THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, December 13, 1845.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 197, 13 December 1845, Page 162

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, December 13, 1845.

Journals become more neceutry as men become more equal and individualism mare 1 .to be feared. It would be to underrate their importance to suppose that they serve only to secure liberty : they maintain civilization. '-* ■ w • *"Dlt TOCQUBVtLMt." Of Democracy in America, vol. iv., p. 200.

The history of colonisation would lead to the iuference that all old communities feel an instinctive shame on being detected establishing new ones. Like Miss Sally Brass, who for private reasons was anxious that the Marchioness should occupy as small a space as possible in the public eye, and for that purpose maintained her on the smallest possible quantities of meat and drink which would keep body and soul together^ so old countries appear to be animated towards their offspring by an anxious desire to stunt their growth, and they evince it by the miserable commons which they ' dole out of every thing which is calculated to promote the progress of a people. Parish gruel is oil and wine compared to the mouldy scraps which are served out in colonial back kitchens. When old Spain, in her greedy dreams of gold, clutched the Cordilleras and the Silver River, one would have 'thought that some small share of the anxiety which she bestowed upon the mines might have been extended to those who were to work them, and that the population which she located on the shores of La Plata, whence she ex- ' pected her treasures to flow, might have been treated as children and not as outcasts. But the history of that colony for 200 years from its establishment displays only a series of successive acts of oppression, of every species of interference with its prosperity, which if it had been the object of the old country at once to destroy, it could not have pursued any course better adapted to the end. Disappointed of the mineral wealth which she had anticipated, the boundless riches of the great prairies of Buenos Ayres were disregarded, and the industry of the inhabitants was checked by a prohibition of all exports except such as could be conveyed in two vessels not exceeding 100 tons each. Fifty per cent, was laid on all imports, and the celebrated alcabala, or tax of 30 per cent, on all sales (to which Mr. Buller aptly compared Captain Fitzßoy's projected tax upon traders), went to make up a portion of the tender mercies which the unnatural mother bestowed on her child. It was no wonder that for 200 years one of the finest countries in the world " languished in indigence and obscurity." Many years had not elapsed since the trade of La Plata was limited to two ships of 100 tons each ; and yet in the year 1830 her imports amounted in value to 36,800,000 dollars, and her exports to little less. In I spite of all the obstacles opposed to her prosperity, the primal command, " increase and multiply," was obeyed by the population, and the outcry from her shores at last became so great that Spain was obliged to relax her hold and to bestow upon her some immunities. These immunities gave her energies scope ; and when the French revolution disturbed the minds of all civilized nations, La Plata threw off the Spanish .yoke, and from that date, being self-go-verned, though having to contend with many difficulties the necessary result of her new position, she has made strides more rapid in the march of wealth and civilization than almost any other country in the history of the modern world. The history of La Plata contains the essence of all colonial history. While kept down by the millstone of distant government, inflicted by officials regardless of their welfare and ignorant of the means of promoting it, they " languish in indigence and obscurity ;" released from the evils of this system, restored to the freedom of their

birthright, governed^ Uy '^themselves, who .both 1 feel and comprehend What promotes their prosperity, they rise into whatever eminence the physical.^sources of their country and the natural endowments of its inhabitants permit. The day will no doubt arrive to every colony when it will cease to be such, when its nursery trammels will be discarded and it will be emancipated from parental control. The particular period for the emancipation of each must depend on its particular circumstances; those which have boen best governed as colonies will first arrive at political maturity ; while, as in the case of the Argentine Republics, gross misgovernment may keep others back for an extended period. Those children which are best fed are first fit to go alone, while the halfstarved longer require the care of the nurse for their rickety limbs. It ought to be the pride of old countries to " turn out " the most prosperous colonies, instead of rivalling each other in their endeavours to make them emulate the living skeleton. Of all systems for successfully misgvoerning a colony, that which has been adopted in Great Britain since the appointment of a Secretary for the Colonies is perhaps the most ingeniously devised. As certainly as a mechanist will apply the doctrine of forces in the construction of a particular machine, so certainly must the inventor of that office have foreseen its results and adapted his means to an end. Paley inferred an intelligent Creator from the evidence of design in all existing things ; and the historian who shall some centuries hence stumble on the fossil remains of the Colonial Office will at once come to the conclusion that it was most judiciously designed and most exactly adapted to the misgovernment of a distant and dependent people. Perhaps in those days the world, full-peopled, will display no instance of a colony ; but, just as Buckland or Murchison delineate some extinct monster, perfect in all its parts, by inferences drawn from its os coccygis, so will the historian of remote ages arrive at the conclusion that once there were colonies, oppressed and distant from the seat of government, when he discovers some relic of the Colonial Office which shall survive a political deluge yet to be. Yet with what distrust will he receive his own conclusions, with what difii dence will he lay them before the public, how difficult will he iind it to account fur the fact that a nation wh : ch possessed every popular institution, whose \*\my and greatness were convincing evidence of their value, should nevertheless have established distant dependencies deprived of every pirticle of self-government and subjected to a pure despotism, whose iron rod wu* held by a Secretary for the Colonies 15,000 miles distant! If Great Britain be not cursed with •' folly's own peculiar attribute and native act — to make experience void," the time must be approaching when she will see the absolute necessity of giving her colonies more popular forms of government. Ministers will save themselves much trouble by leaving colonies to govern themselves, and economy on this head is what Ministers in general are willing to attempt. It may suit the phrenological developments of Lord Stanley to be always invohed in hot water, but Sir Robert Peel and Sir James Graham will not relish being periodically dragged through the dirt in no better company than that of Messr?. Hope and Card well. The great debate is not the last on New Zealand. Mr. Hope's prophetic declaration that there was nothing to be feared from the natives (" he had it from Mr. Brown "), would be contradicted a week or two after i:s utterance, by the news of the destruction of Russell. It may possibly occur to Sir Robert that notwithstanding the difficulties which the peculiar circumsiances of New Zealand present in the way of establishing a Representative Legislature, yet that those difficulties are in fact less than the difficulty of attempting to govern so distant a dependency by such imperfect machinery as the Colonial* Office.