THE WELLINGTON INDEPENDENT.

Wellington Independent, Volume I, Issue 34, 26 July 1845, Page 2

THE WELLINGTON INDEPENDENT.

Saturday, July 26, 1845,

The barque Louisa Campbell, Captain Darby, arrived from London via Nelson, on Thursday night. She arrived at the latter place on the 9th July, and has furnished dates to the 18th March.

The opportunity furnishes New Zealand Parliamentary proceedings of the 11th and 15th of March. Further proceedings were to take place in Parliament on 18th March, hut the result we believe has not reached New Zealand. Numerous interesting articles on this colony and on the Colonial Office, especially its conduct to New Zealand settlers, are also supplied. We furnish the proceedings of the 11th of March, and will continue to supply the remainder, and the extracts from English papers, as fast as our space will permit. It will be observed that the tone of the members advocating the cause of New Zealand, and of those who support Lord Stanley aad Captain Fitzroy, is unusually and remarkably bitter. The Tory Government is unquestionably very strong, but the discussions about this colony will severely damage confidence in its intelligence and justice, more especially backed as the opponents will be in July by the events of the 11th of March at the Bay of Islands, and whatever may be the fate of that essentially mischievous and reckless man Lord Stanley, it is apparent poor Fitzroy's fate is sealed. Mr. C. Buller stated to Parliament not only the imperative duty of sending out another Governor to replace Fitzroy, but the propriety of sending out a keeper to take care of the poor fellow. It is evident that Captain Fitzroy has thoroughly convinced impartial minds from New Zealand to Great Britain that he is stark staring mad. Will the pitiable person resign.? There are two remarkable points of coincidence. The one that at the very same time the settlers by one accord declared Capt. Fitzroy mad, hopelessly mad, the same conviction was expressed at the same moment in the British Parliament and the British Press. The other is, that the first day Ujjon which Captain Fitzroy's friends and the Colonial Office attempted his vindication in Parliament was the Wth March 1845, the very day upon which the unfortunate lunatic reduced the Town at the Bay of Islands to ashes. We do not find any other information of interest; nor can we learn that any other vessel has been laid on in England for this settlement.

It is reported that the brig Nelson, Capt. M'Laren, which sailed from this port last December, for London, has been wrecked on the Brizilian coast, but that all the passengers and crew and part of the cargo had been saved. The report originates, we believe, with the Captain of the Lousia Campbell, which came into port, the night before last, from London via Nelson. Capt. Darby states that he read in an English paper the account of the loss of a brig on the Brazilian coast, from New Zealand, and that upon being reminded of the name he has no doubt it is the Nelson. The time which has elapsed between the sailing of the Nelson from this port and the departure of the Louisa Campbell from England, is one •hundred and four days, which was sufficient for the news of the Nelson's loss being heard in England before the Louisa Campbell ' sailed. We regret the loss of this vessel, .■as it must have attended with anxiety and ( , inconvenience to the passengers, among ~ whom Dr: Evans is included, and it will be ...attended with the loss, probably' of more or less of the mails, and the numerous samples and presents sent from this to friends and parties in England interested in the

progress of this setttlement. We subjoin a list of passengers :—

Passengers per Nelson. —Dr, G. S. Evans ; Mr. and Mrs. Young ; Mrs. Wining ; Mr. Bowler; Messrs. Attley, Birch, Wood, Hebden, and Durie.

Several plans have been devised with a view to obtaining funds with which to pay the Militia, but hitherto we are sorry to state without success. The last plan proposed was to issue Militia notes for one shilling, five shillings, and for one pound, redeemable when the fifty pound bonds were retired by the Government. The notes were all to be signed by the four Captains of Company's. Such a currency would have been as safe as the bonds, and we think popular with the community, as it would be known it was issued to prevent the probable disbanding of a body of men whose organization has unquestionably tended greatly to discouraging any inclinations the natives may have had excited by the disasters at the Bay of Islands, to rob and molest the settlers. We hope the temporary inability to obtain the means of paying the Militia will not be attended with their ceasing to perform their duties, as we feel convinced the effect would again be to encourage among the native population, mischievous ideas which have not been sufficiently long in abeyance to destroy the inclination to put them into operation against the peace and progress of the settlement. If we are to remain quiet here we must have the Militia maintained in an efficient state until a sufficient number of troops are appointed to protect the place, and it will not be until all the elderly natives have gone to their long home, that New Zealand can be a safe place of residence without the presence of a considerable military and naval force. The difficulty supposed to be in the way of issuing Militia notes is the first Captains having declined to sign them, but upon what ground we know not. Captains Durie, Compton, and Dorset, were, and are still willing to issue the notes in question, and, we see no reason against their doing so, inasmuch as the only object in obtaining the signatures of the Captains, is to provide the public with a security that notes only to the exact amount of the bonds against which they are issued are put in circulation.

We have copied from the New-Zealander, (Auckland paper,) of the 21st June, a long despatch from Lord Stanley, dated London, 30th November, 1844, to Governor Fitzroy. It appears to be intended to be a careful Teview and consideration of Captain Fitzroy's proceedings in New Zealand, so far as the Colonial Office had been made acquainted with them by Captain Fitzroy, up to the 15th April, 1844. Lord Stanley is evidently puzzled, but sets the matter at rest for the moment, by adopting Captain Fitzroy's acts so far as known through our worthy Governor's own account of them. We have been partly induced to reprint .this lengthy, and feeble as lengthy, document, that our readers may be enabled to contrast it with the general despatch which Lord Stanley must have written, when he finds himself a few months later called upon to sanction acts of Captain Fitzroy diametrically opposed to those now so evidently adopted with far from confidence in the issue. Before the present period Captain Fitzroy's despatches must have made Lord Stanley a capital subject for H.B.s pencil. ( Imagine Lord Stanley as a little boy, with a large head? at his desk, with usher Fitzroy dictating a copy despatch, and schoolmaster Stevens ruling very crooked lines in the book. But a better subject will be, when Master Stanley has become very testy for having been laughed at by all his playmates for his parents allowing him to remain in the hands of such instructors, while he might be at a school where he would really acquire knowledge, and on reasonable terms, he is called upon by dancing master Fitzroy to practice Jim Crow with numerous variations, to the tune of fiddler Stevens. It is evident the proficient Fitzroy, in all his rashness and recklessness, will get upon Master Stanley's feet, and.perchance he

will make the young gentleman tread upon his own nose, when the lordling finding himself personally interested in the matter, will not hesitate to evince abundance of feeling with all the gentlemanly courtesy, for which this overbearing aristocrat is so

proverbial. The most amusing part of Lord Stanley's despatch, is the proof afforded that Captain Fitzroy had led him to believe that on or about the 15th April, 1844, he had established the most amicable relations with the colonists in New Zealand, and that they had acknowledged their errors, and had become converts to the conviction that Fitzroy's opinion of his own ability to govern New Zealand, had warranted the overbearing insolence with which he endeavoured to treat the settlers, very many of whom are infinitely his superior in intelligence, educatin, experience, and gentlemanly feeling and bearing.

V/e are happy to find that a good demand is arising in the neighbouring colonies for New Zealand wood. Pine for house building purposes, is said to be worth twenty shillings per hundred feet, and orders having been given here has already raised the price of timber from five to seven shillings per hundred feet. The brig Palmyra is loading oil, flax, rope, pine and furniture timber for South Australia, and we hope the result will be satisfactory.

Flour. —This article is becoming very scarce and dear. We trust the merchants of Sydney, Hobart Town, and Adelaide, will speedily send a supply. In return we can give them a variety of articles suitable to their own markets.