NEW SOUTH WALES.

New Zealander, Volume 3, Issue 173, 26 January 1848, Page 2

NEW SOUTH WALES.

The projectof Karl Grey foy altering the present constitution of the Colony occupies at present the attention of the press and the people, and is denounced in no measured terms by some of our contemporaries. It is propo. sed by the noble Earl, to divide the Colony into two portions ; the Northern portion to retain its name of New South Wnles, the Southern to be called Victoria ; and to establish ar uniform system of liepieseniative Legislation " throughout the whole of the Australian Colonies, including Van Dieman's Land and South and Western Australia, and also a great central authority for enabling the various Legislatures to co-operate with each other in enacting such laws as may be necessary for regulating the interests common to these possessions collectively." No more is {riven thnn an outline of the proposed plan, and evidently with- the purpose of eliciting public opinion, but we gather that it rrsemWes in most particulars, the notable constitution under which we are supposed to exist at this moment in New Zealand, and to the practical working of which we look forward with no little anxiety. A few months will enable our Australian fiiends to judge of the effects of the first actual experiment by the noble E«rl upon ourselves. Can it be, says the Australian, " (as, indeed rumour asserts) that to the notorious Colonization theorist, Edward Gibbon Wakefield and not to Lord Grey, the colony is indebted for the Constitution theory, ■which his Loidship has so dimly shadowed forth in his Despatch of the J 3 1st July? Is it ically to the discoverer of that great secret in Colonization, now familiarly talked of under the name of the •• Wakefield principle," and which according to its enthusiastic advocates, was to have made mankind rich, virtuous and happy for the rest of their time on earth ; — Is it really to this gentleman that, in his new character of Constitution-monger, we owe the precious plan which Lord Grey thinks will " settle the Colonial Governments on a basis on which the Colonists way, under the blessing of Divine. Providence, themselves erect Institutions worthy of the Empire to which they belong, and of the People fiom whom ihcij arc descended ?" We have many reasons for fearing that our surmises are true, and we theiefore hasten to lay before Lord G ley our earnest hopes that by withdrawing his sanction to a most arbitrary aud tyrannical procedure, the Colonists may not be driven to " settle the Colonial Government" on a very different basis from that to which he so complacently refers."