GLEANINGS FROM THE ENGLISH PRESS.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 176, 19 July 1845, Page 79

GLEANINGS FROM THE ENGLISH PRESS.

The No-Government of New Zealand. — The truth is, that from first to last, the so-called Government of New Zealand, in emulating and even surpassing the Government of the Cape of Good Hope, has done nothing for the settlers but tie their hands that the natives might thrash them with impunity. It is hard to have to pay for services of this kind. — Colonial Gazette, Nov. 9.

Petition! Petition! — The Times began its leader on the 22d of October with the following remarks : — " Our colonies are presenting just now a pleasing diversity of error. Each seems to illustrate a several law of aberration. One might suppose that they were in the hands of some ingenious experimentalist, who wished to work out all the possible conditions of which the case of a colony admitted." The editor details at great length the miserable condition of each, and ends his. powerful paragraph by stating that "The colonies are put under an exhausted receiver, and we are to wait and see what it will turn into." — Ib., Dec. 14.

The True Friends of the Natives. — The perplexed and embarrassed condition and prospects of the colony of New Zealand are the work of the Colonial Office, or of its masters, the missionaries. They have placed the development of its resources at the mercy of the caprice of the savage aborigines. They have hesitated to exercise even the simplest rights of sovereignty, until the natives have learned to despise them and threaten the safety of the settlers. On the other hand, the New Zealand Company have from the first urged the adoption of a comprehensive, consistent, and humane system of colonization. Without attributing fancied rights to the natives, they have urged and, as far as in them lay, taken precautions to guard native interests. They have developed a plan for the settlement of British colonists in New Zealand which has extorted the reluctant praise of more than one Colonial Minister, and has been proved easily practicable as far as they have been allowed to try it. These facts have been established to the satisfaction of the Committee, and, since the Colonial Office persists in acting in defiance of the Committee's recommendations, they will be proved to the satisfaction of Parliament, as soon as Parliament assembles Ib., Dec. 28.

Lord Stanley's Statesmanship. —Of Lord Stanley's statesmanship history will have little to record, except that all the countries with the affairs of which he has been allowed to meddle — Ireland, Canada, the West Indies, and New Zealand — have successively had reason to rue the day that gave this uncommonly clever man power over the rights and happiness of his fellow creatures. The alpha and omega of his character is his specious eloquence. Let him touch real business, he either ruins it or abandons it to the copartnership of Messrs. Stephen and Mr. Dandeson Coates, whose management will be pretty well shown up during the ensuing session of Parliament. — Ib., Jan. 4.

The Uniform of a Government. — It is not enough to say that the Brritish settlers in New Zealand have no government — they have a thing in a uniform, sent out and supported by the British Government, incessantly busy in defeating every attempt to establish order and good government. Wherever this tiling comes it unsettles, does mischief, and creates irritation. //■ visited Rauparaha and Rnngihaiata, to assure them

of immunity for their murders at the Wairau. It went to the Bay of Islands to relieve Johnny Heki of any apprehensions of punishment for his repeated robberies he might entertain. It went to Nelson to insult the magistrates; to Wellington, to insult the gentlemen who civilly came to pay thenrespects to the Governor; to New Plymouth, to injure and insult the collective settlers at the same time. // was instructed by the Home Government to accelerate the settlement of the land claims : it has used every exertion to retard and render settlement impossible. It was sent out to execute the law : it has absolved the aborigines from every bond of law. // was sent out to repair the financial dilapidation of Shortland : it has thrown the colonial finances into wilder confusion. It is difficult to say what line of policy ought now to be adopted in New Zealand. If the British Government had never interfered, and if other Governments had stood aloof, men's necessities would already have led to the establishment of a make-shift Government. But the successive bunglings of Shortland and Fitzßoy have awakened fierce passions, and created obstacles almost insurmountable. Perhaps the best thing that could be done would be to send out a good Governor with a carte blanche, and a pledge that he would not be interfered with in any way for five or ten years. But where is the man ? — Colonial Gazelle, Feb. 1.

Madness of Governor Fitzßoy. — So long as Captain Fitzßoy is allowed to retain the title of Governor, there is actually no government in New Zealand, but instead of it a flighty-headed gentleman, with a brain as light and unsteady as the cock-tail feathers in his military hat, frisking about from one end of the North Island to the other, encouraging the natives to deeds of outrage, encouraging the whites to evasion of the law, offering uncalled-for provocation to the irascible and injudicious French officers in the Pacific, and preventing the establishment of law and order. It is impossible to read Governor Fitzßoy's speeches and proclamations without fancying that he has dolFed his British uniform, got himself tattooed, and donned a New Zealand mat. It is impossible to review the whole of his administration and legislation without being convinced that he is more fit to be an inmate of Hanwell than governor of a colony. And the Government will be as mad as himself that allows him to " play such fantastic tricks" one day longer than is necessary to convey the intelligence of his recal to New Zealand. — Ib.

The Uses of New Zealand. — We offer no apology to the space devoted this week in our columns to the affairs of New Zealand. It is the ground on which the battle with colonial misgovernment is at present to be fought. The evil influences under which New Zealand suffers affect all the colonies more or less. The only hope for New Zealand is in an entire reconstruction of the Colonial Office, and the adoption of a new colonial policy by the Government. In the benefit of such a change every colony would participate. The affairs of New Zealand are, therefore, at this moment, the affairs of every colony and of every colonial interest. — Ib.

An Important Inquiry. — It is for Parliament to determine, whether the most rational and hopeful enterprise in colonisation that the British people ever undertook, shall be irritrievably ruined ; whether the only honest attempt that the annals of colonisation record, to provide for the welfare of an aboriginal race, shall turn out a dismal failure; whether some ten thousand of industrious and energetic Englishmen, after bravely grappling with all the natural difficulties of founding a new England, shall be abandoned to the tender mercies of a Government that wriggles out of bankruptcy by help of half-crown assignats, slurs over a barberous murder without inquiry, and surrenders at discretion to rebellion. — Morning Chronicle, March 13.

A Word to Missionary Societies. — Oh, Anti-Slavery Convention, loud-sounding, longeared Exeter Hall ! but in thee, too, is a kind of instinct towards justice, and I will complain of nothing — only Black Quashee being once sufficiently attended to, wilt thou not open thy dull, sodden eyes to the 60,000 valets in London itself, who are yearly dismissed to the streets, to be what they can when the season ends. Or to the hungerstricken, pallid, yellow-coloured " free labourers " in Yorkshire and all other shires. Those yellowcoloured, for the present, absorb all my sympathies : if I had twenty millions, with model farms and Niger expeditions, it is to those I would give it. Quashee has already victuals, clothing. Quashee is not dying of despair as the yellow-coloured, pale man is. Quashee, it must be owned, is hitherto a kind of blockhead. The Hayti King, educated now for half a century, seems to have no sense in him. Why, in one of our weavers, dying of hunger, there is more thought, heart — a greater arithmetical amount of desperation in him — than in the whole gang of Quashces. — T. Carlyle's Past and Pretent.