THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, February 5, 1848.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 309, 5 February 1848, Page 192

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, February 5, 1848.

Journals become more necessary as men become more equal and individualism more to be feared. It would be to underrate their importance to suppose that they serve only to secure liberty: they maintain civilisation. Db Tocovevillb. Of Democracy in America, vol. iv., p. 300. We scarcely know whether we should congratulate our fellow settlers, or condole with them — whether to express our satisfaction or regret, at what we are going to announce. The truth is that, opposed as these feelings are, each enters so largely into the event we refer to, that the one counterbalances the other. Nelson is about to lose three of its most distinguished settlers — his Excellency the Govern or- in- Chief having offered to Mr. Domett the Colonial Secretaryship, and to Mr. Fox the appointment of Attorney-General, for the Southern Province of the colony, and to the Hon. C. A. Dillon, an appointment in the Genera Government at Auckland — and each has been accepted. On narrow and selfish grounds we should most sincerely regret any event that would take from our small community either one of those gentlemen. Each has so thoroughly identified himself with the political struggle the settlement has felt bound to make, and taken on all occasions so prominent a part in our discussions and public proceedings, that his presence cannot fail to be missed on all future occasions under that new state of things which it has been his chief labour to help to produce. On the other hand, it is no mean compliment to us, and to our cause, that three of our leading gentlemen have been selected to fill the highest and most responsible appointments which his Excellency has the power of bestowing under his Government. Whatever private regrets we may therefore have (and no one has more) for the local loss we are about to sustain, on public grounds, which should outweigh all others, these appointments give us the most unfeigned satisfaction. We know of no other gentlemen in the settlement, or in the colony, into whose hands we would have so readily entrusted the government of our affairs, and we are satisfied that had they remained among us, the- settlement, in the exercise of the privileges about to be bestowed upon it, would have shown, in the most marked and conclusive manner, that this sentiment is the one felt

by the great majority of our population. To the gentlemen themselves, we offer our best congratulations. "The winning of honour," says Bacon, " is but the revealing of a man's virtue and worth, without disadvantage." In the career of public life which they are now entering, they will be better able to advance those great principles of universal freedom and justice, which found in them at all times the most zealous and consistent advocates; and the promotion of those objects will, we are sure, be the best recompense for the toils and responsibilities they will have to encounter.