RESIGNATION BY MR. FOX OF HIS SEAT FOR RANGITIKEI

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXIV, Issue 75, 22 June 1865, Page 3

RESIGNATION BY MR. FOX OF HIS SEAT FOR RANGITIKEI

[From the Wellington Independent.] To THE ELECTOES OF THE HOUSE OF EEPBESENTATIVES IN THE EaNGITIKEI DISTRICT. Gentlemen — After much deliberation, I have sent to the Speaker of the House of Representatives my resignation of the seat I have had the honour to hold in that House as your representative. When I left New Zealand on a tour to the Australian colonies it was my full intention to have returned to attend the ensuing Session of the Assembly, which it was then understood would be held in June.

The information that I have been able to gather in reference to the position of the leading questions affecting the colony, does not induce me to believe that I could exercise any beneficial influence in the Assembly. The settlement of the Seat of Government question, arrived at last session, has I trust long before this commended itself in practice to the good sense of even those parts of the colony which might at one time have objected to it. It will, I hope, also be found to put an end to that agitation for separation, which found its only reasonable argument in the inconvenience of the remoteness of the metropolis. If I had believed that there was any prospect of a reversal of the decision of the colony on the first, or a successful agitation on the latter of these questions, I should have considered it my duty to attend the session.

As regards the great trouble of New Zealand, the Native difficulty, I do not believe that, so long as Governor Grey remains in the colony, there is the remotest prospect of any satisfactory solution of the problem which, four years and a-half since, was entrusted to him to solve. Still less do I believe that, while lie is in the colony, the Assembly can exercise any appreciable influence upon this question. The possibility of its doing so is greatly lessened by the terms of Mr. Weld's resolution on Eesponsible Government in Native Affairs of last Session, which practically gives the Governor unlimited power in them, so long as a single British regiment remains in the colony.

It is melancholy to read the report of the jaunty debate in the English Parliament on the 17th March, upon New Zealand affairs, and to witness the members rubbing their hands with mutual congratulation at the prospect of being able to recal some of the troops serving in the colony. They appear to have believed that Governor Grey's unconditional peace Proclamation, and change of Ministry, had settled the native rebellion, and that the Maoris were ready to acquiesce in the supremacy of British authority. Two or three days after that debate, the mail would announce in England the renewal of hostilities in Cook Strait ; and every succeeding mail will have conveyed news of some horrible disaster, such as the murder of poor Hewett and Volkuer, or the narrow escape of the Queen's troops from overwhehnning defeat, on more than one occasion. Then Parliament will be prorogued, and tho Colonial Minister will, during the recess, go on receiving for truth Governor Grey's versions of what passes in the colony, while the colony and all its interests are plunged deeper and deeper into financial and other difficulties from which it will take years to recover. When I see the Homo Government and home public so deluded, and bo willing to be deluded, and the colony so utterly helpless in the matter, I lose all hope that anything the colony can do will have any beneficial effect. At all events, Ido not see how any humble efforts of mine could avail ; and I have, therefore, only to thank you, my constituents, for the confidence and support you have always given me, and, for the present, to say good bye, in the hope that we may meet again at some future time, under happier auspices. I have, &c, William Fox. Adelaide, South Australia, May 16, 1865.