NEW ZEALAND AFFAIRS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 796, 23 March 1853, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND AFFAIRS.

[From the Australian and New Zealand Gazttte, October 2, 1852.] We have fresb advices from the Canterbury settlement, the chief topic being a burst of indignation at the unscrupulous conduct of the Association, with regard to their misappropriation of the various funds contracted to be set aside for public purposes. Taken as a .whole, this pteudo colonizing scheme may fairly take rank with the Texan projects, which some few years ago appealed to the gullibility of the people of Eugland and France. In the latter country, the dupes were to live in a paradise of Communism. In England, acording to the Canterbury Association, the paradise of communism was to pale before a paradise of Puseyism. The result appears to have been the same in both cases. The projectors got the cash, but the emigrants got neither communism nor Puseyism. The Canterbury colonists will shortly have the whole nest of jobbers amongst them, when we trust they will give them such a reception as they richly deserve.

We have reason to believe that changes are about to take place in the government of Ne*

Zealand. The daily papen bare • rnmoor that ' the Hod. Dominic Daly, at preient GoTernot of Tobago, and formerly Colonial Secretary of Canada, bat now in England, has been appointed to lucceed Sir George Grey, who is to be removed to the Weat Indiea. This rumour is not quite in accordance with the assertions of parties concerned with the Canterbury Atsociation, that Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, who sails in a few days from Plymouth in the Minerva, has in bis pocket an order from Sir John Pakington to succeed Sir George Grey. The first rumour reaches this country from Canada, from which we can pretty well guess at its source, from the fact that Mr. Daly and Mr. Wakefield were for some time politically connected in Canada ; from which the colonists of New Zealand may perhaps augur some such coalition in their own colony. It is lucky for them that the New Zealand Bill has rendered the future beadu the colony a comparative nonentity, or they would soon have some new Wakefield theory in operation. Aa it is, their past experience of Wakefield theories will fully enable them to meet any futurs ones. Mr. Wakefield's political career has been one of mistakes and infelirities. If we do not greatly err, his last act, viz., that of going to New Zealand in person, will be the most infelicitous of all ;— an ovation will be not unlikely to await him there, which he might well dispense with. But we will tell Sir John Pakington, that which may not otherwise perhaps have reached *he Colonial-office, that in removing Sir George Grey from New Zealand at present, he is committing a serious error. It would be well to check Sir George Grey's tendency to lavish expenditure — though there are reasons, and cogent ones too, for much of this — but to remove him is a dangerons experiment, and is pretty sure to be followed by another native war. Sir G. Grey has, by the aid of a tact by no means common amongst the governors of colonies, established a firm hold on the natives, who regard him, as they call him,—" a father." They plainly declare that they will obey no other father, and on more than one occasion have addressed her Majesty to this effect. At home, these declarations are looked upon as the mere poetic effasions of nature's children, but whoever judges the natives of New Zealand by this rule will be greatly deceived. We know them well, and we know also their spirit at the present moment. They even uohesitatingly declare that if they have any one else than the present Governor they will sell no more land, and if interfered with will renew tht war. That man who succeeds Sir George Grey as Governor of New Zealand, is either ignorant of what he will have to encounter, or has great confidence in his own political abilities. If he do not possess those abilities even in t greater degree than Sir George Grey, he will go nigh to make another Fitzroy business of it. He must calculate on no support from the settlers, but must rely on his own powers of standing alone, with both settlers and natives against him ; the former now holding the supreme power in their own hands, almost independently of their governor, whilst the latter will regard him as their enemy, from having supplanted their present friend tsnd ruler, to % horn they are Ardently attached. la the present condition ;of the colony, tht very last thing any man who has any regard fo» bis political reputation shonld wish for is to succeed Sir George Grey in the governorship of New Zealand. If Mr. Daly is to be the governor, he has had to deal with the scanty remnant of the Red men of America^ but he will find the Maoris a different affair. They are as able in the field as in the council, as our troops found in the late contest with them ; and we have no hesitation in saying that if, till they have become more absorbed in traffic with Europeans, a new governor is sent to rule over them — no matter what his abilities— in less than two years we shall have to chronicle the operations of another native war .