COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 428, 18 May 1850, Page 45

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.

[From the Mtnmg Chronicle, December 81.]

We published yesterday a valedictory letter, addressed by Mr. John Robert Godley to Mr. Gladstone, previously to the departure of its writer for the settlement of Canterbury, in New Zealand. Mr. Godley's ability, and his knowledge of colonial matters, are too generally recognised to render it necessary for us to say much upon that score. For several years past he has been occupied in laying the foundationstone of the distant social structure to which he is now proceeding in person. His inter* course with the authorities of the Colonial Office, to whom he was known as representative of the New Zealand Company, has been constant and friendly. He has obtained, by long study and by acute aud close observation, a thorough acquaintance with the past history and the actual condition of our lost as well as of our remaining possessions in North America, and the fact that he has succeeded in bringing to bear the result of his experience, by the creation of a new settlement at the Antipodes, entitles him to receive from the public at large that attention which will be eagerly conceded to his letter by all who have enjoyed an opportunity of acquainting themselves personally with his energetic, sagacious, and upright character.

The views which Mr. Godley has promulgated in this letter are too clearly and temperately put to require any further exposition from us. Satisfied that the days of "Mr. Mothercountry " are numbered ; that he leaves behind him those whose tongues and pens will never rest till they have freed their colonial fellow subjects from the paralysing incubus of an unskilful and tyrannical bureaucracy — he " forbears 'to enlarge upon the stimulus imparted to the opponents of the present system by the perserving mismanagement to which the colonies have been of late subjected/ although he considers " that it would be mere affectation to ignore altogether an influence so undeniable and so important." His main fear is, not that "Mr. Mothercountry" will much longer coerce and .override our colonies as seemeth best to his spiteful inexperience — but that, in the impending struggle to be free, for which preparations are making throughout our exasperated dependencies. Queen Victoria may be deprived, in consequence of the evil temper and the unskilfulness of her Minister, of some of the brightest and most valuable jewels of her Imperial Crown. He implores Mr. Gladstone to exert himself to avert Buch a deplorable catastrophe — for, in spite of all that some parties may allege, such a severance would be a deplorable catastrophe both to England and to her dependencies. Mr. Godley suggests, as the only means of appeasing the determined spirit of resistance which the laßt three years of insult and of misgovernment have called into being, that the right of complete and entire selfgovernment should be conceded to our colonies. He explains himself to mean by self-govern-ment — " The right and power to do so, within the limits of each colony respectively, without check, control, or intervention of any kind, everything that the Supreme Government of this country can do within the limits of the British Islands, with one exception — the prerogative of regulating relations with foreign powers." He defines, as follows, his viewß of the proper conditions of a colonial relation to the mother-country :—l.: — 1. An acknowledged allegiance. 2. A common citizenship. 3. An offensive and defensive alliance ; and he adds, that "colonies enjoying the perfect administration of their own affairs ought not to cost the mother-country a shilling for their government — like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania of old, they would regard total pecuniary independence of the mother-country as an important means of preserving their municipal privileges." It is rather with a view of arresting public attention to Mr. Godley's letter than with the hope of stating more intelligibly what has been bo clearly expressed by him, that we have thus adverted to two or three of the moßt salient points of his address to Mr. Gladstone. We must now devote a few words to the anticipation of the small official objections with which Mr. Godley's comprehensive views will no doubt be combatted when Parliament meet*, and to the reductio ad absurdwn of the present mode of Colonial mis-government — if indeed, any further reduction of that kind can be supposed to be necessary. Lord " Mothercountry " in the Upper House, and " Mr. Mothercountry " in the Commons, and their representatives in the Ministerial press, will defend the present Colonial Eystem, by saying at once that it is indefensible, and that they are "going" to reform it. In proof of this they will show how, having spent much midnight oil and toil in framing new constitutions for New Zealand and New South Wales, the Colonial Minister was unexpectedly thwart-

ed'by the awkward fact that the said constitutions were forthwith returned on his hands, after circumnavigating the globe, as unquestionable misfits.^ They wilt plead that their animus to Ibe liberal .has bsen thus proved beyond cavil, and that they hope in time to become more dexterous and more successful. And if, in the mean while, it should so happen that the affections of our colonial fellow-eubjects are soured and estranged— that their trade and agriculture are paralysed, and they themselves first lashed into insurrection, and then decima-. ted into subjection— Lord "Mothercountry" will declare his conviction that these deplor? able results have arisen, not from his own obstinacy* incapacity* andbad.faith,Jbut entirely from the unaccountable personable animosity of British 'colonists towards himself. He will point out that if public writers could be induced to pass over his" misdeeds in silence, he might get on much better. He will instance, perchance, the Cape of Good Hope. Having promised *<stii&t colony a constitution— -and having selected Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Smith, K.C.B. (a gallant officer, who, if he has any desire to maintain the reputation he has so well won, ought to exchange bis sword for his pen as seldom as possible), to frame it, and to forward it to Downing-street, without consulting in any way the members of the community for whose use it was designed— he will show how, in return for his good intentions, the ungrateful CJapemen declined to contaminate their hitherto pure homes, with his cargo of " exiles from Erin/ sent to them avowedly because he did not know what else to do with them. His Lordship will continue pathetically — " Can anything be more disheartening to a statesman who means well — who is sacrificing his time and his reputation^ in their behalf? I ask your lordships, do such men deserve a constitution at all ? Fortunately, my lords, when the estimates are next' diecflssed, there will be an opportunity of annoying and mulcting them ; and if they should iv the mean time be attacked by the Kafirs, we need but use a judicious official delay in succouring them, and their present triumph may happily be waßhed r out by their blood."

,"Mr. Mothercountry " in the Commons will, on his 'part, ask with a Belf-eatisfied smile, whether he is to understand that Mr. Godley really proposes that universal suffrage should be introduced into Sierra Leone, or that the seven whites and four hundred negroes who vegetate in the islet of Cariacou, in the Caribbean Sea, should be indulged with self-govern-ment ? He will apply the proposed scheme to Gibraltar, and prove it impossible — and he will be excessively funny about Hongkong and Heligoland. He will talk in a grandiose vein about all that he and " his nobk friend " have' done, are about to do, and would have done, for their subjects, had they not, like bungling mesmeriserSf been impeded by malveillanls at home; and he will attribute the present state of feeling in Canada, at the Cape, in the Weßt Indies, and throughout the Australian colonies, to the spite of disappointed monopolists and malevolent scribes, who are not Sufficiently generous to acknowledge the consistency, candour, and success, which have caused admiring and expectant placemen to confer upon him and on " his noble friend " the gratifying norn de bureau of " the greatest colonial reformers of the day." With suchlike trash has every colonial complaint been hitherto met; but we are happy to believe that the time is not far distant when a better account will be required from the unjust stewards of Downing- street. A great step was made during last session by the exhibition of the conduct of one of Earl Grey's colonial Governors, and of the person of another before a Select Committee of the House of Commons. We would ask any of the independent members of that Committee, whether they can imagine any greater insult or outrage which could be offered to such men as Mr. Godley -or Bishop Selwyn — men' who" have devoted their lives to the' conscientious discharge of the onerous duties which they have undertaken— than the capricious imposition of a rash and violent novice like the Governor of Ceylon — or of a testy and foolish disciplinarian like the late Governor of Guiana — to represent her most gracious Majesty in the community in which their lbt is cast ? And the only cause that saves them from such an infliction is, that the salary alotted to the Governor of New Zealand did not come up to the value which Lord Torrington and Sir Henry Light, X.C.8., themselves set upon their services. We think it probable that were Mr. Godley's suggestion acted upon — were our colonies left to select their own officers, to regulate their own affairs, and to pay their own expenses — many of them might for a titrie be ill-governed ; but we do not believe that, by any possibility, such universal discontent and ruin as now. exists could obtain under any other system than that which was so vigorously assailed by Earl Grey when out of office — and which he now obstinately, and yet so feebly, defends.

Jjast year, 31,630,222 persons travelled by rail in Great Britain and Ireland, of whom' 3,733,600 went by first class, 12,191,549 by second class, 7,184,032, (by third class, 8,450,620 by the parliamentary trains. The receipts amounted to £3,283,301, of which £1,033,511 was paid by firat class, £1,360,468 by second class, £3,200,860 by the third class, and £597,071 by parliamentary train passengers. I " It is often alleged," says the Jewish Chronicle, "by persons writing geography, that the whole Jewish population all over the globe U about two millions and a httf, - Bat from authentic information it would j^ear that in Russia and Austria alone there anfmte than this number."

A ragged *d»*ool was opened in Armagh on Monday, October 29. r :