THE CONFISCATED LANDS OF THE WAIKATO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume II, Issue 355, 31 December 1864, Page 6

THE CONFISCATED LANDS OF THE WAIKATO.

® N .'' the most important announcements I which it has yet. fallen to our lot to notify to the public ot this province is contained in the following intelligence, the authenticity of which our readers may fully rely upon. The A Veld Ministry have made a proposal to the Superintendent of Auckland to hand over to the province the whole of the confiscated lands of the \\ aikato, provided the latter will undertake the duty of colonising it. We learn also that the Superintendent has expressed his willingness to assume the duty, and in doing so . ave ' wo feel assured, the heartv support of the Council and of the people of Auckland, -the i rovmcial Council meets to-day, and we may therefore expect to hear more of the proposal. It is one which opens up for this province a great and glorious future—which will maintain us m that proud pre-eminent portion among the provinces of Now Zealand wn cli we -'.u\e always hckl and which, while it advances

the interest of the European settlers, will not tho Jess advance those of a Tacc with whom the people of Auckland have always maintained kindly relations, who in the old times have been our mainstay and our source of prosperity, and who may, we trust, again, when peaceful avocations shall alone engage the people of this island, once more contribute largely their share to the general advancement.

lhe proposal is a large and a comprehensive one for our Provincial Legislature to grapple with, but it is not beyond their grasp. The diiliculties are chiefly of a financial nature, but then if the confiscation is of such a nature as the Colony has a right to expect that it should be, that difficulty at once vanishes. The sale of the township of jNs*aruawnhia has shown us that while the responsibility of settling the waste lands of the Waikato is large, the means for doing so, arising from the sale of those lands, is large also. After we have made all allowances lor keeping faith with the Waikato regiments, and with those emigrants who have already entered into arrangements with the emigration agents at home, there will remain some hundreds of thousands of acres of country land and sites suitable for inland and sea-port towns. It is. a task worthy of the best energies of our Council—it is the Hood tide of prosperity for this Province, which, taken at its turn will lead to f'oHUhe —it is a work to which other 1 ess important matter may well defer—it is the very making of the Province of Auckland. We trust that in so important a matter as this, there will be unanimity of action on the part of our Provincial men. The gain to (ho Province is larger than at first sight. As matters uro now, the General Government not only can use the confiscated land of the Waikato lor purposes ot settlement and colonisation, but can sell such portions its they chose, in order to recoup the expenditure of the colony as a whole. With matters changed, as the General Government now propose, the Province of Auckland will, as it ought to do, alone profit by the sale ol its own lands. The resold portions of the confiscated rebel laud in this Province will become provincial revenue.

Tin: rcuio va! of the Executive from Auckland the absence at "Wangnnui of Lieut.-General Sir Duncan Cameron with the major portion of the troops, and the departure of the Governor lor Duncdin, a l , one and the same time, cannot but be regarded as most disastrous to the peace oi this portion of the Jvorthern Island at a moment when it is inowii to all that a large section of the 2\'gapuhis ure only wailing a tuki, or cause ol war. as an excuse for commencing hostilities against us.

'J he conduct of the " Southern Cabal," during the late Session of the Assembly, furnishes, perhaps, one of the most, remarkable instances of high-handed audacity, in itsopen and unblushing perpetration of an act of political dishonesty, to be found 011 record in the anii:iis of colonial legislation. But not 011'y arc dishonesty and audacity conspicuous in the organised conspiracy which, in this instance.wss banded together for the express purpose of taking advantage of the general contip'on i.< M'/cr.iiidisc themselves at the expense ot " • hi la of 01 hi wl so Zo f.<>f tic in. ..... in i'in- immediate institution of a dispassionate enquiry into the working of the plans devised and elaborated under their special sanction last yeah for the prosecution of the war and the seitlemriit of the troubles which afflict the country. A\ r e say advisedly this was the reasonable expectation of every honest man in New Zealand. Hut instead of this what have we witnessed. u The Assembly had not accomplished a single sitting before if. became evident that a deep laid conspiracy had been formed by the Southern members, comprising among themselves some two-thirds of

the House, with the intent of ignoring nil enquiry whatever into the state of the conn try. 'I hey found affairs so circumstanced that they could easily take advantage of the MUlation, and carry into effect certain provincial designs for the glorification and behoof of sundry obscure localities iii which particular members of the cabal were personally and pecuniarily interested. The temptation was too strong to be resisted. A systematic scheme of spoliation was thus matured against Auckland, the seat of Government since the foundation of the colon}-, by which its prosperity whs to be arrested and its wealth 011 and distributed among a horde of need - semi-insolvent provincial vestry boards, retaining, we suppose, among them just enough

honour and honesty to permit.a tolerably equitable distribution of the spoils of their victim, ihe first step taken bj'these political tricksters has been to form n purely Southern Ministry, deliberately excluding from its circle the Northern members of the Assembly. This bold measure on the part of the South, was followed up by the immediate demand for the removal of the central Government to Wellington, most inconveniently distant, from the disturbed dist riefs, entirely awav from the great mass of the Maori population" imd itself the very eye and crater ol the periodical volcanic movements for years active in Cook's Straits. Such a proceeding under any circumstances, looking at the locality chosen, could he likened only to sending London to Coventry ; was worthy onlv of the men with whom it originated, and whose ridiculous ambition it was designed to satisfy. Put to sit tempt an act of this kind while war was still pending, while the rebels were every where triumphant in the disaffected districts, when [ fresh trouble threatened .in the North—at such a time to hawk about the Government of the country, making it a party question in the Legislature to which everything else should give way—was, we believe, to display a recklessness of the public interest, and a wanton disrogird of public safety, disgraceful and indecent in the last degree. We say it, and uesavit advisedly, that the removal of the Executive from Auckland may be followed by bloodshed and massacre in the .North. We 'say, that the danger to be apprehended in the Northern districts is not directly from the escape;! Wnikato prisoners so much as from a large section of the -iN'gapuhis who are anxiously looking for war, and who would fain provoke the settlers or the Government into taking the initiative, but who nevertheless are determined that war it shall be. The removal of (he Executive to Wellington, or the departure of too large a proportion ot'the troops to the South may he the signal for the work of dest ruction to commence. The settlers of (he North have been more than once warned by us. We again warn them. They have yet time themselves to organise the means of providing against the results of sudden outburst—massacre and indiscriminate slaughter of men. women, and children.

No more extraordinary spectacle, perhaps, was ever witnessed than the House of Assembly presented in this memorable session —a scene " truly horrifying," as certain Southern gentlemen themselves expressed it; who, to their credit, stood aloof, and refused to join in the dishonorable exhibition of selfishness there displayed—where former pledges were disregarded—where political consistency was openly sacrificed—where even the most flagrant int-orforenco with and negation of tlieir own deliberate sanctions of twelve months ago w ere meanly winked at, and wickedly condoned in pursuance of the one deliberate purpose of

s acrificangTlio public interests of the conn toy totlie private ends of a band of unprincipled political adventurers, and where the safety and ' lives of the settlers of the Northern Provinces were as nolliing when weighed in the balance against the aggrandisement of Middle Itland Provinces, or the gratification of the vanity of Wellington, and the squandering of Colonial moneys on public; works in that city of precipices and earthquakes. We have heretofore endeavoured to build up the character of our legislators as a body, and it is still our desire to do this, believing them to be, in point of ability and education, second to none in these colonies, and greatly in advance of most; but we regi-et to say, that even among these, men have been found with political principles loose enough to permit them to give way in an hour ot' temptation, insomuch that neither public reputation nor private virtue have been sulheientto withstand the attractions which ill-gotton power ancl local aggrandizement for tho raomciit flaunted before their eyes. That they will repent of what iliey have done—that the prime movers in this conspiracy to rob and despoil the chief of the confederated provinces of this colony, with the unworthy view of propping j up the declining prosperity of other localities, and conferring an importance for which nature I and eireiwjistances never designed them on other districts, are already shrinking from the consequences of their late disgraceful proceedings, there arc abundant indications in evidence to prove. But this will not save them now from the scorn and contempt of all honest men. As far as their public reputation is concerned, their doom is irreparable. Even among themselves, so undisguised lias been the selfishness of their conduct, so broadly repugnant to all honourable sentiment hare been the motives by which they have been confessedly actuated, that mutual confidence is hopelessly destroyed; selfrespect is no longer possible among such men, and 110 doubt the time is not far distant when a general breaking up of the unrighteous compact of the Southern cabal, though it may come too late to save the country from many evils tlic fruit ot its formation, will reveal the full hideousness of the principles it avowed and the depth of the in which it had its rise. Kot we believe that there is anything to reveal, that we are not already fully acquainted with. There is not an individual who lias made himself a party to this iniquitous league to rob a neighbour of his coveted inheritance — not one of those who have consented to sacrifice character and consistency and to desert the interest of tlieir country in the Crisis of its fate,, on whose head we could not lay our (ingef, and tell exactly the nature and extent of the mess of pottage for J which the fair birth right of honour and a pat riot's | un . < '. | l;ls hcen blindly offered up 011 the altar of a pitiful ambition.

It will be our business to watch narrowly tlic working out of tins most mischievous combinatiou. 'Dint it «■ ill have a swift career of political crimp, is iio more than we may reasonably expect. That in good time it will meet with tlie jmst retribution due to it, it is but commonplace morality to believe; but in the meantime, that the scourge of misgovernnient, insurrection, and war it threatens to precipitate upon the ""Tony may be as shortlived as possible, it will our duty to bear our light steadily oh all its n-enients. to track it through all 'its haunts, d so lar as in us lies to endeatour to guard the war)' and secure, against the treachery it connplates, aud the wrongs against the best .crests of the country it aims to accomplish. ■at Sir George Grev will sanction tlic removal the Lxccutive irom Auckland when lie tows, as know he must, that its departure ay be the signal for bloodshed and murder, e will not believe until wo realh r see tlie act r .illy consummated. He at least can have no ink-rest in pushing 011 the ruin of the North. .Ho at least, as far as tlie Home Government is concerned, has character to lose. He knows the nature of the volcano on which wc all are in t his island treading, and he will nol. we think, peril his o J .vli reputation t.o do the bidding of a Southern Junta.—December 22.