THE New Zealand Herald. STECTEMUR AGENDO. MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1876.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIII, Issue 4668, 30 October 1876, Page 2

THE New Zealand Herald. STECTEMUR AGENDO. MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1876.

Thx proceedings ; oi§ .the Assembly on; Friday : nightj Saturday, and Satur-, day night-will -be-found recorded; elsewhere, and comprise a great; deal of business. In reference to the; San Francisco service, an addition to! Mr. Stevena's resolutions was carried on! the motion of Mri l Sheehan, which' wb. should 'think would have the effect'of; settling the matter, and bringing the: ■boats- 'on , ' to iv ATickland ;' the"; tors are to be allowed to ' difl-j continue the. coast service on further' reducing the subsidy by £4000 , (in ad-j _didon-to £7500)— the colonies to provide; for -that; service. In this.' arrangement' the chief difficulty will, we should think,; be. with the Government of New South .Wales. It is worth noting that the , chief enemies of Auckland in this matter of the mail service, have been the members from Canterbury. In going, over, the Bsti-| matea the flbuae struck' off the £2750' extra allowance to' "Sir'Julinß'V6gel' T on accoanfcof his trip toiEnrOpe. If we remember rightly, Major Atkinson; stated in the Bouse that the £2750 had not been—paid—to - Sir Julius. If so, the .chances'We that we , shall:continue to owe, which we shall be very happy to do. Whether Sir Julius has actually advanced the money from his own private resources, we. do not know. The fact of the House having refused to vote the money is very significant. Of course, if the money has been paid,- as,is not unlikely, no amount of striking out will bring' it back. It was-announced that during the recess the Native Minister and the Minister for Public Works would ' retire, and that Mr. JOrmond would supoeed to one of the offices, no doubt that of Native Minister. We do not think the change will be an improvement. Probably an attempt will be made to induce Mr. Donald Reid to join the Government as Minister ofJßublic Works. - We are glad to see that, notwithstanding the opposition of the Government, £OOOOU Was appropriated for the erection of school buudnigsL If the sum. is distributed ac- . cording to the needs of the different districts, then Auckland will come in for a large share. The House have agreed to a .resolution enabling the Government to hand over to the County of Thames the mortgages held on the Pumping Association's plant, but it is not stated what has been done with the guarantee given by the province of Auckland. The House will meet to-day, and unless something unexpected occurs, the prorogation will probably take place on Tuesday.

Thb instructions of the Secretary of State to the Governor of Fiji have just been published in a Parliamentary blue-book. They are dated March 4, 1875, and were only known to the outside world in Fiji some eighteen months after. They are instructive as showing the difficult position of a governor at the head of a Crown colony, and the collision into which he may be brought with the' colonists by instructions that he has no choice but to obey, while bound at the same time not to let them be known. Numerous cases of this kind are on record in New Zealand history, and no one suffered more than Sir George Grey in this respect. We are too apt to forget that, in the end, Sir George sacrificed brilliant prospects of official promotion both in New Zealand and at the Cape, through refusing to be boundby instructions when he considered them, at variance with the interests of the colony over which he presided. This is a sacrifice which it is, nevertheless, unreasonable to expect from governors as a rule, and though, from all we hear, Sir Arthur Gordon would be very likely to follow the same course if the necessity should, arise, there is much to be thankful for when a colony can escape from the tutelage of an authority sixteen thousand; miles away, and unable to form an ac-' curate judgment on the matters before it.

- The first point on which Lord Carnarvon touches, is the allowance by way oi ; pension which Cakobau, with his wife Yadi Lydia, and his daughter Adi Kuila -were led to expect as one of the results of the cession of the Islands. Cakobau was to get £1,500 a-year during life. His wife was to get a certain sum in case of his death, and Adi Kuila was to have £100 a-year. Lord Carnarvon says, if Cakobau has been distinctly given to understand that so large a pension is likely to be allowed in his case, and expects to receive that amount, it will probably be/ desirable not to reduce it. But, he addaJ "the sum appears to me to be larger) than is,-, in some, respects, consistent with the' position' which the'late-King must hereafter occupy." He considers it ob-j jectionable to provide Cakobau .with the means of maintaining " any royal Court or rejinuej.and, that the be taught as early as possible that,', while and protected from, wantj hie is: now , a individual. ' They ,^l^^d,,.abp,,^be^ J topgh<i,;'tjiaji!\'iir|ia'tever power and prestige' of royalty may";have been,,attributed'to Kim,-have'.passed to the Queen of England, y His Excellency ie therefore requested to consider very carefully whether, without any breach of faith, the pension may be fixed at a lower sum, and to see also that it is properly expended "both for Cakobau's own-bene-fit and in a manner not injurious to the

interests of tho Government." Mad Lc*d rchiß-yraaßnDaraaim open air, w^9ig^e ; yjßnejgtedb|iim and his ancentora fer g<m«fiiitiftnri w*"* " •*»"'«&- tion unknown to the loyalty of more civilised nations, and who would feel honoured by serving him and contributing to bis support, ha could not have penned this despatch, nor have contemplated the possibility of a pension being necessary orierely: toll proVide/MmO andl his Starigfe "with such necessaries as may h»> suitable to hie condition." Those necessaries and those, comforts, so far as a Fijian Chief is concerned, are very few. At the,, .same time Cakobau ; a c passion for a small yacht, and numerous tribal claims upon.him,;; to provide for, and though £1,500 a-yerx may seem a , large 'pension',"'it is not too much understand..Cakobau has not retairied' any 'considerable landed! estate for himself or family. At all events j the publication' of •such : instructions will do no good when they reach native ears. To carrjr them out a.Governor in a very*false-position, I ''anil entail upon him much personal odium, while onlyobeying instructions which he could not even make public at the time. Still more markedly is this seen in the refusal to ', recognifle;the,liabilitiee of rtfae ol&Govem-. ment of the colony while taking over the j assets that these liabilities represented. In the matter of ? Tand'-'titles the instructions are just and liberal. The Governor; is to "all contractshoneajly-en- ' tered into before tHe'Cessioh," which is al that any Fijian settler could desire. At; the same time, no - proper provision is j made to employ the requisite staff to, make the investigation, and the loss and, misery caused "to "the early 'settlers by' dolay, must, be incalculable. .They; have j toiled and sown biit others must reap, j , That, considerable - bitternes4,.pf , feeling: will be roused by this wamb \p£ J tioii is' apparent. ' That Lord Carnarvon; -should'-have- small sympathy with -these settlers is, however, easily understood,: for he tells His Excellency very plainly i that any difficulty-with the natives "is, | in fact, judging from, experience in other i •oojonies; to be looked for as much in. the ; miflconduct of Europeans or i their' employment, as' in' the aggressive' disposition of the tribes with' which; friendly relations, have t not been com-, pletely established." j It is very wonderful, when reading these instructions, to reflect on the ad-: vance of English colonisation in, .spite; of along bourse of official treatment of which they are but a type. Their tone is one of suspicion towards the colonists themselves, and they are well calculated to prejudice any -Governor in his dealings with them. Wβ were not without experience of this in the early days of New Zealand, and Fijian settlers must evidently go through the same furnace. - It will be said that this is one of the necessary consequences of the annexation for which they cried, but this would be only •half'the truth'. The Qther half is 'the ini terference of English men-of-war in their affairs—ran interference that was fatal to good government — that reduced the settlers to a position of abject dependence on the Native Government—and that effectually prevented them relieving themselves -of that dependence, as they would have been easily able, to do.,- If Fiji is to prosper as quickly and as greatly as it ought, a .very different spirit must be exhibited: by. the Colonial Office in the future, and ■ the \ settlers must be treated with a kindly.sympathy and; an earnest desire to. foster their welfare/ They have gone through great -trials and endured great hardships. They have a splendid country and great "potentialities" of prosperity before them.. In'the past these have been largely neutralised by. the; injudicious interference ■ of men -of - war, which made the Native Government virtually a despotism and deprived the colonists of all hope of' successfully resisting it. In the future there will not be this difficulty to overcome, but they may have one as fatal, if a want of sympathy paralyse the exertions that ought to be made to put the finances .and credit of the colony and the land titles of its settlers on a secure basis. At present the expenditure is double the revenue,' and the absence of land titles precludes any hope of improvement. The disgrace of a disastrous failure will aoon overshadow the "only colony" of the Pacific—the convict colony*"of Western Australia excepted —if these matters be not looked to sharply and settled thoroughly. It is a happy thing for Fiji that she had as her first Governor one so independent and so able as Sir Arthur Gordon. He has done a great service in permanently ending the native question and in settling the details of administration. He will do another service, perhaps greater, if the representations he has doubtless made enable the Colonial Office to take a sounder view of the position, and cause) it to leave his successors more freedom of action in the settlement of affairs that are intimately connected with the welfare and progress of the colony. But if all matters of importance are, after the old Crown colony syetem, to be referred to a distant and —we may say without fear of being misunderstood— an ignorant authority in; London, the future of Fiji will' have no agreeable task, and Mie settlers will have difficulties to overco ne that must seriously impede the progress on which they had a right to rely.

The people of Tauranga, after having been bamboozled by the Native Office for ten or twelve years, have at last determined that they will be humbugged no longer, and that the Government must do something, or they will know the reason why. The Tauranga grievances may be divided into two sets, and we hope that now the residents have made an excellent commencement, they will insist upon having both departments attended to and settled. To explain precisely the position of the Tauranga land question would: occupy more space than we have to spare. After •Tβ'Ranga, when the Taurauga natives made peace, they ceded their lands to the Government. They were told that 50,000 acres would be taken, but they said thoy, knew nothing about how much that was, and asked the Government to fix certain boundaries. This was done, but after a long time, when the land was surveyed, it was found that it did not amount to 60,000 acres, or, anything like it, and another piece was taken. Some natives disputed our right to do} this, and we blundered intoa costly war. Then, certain natives who had claims within thej block, .and who had not been in rebellion,! had to be; arranged with ; and, in fact, as inj ■ I * loß ' ,i?* such transactions, we "had,'si» I *pay pretty heavily , for all,the larid. " qiience of the {position-' .of- the titles, the laurange. dietriet--was excepted from ; the jurisdiction of. the'Natiye Lands, Court, and Mr. H. T. Clarke, thes'Ci'vJi'CommissionerJ was appointed to-invostigate the titles} However,. 7iSmeVaeenw rW/flhjieptZ the yeard hsve,'passed*way,.and;,the"i| l oxk> »s nofoyet aone-;-the.<spnsequence jheipg'.thj£ fchg; settle? ment of the Tauranga district hasbeen most materially retarded. Everyone who sees Tauranga,. who views its fine harbour and fertile lands, puzzles himself with the i««e-. toon how it is that Tauranga is so far bom in?. The immediate and second canse of che oomplaint is the action or inaction of the Go,

vernment with reapeot to Kaimm. It ia Mid thsre ia .gold, there, lad ft believe.J?PegfaJFaamaga. The principal ggftEft >w*exi bktfe-consented to the opening olithe: fonn^r^-for-proßpectinj^J^itt^pe-or—two; tne itself on theffifciiaSt aqEgftfimranga people, Hpjyever7Jiava f pruned.* committee, and Ahe minea to.i:B€«i;iihejn»*K|ponL r .'j;The Native Office has fallen bftek-npon its old tactics. «' Oh,'.e &yaH fh* Nativ%*<offics,a ■« Wβ are very anxione / 'fi> r? cfiS" < wlia't ) Vo e iE want, and we X* e just Bjbou£doin£ it.whmtlu noxse 9Q& le complicated njattera, thafhow we<£«ji do nothing. IfHypjjiHEad not stirred, we cwould havo : hadjihe .wholp 'It !parßcDJ&re-: ' Bqfc it .tniftj! rihereie wae kept np'afr th 6 THiiipW for seven or eight r yeart,"jraatho"Qoverii'TaSnt —only —acted—~at —last—when they .pbaifivalyjwere driven to it. jTfie.Tahn&isjt eettlerß,,wh% have waited long in the hope j thai I 'the , openintrof..the diatrictrwouldi bring! them Bomethirjft ake an adequate reward'fpr ; their Taßodre , and' eriiieripriSe, may say' that Surely r tsrTyeare^.waeTqng enough, and th«>t patience' hks 'its "limits. ~ Then; auppoie laihoa were again;, the.. when is anything to be done t We cannot wait for an indefinite nnmter of decadea- It might not matter much ; ,tOiMetiißaelah-or Enoch, bat to people who, Irving after the Flood, cannot reasonably looK fdfward'jto_enjgyingjiheir lifetime, the. waste of ten Tears If they anbeide into quietude, so will the Native Offiae.' SXhe official* of.tha4 department see/ in the settlement of native difficnlties, an end to their' Let the watchword of the Taoranga-people 'beV Now I .?: -v, ,- u l --.-f: : ;..> v ;,• •-...- -. ■ :■. • i