THE NELSON EXAMINER. Wednesday, December 25, 1861.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume X, Issue 111, 25 December 1861, Page 2

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Wednesday, December 25, 1861.

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 civilization. De Tocqueville. Of Democracy in America, vol. v., 330.

It seems now to be generally admitted and understood that there is to be no renewal of the native war; we wish we could add that our prospects of peace were equally advanced. Sir George Grey has evidently come out with instructions from the Home Government that there is to be no New Zealand war ; no further drain upon the Imperial Treasury, and no prolonged stay of the army now assembled here. Still that Sir George will obtain as much money and keep as many troops as possible, so long as he remains here, we cannot doubt ; he knows too well the value of both men and money in governing half civilized men. "When he first came here to succeed Captain Fitzroy, who was at his wits end for the means of carrying on his Government, he brought with him a large sum of money from South Australia, and, when the German legion raised for the Crimea was sent out to be located on the Caffre frontier at the Cape, he kept them embodied for years, in spite of numerous inquiries and protests in the House of Commons. It was suspected at the time that there were certain German predilections in high places, secret influences, and possibly secret instructions, which enabled him to act thus independently of his avowed orders ; but in the present case we do not see any reason for expecting a similar display of insubordination.

In order to form any correct idea of the policy he is likely to pursue, we must keep our views of what is really best for New Zealand and its settlers very much in the back ground ; and ask ourselves, first, what is the state of home feeling and European politics; and next, what course would, in the shortest time, produce the greatest appearance of tranquillity ? "VVe have already remarked on the tone of the English journals, and the agreement on this

subject between those which are commonly most opposed to each other. Their observations are valuable, not only as showing the direction of popular feeling, but because they have opportunities and means of learning what has already been determined upon at head-quarters, far greater than are generally known or suspected. We already know what their advice is. It is to end the war as speedily as possible ; to withdraw the troops, with the exception, perhaps, of a guard of honour for the Governor ; and to hand over to the settlers, without reserve, the whole care and responsibility of their relations with the natives. We have been called the Britain of the South ; we seem to be beginning her history over again at the point where Rome recalled her legions for the defence of her own territories, and, with many good counsels and expressions of sympathy, left her colonists to battle, as best they might, against the savage tribes who attacked them on all sides. Her Proconsul is now here ; not to throw in his lot with us, not to say how best or most effectively we may assist in extending the dominion or assuring the supremacy of our mother country, but to give us good advice, to allay present troubles, and to withdraw with his forces at the first fitting opportunity. To do this with effect, he begins by adopting the Philo-Maori theory. He ignores the war altogether. In reading his proclamation, no stranger could guess that a Maori king was in existence, claiming independent authority and jurisdiction ; that an English settlement had been devastated, and a part of its territory claimed by a hostile tribe as fairly wrested from us in open warfare ; or that terms, fair, honourable, and lenient terms of peace, had been offered to those who had risen in arms against the Queen's authority, to which terms no answer had been returned. It is now evident that none will be required. The Maori flag is not to be hauled down, the plunder of 200 homesteads is to be retained, and no compensation is to be demanded. Nay, more, the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi are to be set aside ; and the natives are to have the power, if we may believe the Haicke's Bay Herald, of lease and sale to actual occupants of their lands. In addition, the whole Maori nation is to be pensioned or subsidized ; for it amounts to this. In every native district, and fifteen or twenty are spoken of, twelve of the chief men are to be paid at the rate of £50 a year each ; besides paid assessors, paid police, &c. Then for the Europeans a splendid perspective of place is held out ; and the huge army of officials, with which the country is overrun from one end to the other under the present system of Grovernment, is to be indefinitely extended and increased. Fifteen or twenty Civil Commissioners, with three or four times that number of resident magistrates, medical men, and schoolmasters, are to be appointed for the regulation of this new Utopia. To our minds the whole scheme is a splendid deception ; in which the only tangible realities are a gigantic scheme of bribery for the Maoris on the one hand and an equally extensive system of taxation for the settlers, and of place and patronage for the Government on the other. It is founded upon a fallacy and a delusion. The fallacy is that any Government, however plausible in theory, can succeed which is not based upon actual power and physical force ; and the delusion is that the natives, as a race, are men sufficiently advanced for constitutional self-government, or children enough to be deceived by the semblance instead of the reality. The Maori mind, which is eminently practical, will receive the fact readily that large sums of money are to be distributed among them every year; and will say "all this good comes to me from fighting at Waitara."

For the object of an immediate pacification and a semblance of peace we cannot deny that the means are well chosen, and such as do credit to Sir George Grey's wellknown ability. They yield every point in dispute ; and they cover his retreat with a great display of philanthropic intentions, and with inducements to fall in with his views still more alluring and substantial. We think them fallacious, because we do not hold the Maoris generally to be so superior to all other nations with which we have come into contact as their advocates maintain them to be ; and therefore believe that the plans now put forth will share the fate of all similiar attempts, where moral suasion, the influence of Government, and legislative enactments alone have been unsupported by the prestige of an overwhelming force in the background.

As all the attempts at perpetual motion have broken down through not taking into account the vis inertia of the mass to be moved, and the friction of its parts, so do schemes for national improvement fail when the true nature of the materials to be operated upon is not understood, and workmen properly qualified for the task are not to be procured. Many scientific inventions have lain dormant for years, until the progress of practical mechanics made it possible to work them out ; and many large-hearted plans for the advancement of the human race

have come to nought from the impossibility of procuring men fit to carry them into practical operation.

We willingly acknowledge and heartily respect Sir George Grey's powers of management, Bishop Selwyn's energy, self-devotion, and apparently unlimited capabilities of work, with Judge Martin's benevolence, zeal, and disinterestedness ; let each of these able men produce a dozen such to undertake the conduct of the experiment, and we should have some hope of its success. Instead of this, we have two significant facts to begin with ; Mr. Mantell, the Native Minister, a man of education, ability, and independence, has resigned ; and Mr. George Clark, the old protector of aborigines in the days of Captain Fitzroy, is appointed the first Civil Commissioner. These are not hopeful symptoms. Lastly, where are the funds to come from ? Of course Sir George will ask the General Assembly to vote them. The majority in the other island, which will benefit in every way from the increased expenditure, until fresh troubles arise, will support the demand ; but will the southern members do so ? We do not think they will. The people in this island have just the same interest in the question that the British people have elsewhere, and no more ; they have no wish to govern the natives, and would not be allowed to do so even if they had. The Home Government has now taken that task in hand' through its own delegate ; it should find the means to carry out its own policy. If it should refuse to do so, and we should think fit to follow its example, who could blame us ? We can give exactly the same reasons for declining to interfere ; we could bring forward exactly the same arguments for leaving the matter entirely in the hands of those whose interests are so directly involved in arranging it ; and our refusal to take any further part in it would be an additional guarantee for the preservation of peace.

The case seems to us one exactly fitted for a great meeting in Exeter Hall and a subscription. We recognise the desire of the Home Government to get rid of us and our " interminable little wars ;" the great interest which the settlers in the other island, especially those in the rural districts, have in procuring peace at any price ; the philanthropic motives which actuate the Maori advocates, and which have constituted them a distinct party in political warfare ; and we would willingly assist in putting down these little wars, in protecting the property of the runholders in the North, and in promoting a. better state of things among the natives ; but if all this is to be done at our sole expense, and Sir George Grey has not even gone through the ceremony of asking for our concurrence before he initiated his new policy, the sooner we formally separate our interests from theirs the better. They have long been separated in reality.

The election for the Superintendency of the province took place on Monday last, and resulted in the return of Mr. Robinson by a very large majority. The returns for some of the out-districts have not yet been received, but, so far as we have heard, Mr. Eobinson polled 593, against 218 polled by Mr. Barnicoat. The Electoral Koll gives the names of 1,534 voters, but probably not more than 1,400 of these could vote, through absence from the province, and other causes, so that when the whole returns are received, it seems likely that the votes recorded in Mr. Eobinson's favour will be little short of one-half of the entire constituency. This must be very gratifying to Mr. Eobinson. If the majority of the electors are satisfied with his past administration of the affairs of the province, they were quite right to re-elect him. Por our own part, not being so satisfied, we felt it to be our duty to oppose his return, and we certainly expected to have found a larger body of the electors than the poll-booka disclose, who partook of our views. We shall not attempt to lessen the keenness of defeat by seeking to explain it away in showing that Mr. Robinson, though elected by a large majority, polled less than half the electors; that Mr. Barnicoat was not very heartily supported through being so little of a party man, that many of those most dissatisfied with Mr. Eobinson refused to vote at all ; and that no effort was made, even in the ordinary way of canvassing, to secure Mr. Barnicoat's return. These and other explanations might be given to account for a result which, we believe, has taken Mr. Eobinson's friends by surprise as much or more than it surprised his opponents ; but what would be the use of them ? The people of Nelson have reelected Mr. Eobinson their Superintendent for four years, and, for the time, the matter is settled.

The"] mail steamer Prince Alfred arrived with the English October mails yesterday afternoon, having left Sydney on Tuesday evening/ the 17th instant. The mail should have reached us three days earlier, but its delay is attributable to the detention experienced in crossing the Isthmus through "* the damage which the overflowing of the Nile inflicted on the railway, The Prince

Alfred has a large number of passengers and horses for Otago, and we are glad to welcome back amongst us (although his stay will, we understand, be but a short one) our old fellow-colonist, Mr. Fell, who has, for the last few years, sojourned in England.