The New Zealand Herald AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1864. THE MINISTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume IV, Issue 277, 1 October 1864, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald

AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1864. THE MINISTRY.

BPECTEStUR AGENDO. M Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Tako each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. This nboYc all, —To thine ownsolf bo true; And it must follow, as the night tho day, Thou canst not tlion bo fates to any man."

As we had anticipated the time when the | AVliitaker Ministry could no longer with any feeling of self-respect continuo in office has arrived. Yesterday morning their resignation was sent in to His Excellency, though as yet, we understand, it has not been accepted. There are some who think that Ministers shouldhave retained office until the meeting of the General Assembly, and doubtless they would have done so had they seen any possibility of working with his Excellency for the benefit of the Colony. Such, however, seems not to have been the case. They would have occupied the position of actual advisers to the Governor, but have been so only in name. They would have been placed in the position of appearing to give consent to a line of policy carried out by Sir George Grey under the new powers conferred on himby the Imperial despatches, which was totally at variance with the will of the Assembly, I They took office to carry out a certain defined and clearly laid down policy of that body, a policy to which his Excellency then gav his unqualified assent, —the confiscation of the Native lands for purposes of military settlement and the thorough disarmament of the rebellious Natives.

Por a time, ere Sir George Grey altered these opinions, which will be found clearlyexpressed in his despatches to the Imperial Government, Governor and Ministry worked harmoniously together. Now, however that he changes his views upon these cardinal points of the colonial policy, the Ministry have no alternative but to refuse to betray the confidence reposed in them by the Assembly, and to decline participation even by a tacit consent, in the passing of measures entirely opposed to its expressed will.

As \vc liave said before, wc believe tlin.t as yet tlie resignation lias not been accepted, and we trust that i'or tlie sake of the Colony there will be no change until the Assembly shall have been called together. There would be few men bold enough, we should think, to enter on office to carry out any policy that differed from that which guided the action of the Whitaker Ministry. One thing they could not but know, that in acting in opposition to that policy they would be Hying in tho face of the Assembly and of the people of New Zealand.

There is but one course of honourable action either for Sir George Grey, or for any set of men whom he may call npon to succeed that which we suppose we may even still call the present Ministry, and that is, at once to call together the Assembly, and figlit the battle out with the Colony in an open and straightforward manner. To do otherwise —to take advantage of the interim between the present time, and the meeting of the Assembly in the autumn, so as to carry out a line of action opposed to the will of the people, the voice of the Colonial Parliament, the prosperity of the Colony, and the establishment of peace on a sure and solid foundation, is to incur a responsibility that we think Sir George Grey even will slirink from, when he reflects what may be the alter Considerations of tlie Imperial Government, when the whole facts of the case and the certain failure of his Utopian schemes come to be thoroughly known and appreciated, ne well at Homo, as here,

In another column will be found, a from a correspondent, wondering thati we should oppose tho granting of P nze ,. moU fi ey to the British troops from the sale ot con -- cated lands, and urgmg the light of the army to receive such emolument.

AVo opposed the demand of the troops which, has been made through the colonels of the various regiments on General Cameron, upon two grounds. The one because the application for pri/.o money has been made by Her Majesty's soldiers as a demand, •while to make such demand they have no legal title whatever; the other, _ that the land likely to be taken is not sufficient even for purposes of military settlement. The present war, though one which the colonists had no hand in bringing about, which should be purely an Imperial matter, has occasioned the Colony a very heavy expenditure. It will leave her with her whole surplus revenue mortgaged for years to come, for the repayment of expenses in which she has been involved by the neglect and the bad faith of her Imperial step-mother, Britain, towards the very Natives whom she took under her special care. Tiie war ;is England's own, and if the expenses of the war were wholly paid by her, which is not the ease, we should even then have nothing to thank her for, if in suppressing the Maori insurrection she conquered for us certain lands. Those lands will have to be appropriated by us to purposes of military settlement, to prevent the future aggressions which England herself, by her action, has rendered us liable to. But we deny in loio that any territory which may be conquered and handed over to us has been " conquered by an army paid, " clothed, and fed by Great Britain.'' Are our four AVaikato Regiments, who, from the moment of their formation, have been kept on active service, nothing ? Are the services of our Militiamen and Volunteers, our Bo rest Rangers and Defence Borce, nothing ? AVerc the services of our steam river lleet upon the AVaikato. tho AVaipa, and the liorotiu, of our steam transports running 011 tho AVest and Bast coasts for the conveyance of troops and stores, to bo counted as nothing V It is just indeed because Britain lias thrown a heavy proportion of her war on our shoulders that we, the colonists of New Zealand, are determined to resist the unconstitutional demands which' she is making upon us —that we throw all feelings of affection, kindred race, and home recollections to tho wind, and meet her, in our dealings, as we would meet a hard, covetous, not over-superfluous bargainer, whose crecd was money-making, whose only object cent, per cent. To Britain we owe nothing, as regards this w;u —literally nothing; and with us soon, as in America, once trampled on and used as we are now used, the term " Britisher" will becoinc a name of reproach aud dislike.

Nor are tlio remaining arguments of our correspondent of any weight. It is not true that the Colony has been saved many thousands of pounds by obtaining lands by conquest which it would otherwise have had at some day to, havo purchased. Wo should have paid dearly enough for every acre so conquered, even if wc had obtained the whole of the lands over which the army and colonial forces have marched —far more than than their cost of purchase from the Natives would have amounted to. But what are the facts of the case ? What lands have been, or what lands are likely to be confiscated ? How can we give to the military that which we have not ? At the door of the Governor Sir George Grey, not at that of the Colonial Government, must lie the blame that to the soldiers of General Cameron the Colony is unable to present a grateful acknowledgement of their services in the substantial award of bounty derived from the sale of confiscated lands. Wc cannot recoup even a portion of our war debt from the sale of them. We cannot, it would seem, obtain sufficient even to servo the purpose of military settlement, so that when the troops are withdrawn our wives and children may be protected from the tomahawk and murderous gnn, our homesteads from lire, nnd our fields from devastation. Willingly would the Colonists of New Zealand give an a gratuity a portion of this spoil (as our military friends rather facetiously term it, when every shilling's worth of spoil costs us twenty to obtain it), if 1 lie Imperial Government and the Governor did not step in and take from them the means of doing so. The people of Auckland have ever been liberal and considerate in their dealings, as men to men. and brothers in arms to brothers in arms, with the military serving amongst them. We need not, and will not, point at particular instances, but they are many and substantial onoi. Nor need our correspondent wonder that we, who have ever been the firm friend of the soldier, should not advocate his cause in this respect. How can wc ? Wc have neither funds nor lands to give him. Sir George Grey has taken care of that. The very work the soldier has done will be scattered to the winds if Sir George Grey, offering terms of peace to all rebels and murderers on the simple condition that they take the oath of allegiance to the Queen, allowing them condonation for all past ofl'ences, and to retain the arms now in their hands, and the undisturbed possession of their land. Here goes the ground of the soldiers' claim at once, even supposing that in law such claim would be valid, and this we assert is not the'case. There is no precedent in Luv or history for such a claim. It is as British subjects only that we can confiscate their lands at all— were they an independent people wc should have no legal right to do so. Now we have one instance on record where British troops conquered British rebels, and where the lands of such rebels were confiscated, and of course to the Crown, in 17-Jo the Duke of Cumberland's army put down a rebellion in Great Britain, and the estates of rebel leaders were confiscated, but did tho soldiers of i the Duke's army lay claim to prize money for tho valneof these estates? Certainly not. Was prize-money claimed for the British troops for the re-taken land when they drove the French out of Portugal and Spain, or was ever suc.ii a demand made in the history of the world ? Virgil wrote his Georgics, agricultural poems, for the benefit of the soldiers of the Roman Empire who were ietllp.il 011 conquered lands, and what Home did, we too would, as we before stated, only too willingly do give a portion of l;ind, when Sir George Grey is recalled, and a new Governor reigns in his stead, and constitutional government is restored in New Zealand, to every soldier who can obtain his discharge and will remain and

settle in the Province in -which the l given is situate. "With regard to the £5 per head paid for the troops by the Colony, our correspondent is in error. This sum of £80,000 forms a portion of the money which our kind but usurious mother ■\voulcl keep back as a " consideration" for backing our " little hill-" Had even England waived this claim le debt of gratitude would have been dffiug from the Colony to her, not from the Colony to the troops. There is no generosity exhibited by England in this matter, unless while at the same time that she waives our debt she gives the money over to the purpose for which it was due. It is to her still that the soldier must look. It is his money which she returns.