AUCKLAND.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 179, 9 August 1845, Page 89

AUCKLAND.

We were prevented last week by want of space from noticing the contents of the Auckland papers received by way of Manakau, beyond what related to the hostilities between the troops and Heki. On referring to our files of the Times and New Zealander, the Southern Cross being defunct, we perceive there is no lack of other matters of interest.

A number of forged 10s. debentures ate in circulation, a book containing 250, numbered from 4,251 to 4,500, having been stolen from the office of the Colonial Secretary. The fact was known to the Government for weeks before it was made public, though whispers were afloat highly prejudicial to the character of innocent parties. At length, on the 4th of July, the robbery and issue was announced in the Government Gazette, accompanied with a notice that Mr. J. S. Freeman, chief clerk in the Colonial Secretary's office, had resigned. Both the Times and the New Zealander speak in no measured terms against compounding of felony and hushing up so grave an offence.

On Sunday, the 29 ih of June, Auckland was visited with a most violent gale of wind. The stoutest wooden buildings were rocked about as if by an earthquake. A new military barracks, in course of erection, was Mown down, and a native church, in Judge's Bay, received considerable damage.

The settlers about Auckland were very active in collecting Kauri gum for exportation, a considerable trade having sprung up in this article within the last few months. The Maories get about £4 a ton for the gum from the outsettlers, who readily obtain £12 for it in Auckland, and in Sydney it brings £20.

Some long communications, bearing the signatures of " Amalgar ator " and " An Old Settler," abounding in twaddle, have appeared in the New Zealander. The Times ascribes the authorship of these letters to a " certain personage very high in the management of the affairs of New Zealand ;" and on this assumption replies to " Amalgamator" in the following article: —

"Among all the estimable qualities which have been freely acknowledged or liberally imputed to a certain personage very high in the management of the affairs of New Zealand, no one of them all has been so apparent as the exercise of perpetual and unwearied industry : not content with directing, he has been desirous to execute the duties of every government department; and, not satisfied with even this achievement, has constantly interfered in private and individual employments — thus, advising a settler, being unsolicited to do so, how many eyes may be got out of the tail of that modern Argus— a totatoe; to another, still unasked, how best to erect his new establishment ; to another, who is departing in despair, how best to pull his down !

"No doubt all this is very amiable ; but it has always been questionable to everybody but himself, whether it was judicious : for people have naturally said, where there is so little wisdom and stability in public affairs, it must be very clear that our private ones are safest in our own keeping ! We see, and so do the public, however, a new channel of industry opened to our hero in the pages of the New Zealander ; and it no sooner makes its appearance, than the indefatigable individual we speak of grasps at the fulfilment of its promise, and assumes the novel character — novel for his station — of public critic upon his own actions, and censor of the opinions of others ! and thus it is probable, that for the little time he is likely to stop among ua, we shall have an hebdomadal dish of slipslop, such as is afforded in the correspondence of 'An Old Settler' and 'Amalgamator'— two signatures which would either or both of them bear a more honest as well as a more elevated character, if they were displaced by 'Kawana' and * Gvbernat6r.'

"It is the general assurance, opinion, and belief, that such is the fact, and we ourselves, having some judgment and experience in these matters, so fully concur in the strong conjecture abroad, that indeed, as especially in reply to Mr. Amalgamator, we must have something to Bay. "Assuming, hypothetically, then, as we do, the authorship of a certain party, who has always had almost despotic means of proving the wisdom and utility of his own measures, and who is now reduced to the miserable alternative of acknowledging his inability, by the abandonment of place, or of retracing and reversing all hit steps (a process that he is not unused to

withal), assuming that such is the real authorship, we commence our reply with a direct denial of the want of success of all previous journals. We ourselves, although commercially little benefited by our efforts hitherto, have obtained the confidence of the public so far, that, if the head of the Government does not destroy the colony altogether, we are confident of great and ultimate success ; and certainly shall only be spurred on to continued perseverance by misplaced taunts of this kind ; and is it not a notable source for such an imputation to spring from, and that influential quarter which we all recognize as the fountain of our present misery, apprehension, and danger. Point out to us, Mr. Amalgamator, the success or the stability of any of your own wise measures, ' before you proudly censure ours ;' and permit us further to tell you that the politician, who, by the evidence of his own perpetual change and retraction, is manifestly baffled, beaten, mistaken, and disappointed in all he does, is not the proper man to be volunteer adviser or reprover of a public journalist. "The assertion that any portion of the press has heaped cowardly insults upon the Maories is utterly false : it is a subterfuge and an afterthought, like that which accused our writings of being the provoation of Heki's proceedings. The press have only deprecated the monstrous follies of the Protectorate and their patron, who, by giving to the Maories beforehand indemnity for crime and reward for it afterwards, have brought those proceedings which have so lately resulted in loss of house and home and all they possessed to the colonists, and disgrace and insult to the British flag, on sea and shore, throughout the whole of her dominions ! We have seen, day by day, every gradually advancing useful result of European intercourse with the Maories, broken down by an attempt to support a false and most contemptible philanthropy; and now we see the Champion, the apostles, and disciples of this creed in arms against the results of their own practice and propounded wisdom. And is this a time for the Champion aforesaid to volunteer advice and assistance to that public press, which is the only protection and safety-valve against the effects of his wild fancies and theories ? We trow not : let us hear no more, then, of cowardice imputed to the public writers, by whose energy and public influence alone some hope of advancement, some character of usefulness, has been presented to the colony.

"The abandonment of the system we have thus reprobated must be brought about, and and that public journalist is nothing less than a traitor to his office who may be flattered or cajoled into an effort to maintain it. Our established friendship with the Maories might have been maintained, but for the designing and interested display of humility which the natives naturally construed into weakness and cowardice, and which all such as they are reward with contempt and violence.

" It is evident to us, however, that Mr. Amalgamator has very little benefited by all his experience — he hankers even yet after the maintenance of that system, to suppress the result of which we have an army in the field — he vaunts the prowess of the Maories, and enlißts, or endeavours to do so, our sympathetic recollections of the ancient Britons in their favour — in short, he comes it strong in the Exeter Hall style ; and, lastly, to give an introduction to his signature, he strongly recommends the amalgamation of the races — and a pretty amalgam they would make, truly — the metal of which each is composed having such strong affinity to the other — would not they ? But let us ask Mr. Amalgamator, how he would like the practical operation of the process in his own family. Ask any father how he would like his own son, whom he had nurtured with fondest care, and instructed with his best ability, for whose success and promotion in life he was earnest and sanguine — ask him how he would comport himself if that son, seduced by the hypocritical cant of some protecting impostor, should take to him for life a Maori girl — with her head — the outside of it full of shark oil and other commodities, albeit perfectly empty within; her lips redolent of tobacco, and beautifully tattooed blue : or, ' horrescor proferetts,* how, if the daughter of his fondest love should forsake his bosom to seek domestic endearments and wedded love beneath .the everlasting folds of a Maori blanket. A missionary priest might make the marriage a legal one as far as the girl was concerned, and Maori custom would sanction her husband's possession of an unlimited harem; but then they would both, no doubt, be 'nui rangatiris'; and under any circumstances they would, of course, be ' amalgamating.' We leave this part of the subject with disgust : the only true and proper way to preserve and elevate the Maori race is to seek to' educate their rising offspring, instilling into them Christian principles and civilized habits ; discouraging their antediluvian language and introducing our own, instead oi inventing, for the sake of interested disguise, a villanout jar-

gon, disgraceful to botfe : thus, they hage ' Kpwana* for the office of roifrrr"atfd 'Ropiti Piterbi' for bis noble sponsoriaTatad patronymic; a horse is called 'Ao/ta;' a soldier, 'hohier.* The protectors may grow fat by this system, but they are reversing the duties of their office ; instead of raising' the Maori people to our station by all they have done, they are reducing us to theirs."

The refugees from the Bay/ of Islands have applied to the Governor for pecuniary aid from the Colonial Treasury, offering their lands as security. The Governor, in 'reply,* stated his inability' to assist them ; and- moreover informed them that if he could have done so, it might be the means ~of fostering speculation of a doubtful character.

The Governor is building a house for Te Whero Whero, the Waikato chief, in the Government domain . T,he wisdom of bringing this powerful chief and his people into the town of Auckland is considered very questionable. There is no circulating medium in Auckland but debentures. In imitation of the Government, every trader issues his own notes* The result of all this must, in the end, prove highly calamitous to the honest part of the community. We cannot resist giving another extract from the Times, written just previous to the last defeat of the troops, as it shows that the feeling in the north is as strongly condemnatory of the policy of the Governor ' as it is in the south : —

"The inconceivable mistakes that have prevailed^ and still are active in their influence, must, by this time, have gone sufficiently far to convince all others the most sceptical of their impolicy. Everybody looks, of course, with especial anxiety to the result of the present expedition to the Bay; all are naturally anxious for the safe return of their friends and fellowcountrymen who are engaged in it : but there is much more than this to be thought of, dear as this is, namely, a final result : and this will be never procured till the British name and power is asserted and supported. What a perfect farce it is *o have Governor Fitzßoy and Bishop Selwyn here preaching the doctrine of protection from his Excellency, who gets regularly whopped; and of religious instruction from his reverend lordship, who ought to discover that with all his zeal, under the present system, his energetic' kindness and perseverance amount to nothing. "The natives respected and valued us, loved us and cultivated our acquaintance, till they were taught by Captain Fitzßoy that he had come out as their especial protector, and that he had no business in the land but to remedy their imaginary grievances. " Such being the imaginary state of the case, what less can be desired than the removal of the present Governor, with all his very stubborn (though very stupid and amiable) fancies ; and the occupation of the territory under a system of legitimate and settled law and power, instead of a namby-pamby practice, such as we have been subject to? There is one thing, at all events, we can tell, with the perfect assurance of truth, to Mr. Protector Clarke and his Excellency, that since the arrival of the latter and his patronage of protectorate folly, every prospective hope of the colony has been impeded — a , mistaken desire of peace, by forbearance, has been nurtured into warfare and bloodshed — and it will go on increasing in its miserable influence till the British authority is effectually asserted. "The- colony, again and again we say, must be established now by physical power, since the moral influence which formerly prevailed has been rashly, if not wilfully, overthrown, by the miserable, most contemptible, and always forewarned protectorate authority. "There has been perhaps in the records of nations nothing more striking than our annals. There is a vulgar proverb about indecision and its effects, which we forbear to quote; but our Governor seems to have fallen into the very babyism of behaviour'; and whether his may be a desire for the advancement of the colony, or a wish for its extinguishment, he goes on from day to day cutting away the very possibility of its existence.

"The creation and stability of New Zealand, as a British colony, must depend upon capacity and not caprice : if the Government assume it, it must be done by conquest or treaty; and the latter is by circumstance impossible, as we shall prove hereafter, if it have not been already proved over and over again. But, under all or any circumstances, we must have a Governor who knows or recollects his own mind for five minutes together, and respects it so much that he does not chop and change, and who will give us an Opportunity of escaping from the very disagreeable necessity of being in perpetual array against him." __