THE GROWN AND NEW ZEALAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 929, 18 September 1869, Page 4

THE GROWN AND NEW ZEALAND.

(Spectator, June 26th.)

It would be a very cnrioua instance of the irony of history, if Lord Granville, the one minister of all others in recent Cabinets who has earned the highest And best-de-served reputation for unwavering political courtesy, should prove to be the minister whose ill-timed hardiness of phrase and recklessness of insinuation, coinciding, as they unfortunately must do, with almost unparalleled harshness of policy, had goaded into secession the first colony of Great Britain which had asserted its independence for more than a hundred years. Yet we gravely fear that this may bo the result, and we fear it upon grounds which we will proceed lo state to our readers. • The Pall Mall of Tuesday, writing in what looks like a self-imposed ignorance of almost all the freshest data for forming a judgment, treats this threat as an idle and unmeaning menace. In so doing it shows less than its usual judgment, as it also showed less than its usual good taste in deliberately miareporting (for the sake of an ineffective sarcasm) what we had said of the protest of certain eminent Now Zealand colonists now resident in England, a protest which, if it had been "full of irresistible eloquence," ai the Pall Mall erroneously asserts that it had learned from us (at » date, too, when the protest in question was already an old document, having appeared in the previous morning's news), would certainly not havo beon what we did call it "weighty," but a very unfit document for its purpose. There is surely something very perverted in the relation of England to her colonies when it becomes a kind of feather in the cap of the most courteous of ministers to send out a despatch which not only refuses needful aid, but does so in a manner stadiodly irritating and contemptuous, and when any English journal which forms an independent opinion favourAble to any of tho claims of our colonists is snooringly branded an thoir "organ," and that in spite of very many criticisms far from agrooable to tho colony, by its English contemporaries. Thoro is a sort of lust of soorp lor British colonies whon hi difficulties coming upon both our statesmen and our organß of publio opinion. Tho Native Miuuter in Now Zealand in his rooentvery able letter to tbo Times said vory justly that if England had *tlait determined to withdraw all aid from her oolonios, it was at least her first duty to treat them with that respectful consideration, that earnest wish to put tho mo-t favourable construotion on their word* and actions, which is tho tradition of tho Foreign Office in relation to independent State*. So far ia this from bouig tho case, that tho moat courteous and amiable of our ministers acoompanies his refusal of th* requoet of New Zealand with utterly gratuitous insinuations of baaenoM, and tho journals which even venture to advooate the policy of limited aid, feel it incumbent on thoro to show in every lino * lofty contempt for " oolooial aspirations." Now, what ia the present state of feeling in New Zealand,— a etate of feeling, be it wmtinbered, on which Lord GranvUle'a Tory unhappy and utterly unjustifiable despatch baa yet to operate, for it cannot be published in the oolouy till the beginning of next month? At the tot advioos, the peremptory order (or the recall of the last regiment qaar. tered in New Zealand had junk boon re» ceived, an order whioh will operate far more njuriotuly aa a pubUo ootwoatloa to the

Maori rebels that the ,Qtteen.hfts. withdrawn' her favour 1 from the colonists, »nd m a'proclamation to^the colonists'of ''the 'real indiffthe.Golonial Offioe'to the imminent 1 peril of ? the Northern island,.:than it, .will; by any ° positive " diminution ,of the military strength of the colonists The withdrawal of this last' regiment was, in fact, regarded as a moral demonstration both by rebels and settlers. The Maoris have always said, "We do not pick up our shell-fish till the tide ebbs 1 ;" and the settlers' who, looking at the matter, from the veiry same point' of view, have entreated the Home Government to leave them this one, regiment, if only for its moral effect against the Maoris, regard this imperious rather than imperial refusal aa a plain way of saying, " Really, whether you are massacred or not, is a matter of no' conceivable interest' to, Her Majesty's Government ! Well, what was the actual effect of tliia news on' the colony ? -Mr Justice Richmond, one of the most reticent; and one' of the very ablest of the statesmen of New Zealand, who has himself held high office in difficult days,' and knows as well as any man what ministerial, responsibility means, had just taken oocasion in charging the grand jury at Nelson (in the Middle Island) to comment on this news in reference to its probable bearing on the criminal, law of .New Zealand. He remarked that if it should be determined, — , the decision in the Jamaica base had not yet reached New Zealand,— that on indemnity Act passed by a colonial legislature would be disregarded by the interpreters of the Imperial Statute Book, cases would immediately and necessarily arise in New Zeal nd, — denuded as she was about to be of all Imperial help, — under which the settlers would become liable to English penalties for defending themselves against the rebels of the Northern island in the only manner whioh might seem to them effectual, and that such improvised self • defence would not be legalized by any colonial indemnity. (In point of fact, we regret to say, the case supposed has already arisen, as Mr Wylie and his friends at Poverty Bay have put to death, without the form of trial, two natives "known," as the papers Bay — that is, believed by their executioners on evidence more or less good — to be stained with the massacre of their fellow-country-men, ) But Mr Justice Eichmond went on with these remarkable words, whioh have been already received with the most einphatio approbation by the press of the colony :—"lf: — "If the news was true that ho [the Judge] had heard that morning, there would be devolved upon the colony the responsibilities of an independent State. But if we are to have the responsibilities, ice must have the powers of an independent State. We must be allowed to meet the urgent necessities of our position by mc7i measures as we may here deem expedient and just. He could not doubt that English statesmen I would see the fairness of such a demand " This grave expression of judicial feeling had been received with boundless approbation in the colony, whose organs of opinion, indulging the highest indignation against the Imperial Government, were already talking in this style. We quote from tho Nelson Examiner of the 13th March ;•— "lf the colony is treated as threatened by the Home Government ; and Ministers, and Parliament, and the people of England, imbued with the shoplteeping policy of the Manchester sohool of politicians, stand coolly and see their countrymen butchered by savages ; their wives and children dragged from their beds at night and cruelly murdered, their homesteads given to the flame*, ad their flooks and herds driven away and slaughtered, and from a miserable parsimoaiousnoss refuse to give any kind of succour, then on England will rest a foul shame. .... It nasbeen theevidont policy of the British Government for somo time to loison the ties whioh bind her offspring to her, and it may become a question for New Zealand to oonaider what value the connection with the mother country has for it. .... If it be the desire of those who govern England to get rid of hor colonies altogether, better propose it openly. Then we might part on tbrms of friendship never afterwords, we may hope, to be disturbed. But to alienate tho affection of tho coloniats from the mother country is to sow seeds of bitterness that may bear fruit of disaster both for parent and offspring. England haa had one lesson of this. Wo hope her conduot towards her colonies will never causo hor to receive a aeoond." And tho Southern Croat, a daily Auokland paper, advocate* outlawing tbo whole of Te Kooti'a party as "rebe murdoTort," without the slightest reference to the opinion of England* urging that it ia "necessary that we should in some way shake off this bugbear of England's inter* ference."

When on a colonial opinion thus painfully exoited there falls the inflaming spark of Lord GranviUe's despatoh, what can we expool to follow? Tho settlers will then find that the English minister moat justly famed for hit oonoUiatory manner* and his width of Liberal feeling, not only peremptorily decline* to help New Zealand by any financial aid, jtut after, by withdrawing tho last English regiment, at the very crisis of their difficulties, he haa still more peremptorily refuted any other kind of aid. moral or physical; bat he couples this refusal with » aeriee of sUtome&U, some of them ludicrously careless and mistaken, others oareful enough, but careful only in their miwhlevous insinuations of evil againit the settlers, and all ooaohtd in a tone of deliberate sympathy And commiseration towards the natives, and deliberate distruit and iuiploion of the oolomsta. Thus Lord Grannlle aays thai the step which led to the

first T»ranaHw»r'Jn, 1860 was " t*ken entirelyrinithe interests and } with the approval of the colonists," and he throws out an insinuationHhat it was inconsistent with the obligations of the Imperial 1 Government to the : natives,i stating . that it was < '' blamed by some" on that ground, the tone of the despatch evidently leaning to the opinion of the "some" thus quoted. In point, of 'fact, l this was not so. Colonel Gore'i^ Browne thought the step one of simple justiceto certain native proprietors who were, as he held, unjustly restrained from dealing with their own lands. The dispute had led to native murders, and a bloody feud was imminent between the opposing native tribes. , The former determined to put a stop to this state of things in discharge of his Imperial duty, and the Native. Minister of the day insisted at' the time in his miniite on the origin of the war on the entire absence of any responsibility on the part of the colonists for what, had been done. ( The colonists, he said, with perfect accuracy , "have never had, the direction of native policy or even suggested the aots of the Imperial Governmentin its relations with the natives." Yet thiß was the real origin of the war which has been either smouldering or active ever since, — an act done by an Imperial officer in the interests of the native's themselves, for whioh interests he alone was responsible, quite aa much as in that of the colonists. Again, Lord Granville Bays that the result of thin war, the expense of whioh was partly borne by the Imperial Government, was to break the power of the leading tribe of the rebel Maoris. This, again, is quite erroneous. The Ngatimaniopotos, the leading tribe, is still in arms against the settlers, and its power quite unbroken Lord Granville adds that since tho year 1857 the colonists have inoreased in number from 49,800 to 218,500, but of thi<* last number some 50,000 are immigrant gold- miners in the Middle Island, who are about as amenable to a Now Zealand militia law as Californian Yankees ; and of the rest, much more than half are inhabitants of the Middle Island, who regard themselves — and, as far as we see, justly— as far less responsible, pecuniarily and personally, for the defence of the settlers of the Northern Island than Englishmen at home. Why should they be taxed more than L 5 a head to defend fellow-colonists whose dangers they do not share, and whose help they do not need, when England disavows all Buoh obligations ?

Lord Granville goes on to point out that England has transferred to the colony no obligation whatever, "except that imposed on all of us by natural justice not to appropriate the property of others," a deliberate insinuation tbat this is the temptation to which the settlers of New Zealand are specially liable. Finally, he adds, what is tho exact contraiy of the fact, that the native obligations were transferred by the Home Government to the colony, "in compliance with the direct and indirect demands of the colonists," — and this, though the House of Assembly recorded a formal protest against it, to whioh the Duke of Newcastle replied in February, 1863, that the consent of tlie_ colony was not requisite, and the obligations of the Crown to the natives would be transferred to the colony in spite of its protest. Finally, Lord Granville closes this coldly irritating despatch by remarking that the present dangers of New Zealand are due, if not to tho sins of the colonists against the natives, at least to the adoption of a polioy which could 'not but appear to the natives to be injurious to them. Thus the despatch accumulates misrepresentations and sneers at the colonists, hints that they wish to rob the natives still, hints that they have probably done so with some system hitherto, and prints these accumulated misrepresentations and sneers as the defence of the Home Government for not guaranteeing a penny to a colony all bnt insolvent, and one portion of which ii in a sort of death-struggle with rebels whom this despatch will stimulate into new aotivity, Can we doubt that, looking to the state of mind in whioh the colony was before this dangerous and injurious despatch was sent out, we Bhail have at least a vigorous popular movement for independence of the power which, instead of lending the settlers help in trouble, sneers at them as it calls its last soldier back? For our pArts, we expect a serious demand for Independence, which wo do not see how Great Britain oan refute, unless she is prepared to alter her polioy very materially. Now Zealand gains at present absolutely nothing from hor connection with England, oxoopt a remote chance of naval defence •gainst any foreign power in time of war, while in independence of action she loses much. And wo should oxpeot that this demand for independence will be followed by an application for a protectorate to some other power— say, tho United States of America or Prussia.

Will thia bo roally weloome to the English poople? Has our imperial feeling already vanished so utterly, that we shall look on with indifftrenoe while ono of our ooloniea, whioh wo have raoefa systematically snubbed, maligned, and despised, politely tells ua that freedom from our rule in a good deal better than ita yoke, and tbat somo substantial help from others would be better than eithor ? For our parts, we confoea we are puerile enough to feel that auoh aa event would b* even more fatal to EnglUh pride and strength, than a "foreign invasion," that it would be an oooaaion for bitter aelMiumUiation and self-reproach. Ia it nowible that those who make it their cardinal polioy to satisfy the reasonable oonditiona of selTrttpeot in Ireland should make it their secondary policy to shame tad mortify our Colonial