THE WRONGS OF AUCKLAND.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXIV, Issue 30, 11 March 1865, Page 2

THE WRONGS OF AUCKLAND.

[From the Nelson Examiner, March 4.]

The cobbler who attended the Latin disputations at a German University, and determined the merit of the arguments by observing who among the students first lost temper, would undoubtedly give judgment against the Province of Auckland, on the so-called* wrongs it has sustained from the colony at large, if furnished with files of the Auckland journals. It must strike every one but the people of Auckland themselves, that there must be a consciousness of weakness, when abuse is substituted

for argument; and it reminds one of the instructions conveyed to an eminent barrister in his brief, that, his client having no case, counsel had nothing to do but to abuse the opposite party. The press of Auckland, ever since the advent to office of the Weld Ministry, has endeavoured to pursuade its readers that a conspiracy to ruin Auckland had been entered into by the rest of the colony, because ilr. Weld made the immediate removal of the seat of Government to Wellington a ministerial question. That the Government of the colony must be carried on from a central position, instead of from one end of the islands, was decided long ago by all thinking men in New Zealand, and it was not Mr. Weld who hastened the change from Auckland to Wellington, but the Whitaker Ministry, which preceded him in office, and which, being practically an Auckland Ministry, sacrificed most shamelessly the interest of the colony to the governing province. The removal of the seat of Government was long foreseen as a political necessity, and had it been effected two years ago would have excited but little feeling ; but the loss of the plunder which Auckland enjoyed while the colony was in the hands of the Whifcaker Ministry, who squeezed it to benefit their province as they would an orange to sweeten their mouths, is the real grievance which Auckland suffers. The Government of Mr. Whitaker gave such a lesson to the representatives of all the other provinces that with scarcely any exceptions save the Auckland members themselves, the immediate removal of the seat of Government to a spot where other interests than those of Auckland would be considered, was at once decided upon. The cry now raised by the Auckland press, is the one always resorted to, when stripped of their privileges, by men who have fatened at the public expense The expenditure by the colony of half-a-million of money, or it may be a larger sum, in making roads, and introducing immigrants and settling them on land, for the sole benefit of Auckland, -should for ever bind that province in gratitude to Mr. Whitaker and his colleagues ; and we can well understand how a termination to such pleasant proceedings is viewed by men who regard Auckland as New Zealand, and who think little of the colony so long as their own province flourishes.

The resignation by Mr. Reader Wood, the Colonial Treasurer of the Whitaker Ministry, of his seat in the House of Representatives, has stirred up the New Zealand Herald to a " careful consideration of the course which the remainder of the representatives of Auckland should take in the present position of New Zealand affairs ;" and, as we should be sorry to injure in any way the force of the Herald*s recommendations, we give them in full : —

True, the Auckland members, should they go to Wellington, would be unable, in the present composition of the House, to do anything to advance the interests of their own constituencies. They would sit like men gagged and bound, the unwilling spectators of further wrongs perpetrated against this province, to resist which they would be powerless. We do not, however, believe that they can most forcibly put on record the tyranny and injustice of the South by resigning their seats, which might be then occupied by men who would sink the welfare of the province in the gratification of their own ambition. Rather we should say, let them retain their seats in the Assembly, but, as one man, refuse to exercise their privileges as senators in a House where faction holds sway as it now does in the General Assembly of New Zealand. Come what may, whatever measures may be brought forward, let them take no part therein. To do so would be nothing more than the enaction of a solemn farce. They would be as powerless to oppose wrong as to advance right. Their presence would but serve as an excuse to Auckland's enemies, to say that what further evils they may have in store for her had been wrought openly and above board, in fair fight. The object of the South is, if they can, to blot Auckland, as a settlement, from the map of New Zealand. They are not simply jealous of her, but in their innermost hearts they hate her bitterly. Even now they are crying out for the immediate making of a hollow peace. Well do they know the result of such a step. The devastation of our homesteads, the ruin of the North, would be no unpleasing news to Southern ears, and dearly would Canterbury love to hear of emigrants leaving our shores, and of settlers circumscribed witliin a narrow limit of territory. There is no blow within its power to inflict which we may not expect from the South. We must not even, by our presence in the Assembly, implicate Auckland in any of the acts of the Southern faction which rules that legislative body. Sooner or later we shall obtain separation, and then it' will be welT that we can stand boldly forward and say, "in this Act, and in that, we have had no part ; we were not even of the Assembly that enacted them ; and now we repudiate all share in the consequences." Our representatives are bound to offer the most decided protest they possibly can against the tyranny with which it is sought to crush Auckland, and in no more decided manner can they do this than by refusing to take any part whatever in the doings of a Legislative Assembly where an unscrupulous majority combine for the oppression of a particular province, and the local aggrandisement of their own particular districts.

The Southern Cross, too, crows immensely at the intelligence that New Zealand debentures cannot be negotiated in the Australian market, and that the news received by a previous mail, that debentures amounting to £250,000, at eight per cent., had sold in Melbourne at par, turns out to be untrue, debentures for £20,000 only having been disposed of. Endeavouring to enlist Otago with the bait of separation, and railing at the necessary expenditure caused by the removal of the seat of Government, and, we must add, the somewhat questionable expenditure on the Panama mail service, it says : — "Will Auckland and will Otago consent to this reckless expenditure, bearing in mind that two-thirds of the total burden will fall upon them ? For Auckland, we will answer, that as she was ostentatiously excluded from the Executive, as her voice was stifled in the Assembly, and her existence ignored by the present Government and its makers, she will most peremptorily decline to be a party to carrying out the engagement entered into by the Government, in excess of powers and perversion of trust. There is no good got by mincing matters. Auckland means to look after her own interests. She means in future to take care of herself 5 and the members for the Middle Island, who calculated on the apathy of this province, and the lukewarmness of her members, will find to their cost that she is terribly is earaert."