The New Zealand Herald AUCKLAND, MONDAY, SEPT. 19, 1864.

New Zealand Herald, Volume I, Issue 266, 19 September 1864, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald

AUCKLAND, MONDAY, SEPT. 19, 1864.

SIVECTEMUR AGENDO. " Give every man thine car, but few thy voice: Tako each man's ccnHure, but reserve thy judgment. This abovo all, —To thine ownso\t ho true; Atid it must follow, ns the night the rtuy, Thou canst not then ho false to any num."

The true relationship existing between the Mother Country and her Colonics represents a divided, but not an irreconcileablc interest. Distinctions in detail may be consistent with mutual co-operation toward the promotion of an unanimous and harmonious result.

It may not be directly to the interest of Great Britain to expend any portion of her revenue in the prosecution of New Zealand wars, any more than it is tlio interest of the colonists to have their farms and homesteads and lives sacrificed to Maori lawlessness and outrage, and the peaceful prosecution of lawful industry throughout the Colony checked and interrupted by the prevalence of protracted and habitual insecurity ; but it is the interest of each party alike to cooperate I'or the common object of suppressing violence, and by united action contributing to the future peace and good government of the country. The British people, as well as the inhabitants of New Zealand, have an interest in the prosperity of the Colony morally, socially, commercially, and politically. There may or may not be degrees of interest in the details and particulars of which the whole is made up, but the ad justment of the account between the parties, could candour and impartiality be depended 011, would not, we believe, show a heavy balance on either side.

Unfortunately, British statesmen of late have exhibited little candour in the matter of New Zealand ail airs. Tho Duke of Newcastle, indeed, 011 a late occasion, did himself the very great credit of manifesting a more honourable spirit when lie plainly acknowledged the total incompetency of the Homo Government to manage the affairs of this country. Such plainness of speech, however, will more frequently be met with in the breach ' than in the observance, in official circles at Downing-strcet. The unerring wisdom of the Colonial office, and the very questionable right of the colonists to exercise direct control over matters in which they themselves chiefly arc interested, is the more usual strain in which official communications with the Colonv are couched.

AVe are by no means indisposed to acknowledge and even magnify our obligations, but wo arc compelled to observe that there has been too often of late a disposition manifested by the home authorities to place the account between us and themselves, in the matter of obligation, entirely 011 one side.

This country, we admit, has occasioned Great Britain much anxiety and expense. But wherefore? Chiefly, if not wholly, through her ungenerous and most unfounded distrust of the colonists. M\e has from the first insisted upon attempting that which in the nature of things she could not reasonably hope to perform efficiently— the joint government of the European and Native people. To rule a Native race, such as the New Zealanders, distinct from Europeans, at a distance of .10,000 miles, where all information must necessarily come to her through interested officials having a slake in the perpetuation of a Native system of exclusive rights and privileges, would in itself be a hopeless task, ending only as it must ever do in the establishment of a more dangerous because a less manageable barbarism. But to rule such a people in con junct ion with English colonization, under such circumstances and through such a system as that represented by the action of"the Colonial Otlice at home, and the Native Ollice in the Colony, was but to exhibit a degree of political Quixotism for which, had we not actually witnessed il, we would not have been forward to give British statesmen credit so late down as the nineteenth century. Yet it is more than questionable whether the thrice repeated failure of this perfectly hopeless enterprise will even now suflice to discourage a repetition of this miserable experimenting on the art of government and the late of races.

Tlio magnates of Downing-street with their accustomed immovability when once they have launched upon a course of action, even j'ef, we believe, notwithstanding the expense to which they have put the British tax-payer, and the loss and suffering they have -.inflicted upon the colonists, are well enough disposed to enter once more upon the old scheme. Indeed any doubt we might be disposed to entertain on this point is set at rest by the tenor of the dispatches last received in the Colony. A\ r e learn from this source, as previously noticed by us, that it is coolly proposed to the colonists t hat they shall again furnish the Native Ollice with

funds as heretofore, to the amount of £50,000 per annum, to be expended by the Governor in the usual way upon the Native people.

We ate mistaken ill our estimate of the value ot jmblic opinion in the Colony, if this audacious and, under all the cireumstances, most insolent proposal docs not call forth in reply, one unanimous, indignant, negative from one end of Now Zealand to the other.

jN o ! We will never again submit to the " sugar and Hour" system and corruption ol kSir George Grey and the Native Office in this country. Our money will never again be employed before our very face in alienating the Maori people from ourselves, and rendering them, as heretofore, independent ot hhtropean laws and modes ot lile. No consideration, we are persuaded, will again tempt us to imperil the Colony in its peace and prospects, by permitting one shilling of our money 1o be spent upon the IN alive race, save only* what shall be expended on it under our own immediate discretion, and in accordance with our own views and judgment, and for their benelit, not for their ruin. _\ol futile oiler of five regiments in the count rv will we again consent to deliver mirseivi's over, as on former occasions, bound hand and foot to be caterers of bribery and the scape goats and victims of Maori lawlessness and corruption. To ask us again to occupy such a position after all we have endured and sacrificed, after 1 he repeated failures of Governor Grey, so clearly foretold by the colonists, and so sadly realized by subsequent bitter experience, is monstrous and intolerable. Great IJritain will not attempt to force anything so unjust and unpalatable

upon ns, and if she docs the Colony knows liow to resist to the utmost by every means legally open to it. AVe "have no ambition to gratify in wishing to hold Native matters in our own hands. Tho business of ruling tho Maori is an unenviable one, whoever may be charged with its performance, but as the chief interest at stake pertains to the Colony, as the knowledge and ability to perform the duties are pre-eminently colonial, and .finally,astho funds .arc to be drawn exclusively from colonial sources the colony dccidcdly is entitled to occupy the first place ill the conduct of Native affairs according to its own views and judgment. Bor Great Britain to assume a prerogative in this matter is, wc believe, as unconstitutional as it is unwise. To attempt this on the ground of superior judgment, *is preposterous vanity : to affect it under assumption of purer motives or more disinterested kindness to the Native race, is simply to display an amount of Pharisaism which wc do not envy, and have no desire to imitate.

Of this we are morally certain, that in the hands of tho colonists the Native people would have risen in the scale of civilization, which under the misrule of the Colonial Office, as heretofore conducted, was a thing next; to impossible.

The Colonial Government has never stood on tho question of expense in regard to the practical administration of Native matters ; it objects only to the wasteful, purposeless, and mischievous expenditure of its own funds by parties in no way responsible to it. It is far more the interest of the Colony than it is of Great Britain to rule the Maori people wisely and well, to promote peace and good order in the Colony, and to conciliate natural prejudices between the races (far from being deep on cither side) by the adoption of timely and judicious means.

The mother country lias peimittcd lierself so to become blinded by prejudice against the colonists that she seems incapable of viewing this matter in its true light. There seems a wilful persistants on tho part of some of her leading men to divide Colonial and Imperial interests, and to make them stand out in irreconcileable hostility to each other. This is a fatal .and ruinous mistake, and which, if persevered in, will yet prove fruitful of trouble to all parties. AVe see it at work in the instance of the Transportation question to Australia. AVe have a remarkable example of its shortsighted selfishness in the case of the New Zealand Loan. The object of the Colon}' in regard to that matter seems to be entirely misunderstood, and the reciprocity of interest nt stake between Great Britain and ourselves to be unacknowledged, if not unperceived. A\ r e have looked in vain, bqth in "tho published corrcspondcncc between the ministerial agent at home, and the officials with whom lie held intercourse, and in the numerous speeches reported to have fallen from time to time from the lips of members of the British Government, for the slightest recognition of our claims, even for countenance, in the matter of tho ad justment of the affairs of the country. All that wc can learn is this—that the able plan of tho Colonial Government for the settlement, both present and prospective, of Native troubles in New Zealand, would not be disallowed, but no helping hand would be volunteered to further our object, though that object was as much to promote Imperial as Colonial interests, — one of its chief aims being the relief of Great Britain, for tiie future, from endless expense on account of tho Colonv.

The colonial policy required that a loan of three millions should Le raised upon security of its revenue asking only for the Imperial guarantee, which with such a security could scarcely have involved an appreciable risk to the Mother Country. \et this was denied, apparently with complete nonchalance. No question even appears to have been asked by our representative as to whether Great Britain had any better plan to propose, which under the circumstances, we think he was reasonably entitled to do. Bather he seems to have allowed himself to be impressed into the belief (for we do not think it possible he could have been argued into it), that the Colony only had any interest, in tins matter, and that, it was perfectly natural and just that Great Britain should refuse to acknowledge any responsibility in the settlement of her own wars.

The undisguised selfishness of the Colonial Ollice so far was only surpassed by anything we have heard of since or before, when subsequently it talked ever our agent to believe in the advisability of pledging the entire colonial revenue for one-third the amount required, at the same time appropriating to itself a large proportion of the inadequate sum thus raised in liquidation of a liability from the Colony not yet fallen due.

This is how Great Britain appears to estimate her interest in the welfare of her Colonies. This is how she meets tlie advances of a young community like New Zealand, which for years lias suffered from the gross mismanagement of the Colonial Ollice, when we come forward with liberal hand and enlightened views to relieve her of a burden which her own misgovernment had threatened to render permanent. Down-ing-street, it appears, has no plan of her own to propose, and no improvement oil ours to suggest. I t cannot initiate a mesure for itself, and it will not co-operate with us in carrying out. ours. This we conceive, to be a fair illustration of the dog-in-the-manger policy. And whom have we to thank for this misunderstanding which has sprung up on the part of the Mother Country towards this Colony? A miserable clique within ourselves of disappointed politicians—PakehaM.aoris in high places having an eye to the lease of large tracts of Maori lands, as sheepruns- -and the representations of a Governor whoso instincts and feelings are Maori rather than European, who looks upon the European settlers as his subjects—the Maoris as his children. These are the originators and fosterers of the jealousy and suspicions of 1 ho llomo Government towards us.

The home authorities apparently would rather fall back upon their old ways of .Native bribery to bolster up rebellion, than geneiv.isiy sustain the colonists in their open straightforward policy. They evidently prefer the distribution of colonial funds among the Maories, at the hands of her obsequious Imperial Agents in ilie Colony, with the chances even of an occasional war at the cost of the home tax-payer, to the adoption in a candid enlightened spirit; of a reined}' in regard to which, the whole course of their acts and speeches hitherto, go clearly to

prove, has? its chief objection in their ej r csin the fact that it proceeds from tlie colonists and not from themselves.