NEW ZEALAND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 31, 20 December 1861, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND.

(Condensed from tlie Saturday Hcvicw, Sept. 21.) The word "complication" has iailt-n into disrepute ii^.m its constant use h}' the French ■ Emperor whenever he has made a difficulty to the detriment of his neighbour, and is trying to make a solution of it to his own advantage. But if ever there was a case to which it could be suitably applied, it is that of New Zealand at the present moment. That unhappy little colony is subjected to the evils, not of double, but of quadruple government. There is, first, the local Superintendent, popularly elected, who is usually at drawn-daggers with the General Government, responsible to the Assembly, and subject to more than all the ordinary mutability of a constitutional regime. Then quoad native matters, there is the Governor, independent of his Executive Council and of the Assembly alike ; and, lastly, there is the general and vague control of the distant and tardy Government at home. This admirable network of jurisdictions is producing its natural result in a perfect mass of entanglements. The colony, according to .the testimony of Mr. Fitzgerald, is shouting for " war, war, war;" but the Assembly has just displaced the War Ministry in favour of the leading advocates of peace. The Governor has thrown down, in the Queen's name, a challenge

to the Maories, which leaves him no alternative but war; while the decision of the Assembly, if it be persisted in, will deprive him of the power of carrying it on. Meanwhile, he has publicly announced that the Home Government repose the fullest confidence in himself and his measures, while a new Governor is speeding across the Indian Ocean, as fast as he can be carried by a man-of-war, to replace him, and probably to reverse his policy. And, to make the complication complete, the Ministers whom this new Governor will find installed in power on his arrival—Messrs. Featherston and Fox—were his bitter and unscrupulous revilers during the whole of his former reign, and the men who stand pledged to resist his policy in all its most essential features. If Sir George Grey contrives to charm this chaos into anything like order or repose, it will be the greatest triumph his administrative powers have yet achieved. A bad machine requires first-rate workmen to elicit from it anything like passable results. The New Zealand Constitution is about the worst, considering the- peculiar circumstances of the case, that was ever inflicted by a mother country on a young and inexperienced colony. The New Zealand Constitution was a compromise between two sets of colonial theories that were then fighting in England for the mastery. In India we have always steadily resisted the demands that have been occasionally made for the bestowal of representative institutions upon a community that in reality never put off its armour. The disturbances which accompany the working of popular institutions in the youth of a nation, before classes are well defined, are wholly incompatible with the necessities of a military policy. The condition of New Zealand only differs from that of India in degree.,. The Maories, at the time the Constitution was granted, were very nearly as dangerous to the English settlers on their coasts as the natives of India, though, of course, their numerical superiority was much slighter. But the colonists cleared, planted, and built, in the presence of an alien race, whom a mere chance might at any moment create into a foe, and against whom they were powerless to defend themselves without the mother country's aid. All who were practically acquainted with the subject saw the dangers of " representative Government " so long as this state of things endured. In 1847 when Parliament was induced to grant a Constitution to New Zealand, the project seemed so impracticable to Sir George Grey who was Governor at the time, that he sent the Act of Parliament and the Constitntion back to England together. Lord Grey had the good sense to be guided by his subordinate, and procured another Act in the subsequent year to suspend that Constitution. But a school of enthusiasts were growing up in England at the time, whose theories soon bore down the experience of practical men. Partly, they were antiquarians, burning to restore in the nineteenth century the colonization which, in their opinion, Corinth and lonia had practised with so much success. Partly, they were democrats, in whose eyes the plan of which New England was the fruit needed no further testimony to its value. Together they enforced a crude imitation of the United States as a Constitution for New Zealand upon Lord Derby's weak and ductile Government in 1852. One reservation of power only was made— both then, and afterwards, when "responsible" Government was concerned. In deference to miliiary considerations, and not to the natural fears expressed by philanthropists of the fate in store for the aborigines, if when the proportion should change, they were left to the mercy of the settlers, native affairs were placed in the sole charge of the Governor.

Whatever else happens It is clear that this delusive compromise between independence and control cannot be suffered to continue. It is too costly and too inhuman. It frees the colonists from the last check upon the fierce passions of race, and it lays on England a burthen which she can ill hear just now. It

is very possible that Sir George Grey's influence and experience may conjure awavj the danger lor the moment. But we caimot always coitirt on the availability of Kir George standing resource yvlkti the CoL>r:r.l Cilice is at KS lt;l b Ci.-.-a. .*..;! t^-C '■.:.:■■ c 01 k:.OUu.i .rill3tralia fir^t, thtn of 2'ew Zcalnnd, then of the Cape, and then of >Tev/ Zealand ng:iin, be lias been constantly sent for, when liope was pretty well gone, to doctor colonies in extremity. But his abilities are a happy*exception to the rule of Colonial Governors, and we cannot count on them as a permanent resource. We must have a system which mediocrities can administer without the risk of such terrible evils as those which Governor Browne has brought about. We must abandon the illadjusted compromise and return to an intelligible system which shall place responsibility and power in the same hands. It is open to us to follow the precedent either of India or of Australia—to retain the control and the liability ourselves, or to hand them both over to trie colonist. Lord Grey, when he advised, some months ago, the suspension of the Constitution, appeared to be in favour of the former alternative; and his authority carries with it great weight. But the re"~ vocation of liberties once granted is an enterprise which few English statesmen would be hardy enough to undertake. It is much more probable that we,shall be driven by the inexorable logic of facts, to transfer to the colonist the combined cost and control of native affairs, in spite of the grave consequences to the Natives which such a course implies.