British colonists, for whom it is the function of the Colonial Office to provide due government, " but to cave a noble race." He went with a

concealed motive, and with concealed instructions from Lord Stanley. Had a less worthy, a more worldly-minded man, a commonly mercenary and dishonest adventurer, gone out, it would not have been so bad. His vices would have gone upon calculation ; his profits would have defrauded the colony, but would not have wantoned in its ruin. His actions might have been estimated and counteracted. ***** Sir Robert Inglis undertakes to get rid of the Report of the Select Committee of last session — that convicting verdict which hangs over Lord Stanley. There was not, says the baronet, " any point in it of any practical value that had been carried by a majority of more than one ;" and he says the value of the decision depends upon the names of those who divided. The facts, diametrically opposed to this assertion, we have formerly described : suffice it here to repeat that the Committee was constituted with a large preponderance of ministerial supporters ; that the bulk of the Report, proposed by the chairman, Lord Howick, was adopted with slight modification; that not a line of Mr. Cardwell's counter-resolutions was adopted; that Mr. Hope's counter-report was withdrawn, apparently without a seconder: and we will add, that in the list of votes against Government will be found the " names " of the following Conservative members — Lord Francis Egerton, Lord Jocelyn, Mr. Charteris, Mr. Milnes, and on one occasion even Mr. Card well; two of them since appointed Ministers, and one net down for a place. So bad was the case, so in- ! evitable the decision.

They plead for Captain Fitzßoy that he is absent, and that itVill take ten months to obtain his defence in* answer to these charges. If that is a hardship, what can be said to those colonists whose complaints against this very defendant, after performing a voyage of half that time, are sent back, not to be accepted unless indorsed by the defendant himself? Such is Colonial Office etiquette. Will Governor Fitzßoy's apologists propose that when his defence arrives it shall be referred back to be indorsed by his accusers ? It must be confessed, however, that there is a hardship in this distant travel of accusation and defence — a hardship for both sides. The way to guard against that evil is to appoint approved and prudent men in whom to repose discretion : but, still more, to secure a good plan of government for the colonists, in harmony with their real interests and feelings — as much aa possible government by themselves. Even Governor Fitzßoy might have been kept in order by a popular representation.