THE NEW ZEALAND QUESTION.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume IV, Issue 172, 5 January 1870, Page 3

THE NEW ZEALAND QUESTION.

(Prom tlie London Correspondent of the “ Australasian.”)

Earl Granville, as you will have learnt by telegraph a mouth ago, has definitively peremptorily settled the New Zealand question. His despatch to Governor Bowen, sent out by the October mail, was published in the London papers on the 12th of last month, together with the recent correspondence between the Secretary to the Colonies and the Governor. The noble earl insists on the immediate withdrawal of the one regiment of the line remaining in the island, in spite of the telegraphic prayer of the Governor and General Assembly that it might be allowed to remain “ as a garrison and moral support,” with a promise to pay whatever contribution the Imperial Government might demand on that account, As the despatch has, no doubt been published in the Australasian colonies, and freely commented upon by the press, it would be quite superflous for me to describe the line of argument by which the Colonial Secretary justifies a decision so apparently harsh and cruel. But the colonists will be anxious to know how the inflexible decision of the Imperial Government has been received in this country, and whether the policy of abandoning New Zealand to its own crippled resources in the hour of itsdiretribulationislikely to receive the sanction or silent acquiescence of Englishmen in general. Erom all that I have seen in the public prints, I am inclined to believe that the newly-inaugurated policy does meet with general approval. Every writer and speaker pities the condition of our New Zealand fellow-subjects, regrets the cruelty and seeming selfishness of the resolve to desert them, forebodes a series of fresh disasters from Maori vindictiveness, and usually concludes his article or his speech with a warm eulogium on the wisdom and firmness of the Colonial Secretary. The course taken is regarded as really the kindest that could be adopted, and the disappointed and suffering settlers are comforted with the assurance that they will themselves some day acknowledge the same with gratitude. It is not every Minister, however, who would have had nerve enough to take so painful a step and risk the possibly disastrous consequences to the integrity of the Empire. Earl Granville has dared to enter the perilous path—to do. what the leaders of all political parties wished to see done, yet shrunk tremblingly from doing—consequently there is no prospect of the reversal of a policy thus signalized either by Parliament or people, by Conservatives or Eadicals. The crisis found the man.