THE SEAT OF GOVERNMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume I, Issue 289, 15 October 1864, Page 5

THE SEAT OF GOVERNMENT.

The decision of the three Commissioners appointed by the Tasmanian and Australian Governors to determine to which portion of Cook's Straits the capital of this colony should be removed, has been forwarded to the Xcw Zealand Government, and that decision is ill favour of "Wellington. Few people will be surprised on hearing this, nor can we recognise in it any serious injury to the real capital of the Colony, of the Northern Island, at any rate. It is impossible, so long as the native rebellion remains unsuppressed and until peace be firmly consolidated, that the Government of the country can be carried 011 from any other place than Aucklaud. The very ditiiculty that now stares us in the face in the North renders this all the more imperative. Auckland is tingreat. centre not only of European commerce but. of the Maori territory, having on the one hand the populous tribes of the North —the Vv'aikatos and East and West Coast tribes upon the other. What change there may be in the future that shall prevent Auckland from being robbed of her just im'.eritance, which shall prevent the spoliation o' the hard-earned fortunes of her settlers, unc ?r whose fostering and protecting hand her very rivals have risen, into importance, it is not for «•.. now to enlarge upon. "We do not believe that A ckland will suffer in the end.

Of one tliL>\g we would have Auckland men clearly aware, .that to Sir George Grey they owe the fact that-the proposition of the Assembly was ever entertained at all by the Governors of Australia and Tasmania. We were ourselves informed of this in conversation with one of the Commissioners, the Governor whom he represented having been most unwilling to interfere, and doing so only because the request to do so was made by Sir George Grey as a matter of personal courtesy to himself as the Queen's Representative. Had Sir George Grey written a formal ofiicial circular to the three Governors, there is little doubt but that the resolution of the House of Assembly, carried by a fluke, and forming a precedent which niay continually upset the permanency of any seat of Government, would have been altogether disregarded.