NEW ZEALAND, ITS COMPANY, AND THE COLONIAL OFFICE. [From the Atlas.]

New Zealander, Volume 1, Issue 13, 30 August 1845, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND, ITS COMPANY, AND THE COLONIAL OFFICE. [From the Atlas.]

In the Colonial Gazette, a journal conducted with very considerable ability, and generally full of information, but so subject to the influence ol one or two commercial cliques, as to repel pubj lie confidence, and support from it, — we find an ! article on the despatch lately addressed by Lord Stanley to Governor Fitzroy. that merits a few lemarks. We have certainly no retainer to defeud Lord Stanley fiom such attacks ; nor are we at all inclined to screen the Colonial Oflice from censuie, when it, as often happens, really de- , serves animadversion : but we have a commission lin the service of truth, and are provoked to use it in the exposure of a few of the many misstatements that occur in the article in question ; assured that we can do the colonies nothing but benefit in the dissociating their cause from inaccuracies. | Without any preliminary waste of words, we proceed to the examination of the three leading passages in the bill of indictment against Lord •Stanley. I "I. The Committee's Report condemns the policy of Ministers, only two courses, were in consequence open to the Colonial Secretary,— either to accept the decision of the Committee, as the decision of the House of Commons, or to appeal to the House, to overrule it. Lord Stanley does neither — he transmits ihe report to Governor Fitzroy, with an exhortation to pay Ino attention to it. In acting thus, Lord Stanley has offered a gross and wanton insult to the House of Commons. He has practically denied " the constitutional controul of the ♦ great inquest of the nation,' over Ministers. He has declared to the Commons of England that he regaids their sciutiny and judgment as a mere farce, an empty show, to take up the attention of the people, which Ministers and their agents, need not allow any influence over their actions." The doctrine that the repoitofa Committee is the • judgment ' of the House of Commons is new. Unfortunately, however, for the writer, his clients have themselves known that itjis not true. For if true, the colonization of New Zealand has, from the first, been against the • judgment'of the House of Commons. In 1836, a Committee of the House reported, by no narrow or bare majority, that the acquisition of New Zealand by England was a measure inexpedient and unjusund certain to be fraught with calamity to a numerous and inoffensive people. But so far from the N Z. Company esteeming this repoit to be the ' judgment ' of the House, they actually invited Lord Normanby and Lord Glenelg, to disregaidits advice, and that too, without any •' appeal to the House." With what honesty or consistency, then, can they, or their organs, now set up such pretensions, fora Committee's report as are opposed to the views of the value of such documents, they themselves entertained in 1887, JS3B and 1539 1 They are not surely entitled to tieat a report as waste paper when opposed to their speculations, and to hold it up as the judgment of the House when likely to put money into their pockets. The notion that a Committee's report is in any case the' judgmont' of the House, has no foundation eitiier in reason or precedent. The house's judgment can be expressed by its votes only. The i eport of a Committee is merely the opinions of a few members appointed to enquire into and inform the House on the subject relened It is a document to be judged of by the House accotdingto its merits; it has the authority of a Committee, — not Ding more. Whilst only lying on the table, constitutional effect on the executive, it has none j and the recommendation ol Committees are quite as fiequently disregarded as not by the House. The executive Goveinmenl i-> not bound either to accept its conclusions as the decisions of the house, or appeal to the house to overrule them ; but is, on t..e contrary, bound to act on its own sense of right andy»d v» rcng ; subject of course for its responsibility to Parliament. This is the constitutional course, and tins is exactly what Lord Stanley is doing. If in so acting he is censsurable, his opponents can submit his proceedings to the animadversion of the legislature. The issertion that Lord Stanley has transmitted the report in question to Captain Fitzroy, " with an exhortation to pay no attention to it," is a misrepresentation. To some of the principle« advanced by it, Lord Stanley demurs j but to the majority of its lecommendatioiis he instructs Captain Fitzroy to give all the efficacy circumstances will permit. And what, in reference to so distant and )oung a Colony, could any Colonial minister do more in matters of detail requiring the most minute local information ? " II Having endeavoured to convince Governor Fitzroy that no respect ought to be paid to the report, on the ground of its emanating from a committee of the Legislature, Lord Stanley proceeds to attack the conclusions of the report by argument. The first position assailed, is the doctrine that 'the uncivilised inhabitants of any country, have but a qualified dominion over it.' Lord Slanlej objects that, ' there are many gradationsof uncivilized inhabitdittbj'inferringtlieiefore that the dortrme is incapable of being practically applied. A ranker sophism was never uttered. At this rate, no general rules of law can be in any case applied, for every such rule implies generalization and classification, and no two individuals can be found corresponding exactly to any geneial description. The documents transmuted to the Colonial Office by Captain Hobson, of the Ratllesnahe, and Mr. Busby, in 1537, prove that the Neiv Zealanders are in such a low state of civilization as to be incapable of absolute and entire dominion over a tei l itoi y." Are there not then" many giadationsof uncivilized inhabitants," Are all aborigines equally barbarous ? Is there no distinction between the industrious Krooman and the lazy Hottentot,— no distinction between the roaming, earth-grub-bing, senseless tribes of New Holland, and the settled, peaceable, half convetted, and laborious New Zealander ? That there are differences and distinctions is ajuct, — -upon which even the New Zealand Company used to debate and expatiate. Scarcely thiee )ears have rolled away since they proposed to create a native nobility out of the New Zealand Chiefs, whose

low state of civilization it suits their present purposes to proclaim, — since they advertised as an attraction for the investment of capital, the systematic industry of the native population In their speculation— since they stated the generality of accumulation amongst them as evidence of the advance they had made in civilization. Do the Company really suppose that all their past proceedings aie so utterly forgotten that they may I venture with safety in such mis-statements. And with what sense of decency can they, who in 1840-41, were enamoured of New Zealand civilization, now talk so liberally of its barbarism ! If it be so low in the scale of countries as they now describe it, what imposters must they have been lour years ago ! And what recompense can they make to those who were deluded by their once glowing pictures of New Zealand happiness, for the pandemonium to which, by their own acoount they have introduced their victims ! The truth is, the New Zealanders are at the apex of aboriginal civilization. In proof whereof we may quote the following passage from' a despatch addressed by. Lord John Russell, on the 9th Dec, 1840, lo the Governor of New Zealand, and written, be it noted, with the very documents referred to in the above quotation before him : — " Among the many barbarious tribes with which our extended colonial empire brings us into contact with in different parts of the globe, there are none whose claims on the protection of the British Crown rests on stronger ground than those of the New Zealanders. They are not mere wanderers over an extended surface, in search of precarious subsistence j nor tribes of huntsmen, or of herdsmen, but apenple among whom the arts of government have made some projress ; who have established by their own customs a division and appropriation (>f the soil, who are not without some meusures of agricultural skill, and a certain subordination of ranks ; withusages having the character and authority of law. * * Nor should it ever be forgotten that large bodies of the New Zealandeis have been instructed by the zeal of our missionaries in the Christian faith." And if further proof were needed, we have it in the tenacity with which the New Zealanders cling to their lands. But if they are "incapable of absolute ai,d ' entire dominion over a territory," what title* cau England have to the" dominton," she has acquired from them by treaty? The only title w e can have is that they transferred it to us j and if they had none to transfer, what is the value of our present pi etensions ? " 111. Lord Stanley proceeds to bolster up li's support of absolute dominion, over the territory on the part of the New Zealanders, by adducing his Treaty of Waitangi. This Treaty secured to the natives signing or adhering to it, their right of property; but it transferred to the British Crown their rights of domiuion. The landed property of the natives cannot comprehend more than the land actually occupied by them j tathoi remainder, there existed at most but an incomplete right—a right of pre-occupation— a right of sovereignty, not of property. The Treaty of Waitangi did expressly convey this right from the natives. To make out the opposite view Lord Stanley is obliged to have recourse to the English version of the Treaty, and build upon it, " lands, estates, forests and fisheries, Sec." technicalities which, to the New Zealanders, could have no meaning, and which do not occur in the Maori version." This is quibbling, w orthyonly of a pettifogging lawyer. The Treaty of Waitangi is in the English language, and by the grammatical construction of the language in whi,h it is written, must it be interpreted. There may have been a copy translated into such Maori as could be applied to it j but the notion that the Crown is bound by any Maori translation when its effect would circumscribe the intention of the English treaty, is the suggestion of a morality little known ' amongst colonial speculators out of the NewZealand House. What are we to know of the Maori ? And are we to read our own language in a non-natural sense, because the little Maori we do know could not convey the real meaning of the English language? If we did, we should be greater savages than the New Zealanders. And what is the language of the Waitcingi Treaty t — " Her Majesty the Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the chiefs and tribes of New Zealand, and to the respective families and individuals thereof, the full, exclusive, and undisturbed possessiou of their lands, and estates, forests, fisheries, and otlier properties which they may collectively and individually possess, so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession. But the chiefs of the united tribes, and the individual chiefs, yield to Her Majest), the exclusive right of pre-emption over such lands as the proprietors may be disposed to alienate, at such prices as may be agreed upon between the respective proprietors and peisons appointad by her Majesty to treat with them on that behalf." There is no limitation here to land* actually in the cultivation of the chief or tribes; what it " confirmed or guaranteed^" was "the full and exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisberies,and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess." The language of English law can convey no larger riglits than these. To .4 mitthein in any respect is to violate both theil letter and their spirit. To restrict the chiefs t6 lands actually under cultivation at the date of the Treaty in IS4O, is to condemn them to actual extinction, for, as Lord Stanley correctly remarks, the practice of these tribes is,," after cultivating, and of course exhausting a given spot for a series of years, to desert it for another within therecognised property of the tribe. The landed property of the native, does therefore, comprehend more than the laud actually occupied by them j it extends to all such districts as belong to the tribes collectively, ihough it be not occupied or rather cultivated. Of such materials as these, are the " wrongs,'* of the New Zealand Company made up.