HOME OPINIONS ON NEW ZEALAND

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

HOME OPINIONS ON NEW ZEALAND

AFFAIBS.

[From the Nehon Examiner, February 25.] •

It is often claimed for English public opinion that, although slow in settling to any conclusion, it is usually just and wise in the end. New Zealand politics have not been treated altogether in this way by public opinion at home. There has been heat, haste, and vacillation among our fellowcountrymen respecting us and our affairs ; but there are symptoms that the latter part of the assertion is becoming true, and that we are shortly to have plair play in men's minds, if we can hardly hope for the liberal treatment in financial matters that our wrongs deserve at the hands of Britain. The last mail brings abundant evidence of a revulsion of feeling. An English correspondent, whose letter we printed on Thursday, asserts that Sir George Greyis beginning to be more truly appreciated, and that our complaints of the hard usage of the British Parliament and public will not long be justified. Mr. Chichester Fortescue, Under Secretary for the Colonies, in a speech at a late liberal demonstration in Essex, devoted a considerable space to New Zealand and its troubles, and, not for the first time, favourably defended the colony* from the libellous charges against it. He emphatically denied that popular Responsible Government has been oppressive to the natives. He asserted the general propriety of colonizing these islands, and showed the alternatives, had Britain failed to do so. He admited the shortcomings of the Governments, one and all, but our sins were all sins of omission. Our ideal had been unpractical, and we had dropped sadly but almost unavoidably short of it. The whole of his remarks are sensible and generous, and show a close and interested attention to. the details of our transactions which entitles Mr. Fortescue to the thanks of the colony. It is not, however, Mr. Fortescue's speech that indicates a veering of opinion to a healthy quarter, for he has always taken a healthy view. But sitting beside him at the meeting, and subsequently a speaker at some length, was Mr. Buxton, whose philanthropic care for the Maori in a debate last session misled him into cruel wrong against his own. race. Mr. Buxton made no protest, and in fact took no exception to Mr. Fortescue's vindication of the colony. Possibly the light of the most recent events had reached his mirid, and he was beginning to feel that a conscientious man wanta a very close knowledge of facts before he can possibly be justified in taking an advocate's part. Equally clear, nay more full in its apprehension of our position than Mr. Fortescue'a speech, is an article which we reprint from the Economist, one of the highest class of weekly periodicals at home. It is a gratification that comes rarely indeed to an earnest public writer in the colonies, to find his voice audible, and his words understood at a distance so great as separates us from England, and amidst a turmoil of affairs so complicated as that which shuts out our little concerns from the eyes of men at the focus of civilization. In citing from our columns the difficulties that are bearing the colony down, the writer in the Economist evidently sees the force of our complaints, and recognises the reality of our account of the dilemma. He announces the conclusion that England should not draw back from the position she has taken, neither should she desert us in our need, nor yet knock to pieces the constitutional fabric she has set up. The Spectator, in a paragraph, of half a column, gives, without enlarging oh the argument, a judgment against the Governor in his constitutional dealings with, the Whitaker-Fox Ministry. The clearness and decisiveness of all these declarations seem to indicate a public opinion settling down to a sound and permanent state, ana substantiate the hope given by our correspondent. A letter of Mr. Adderley's is in the same sense.

Mr. Fortescue is so fair and liberal towards us that we are not disposed to cavil at what he says, yet there are two statements which we cannot pass without a word of remark. When Mr. Fortescue lays all the evils of our relations with the Maori to the double government of the colony, he is speaking less philosophically and less in accordance with facts than usual. He is losing Bight of his own comparison of the dealings of Britain under the old colonial system with the Indians of America ; and his contrast of the relations of England to the Maori with those of other European powers to other dark races. New Zealand furnishes the sole instance of a semi-consti-tutional executive— a double government dealing with uncivilized tribes — and it is, according to Mr. Fortescue, attended with the best result. Yet the evils that attend us, less in some degree he asserts than under the absolute system, are attributed to the same constitutional method. In truth, if Mr. Fortescue would think of it abstractedly, the improbability is enormous of two spirited races meeting as in this colony yet without collision. The ludicrous instructions of our early colonial days, to which he referred, in which Governors were directed to treat natives as British subjects, and to enforce law, have introduced confusion into the minds of many people, natives and settlers, Bishops and humble laymen ; but, had the conceptions and orders of Downing-street been never so wise, and the Government in the colony ever so united, there was but one way to have secured peace, and that was by the presence of overwhelming physical strength on the side of order. Jealousy must have arisen in the native mind, impatience must have found vent in the energetic European settler, and, let us not deceive ourselves, force in the background or somewhere, is needed to restrain the collision of the great passions. The special facts of our political history do not bear out Mr. Fortescue's statement ; for, until last year, during the whole period of government under the Constitution Act, no irreconcilable division arose between Governor and Ministers : they did always manage to agree on a course, and means were found from time to time for carrying those

courses out. Governor Browne agreed with the Stafford Ministry; Governor Grey agreed with Mr. Fox, and Mr. Domett, and seemed for a time to agree with Mr. Whitaker. We do not make light of the evils of the divisions of last year. Financially they were immense ; but the root of mischief was not in them or in any previous division. The other statement to which we take exception is, that it was impossible a Colonial Government, "representing one race," should view the differences with " the calm and impartial eye which the Imperial Government was able to bring to bear upon them." There is, perhaps, no presumption in saying this, yet there is a mistake in assuming that a representative becomes unjust and partial of necessity when he becomes a representative; nor, on this theory, could the Imperial Government claim to be impartial. The truth is that British society is, on the whole, a just society, and its Representative Government are in the main just men and act justly. Happily for us, New Zealand society inherits much of the justice of the old stock. At all events the New Zealand Government is composed in the main of just men, who rise to the responsibilities of their station. Mr. Forte3cue's a priori " impossible," is not the first of its race that has become fact. The Ministries of New Zealand have never done, nor, so far as man can judge, desired or attempted a shadow of injustice to the native race, nor committed any act towards them unworthy of the great rulers of the British Empire. Mr. Fitz Gerald's eloquence represents truly the aspirations of New Zealand politicians. Mr. Richmond's, Mr. Domett's, and Mr. Weld's measures represent their aims reduced to practice.

Mr. Fortescue, in justifying his colleague (Mr. Cardwell's) instructions, has chosen false ground, and does not see that the things justified are one cause or occasion of the disunion which he attributes to all our attempts at constitutional government, and which did upset the last. We deeply regret this part of Mr. Fortescue's Bpeech. We do not say that, under such instructions as Mr. Cardwell's, prosperity cannot be regained. That depends on other matters, and no little on the men who may be Governor or Ministers. But those instructions have inflicted fearful losses on the colony ; and misery, as a consequence of those losses, still broods over us in forms only half realized. We do not say that if the New Zealand settlements fail it is altogether attributable to Mr. Cardwell's despatches. The scheme waa hastily and ill Degun, but even that haste was, partly at least, due to the uncertainty which the vacillation in Downing-street, and in Government House cast upon the plan, and the desire to clinch so important a business whilst the changeful mood was favourable. Not the double government, but the vacillating and arbitrary interference of one branch, of it, caused the latest extension of our troubles, and 'such interferences, the Government, it seems, have hardly yet resolved on abandoning, although we' have sanguine hopes that the blue books of last session, and the moderate attitude of the Legislature of the colony, may convince them and the public out of doors of the fatal mistake of such interferences.