Wellington Independent WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1871.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3316, 11 October 1871, Page 2

Wellington Independent WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 187 1.

It was industriously whispered yester day morning in awe-inspiring accents, throughout the city, that the Hon. Mr Stafford, the leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, was going to make a fearful onslaught on the Government. " Great expectations" were naturally excited. For four solid weeks the hon gentleman had been preparing himself for a great effort, and it was expected, both by Government supporters and the Opposition, that the objections to the Government policy would be at last fully stated. The Hon Mr Stafford, we say it with all due respect, has disappointed not only both sides of the House but the colony at largo. His own supporters expected him to tear the financial statement and the public works statement to tatters. The most SAnguine of them must admit that he has done more by this one speech to beget satisfaction with them, and to inspire confidence in the Government whose policy they set forth, than all the organs (wherever they ire) "in the service of the Government" can do in a year. The supporters of the Government were also as much, but more agreeably, disappointed. What? Is this all that the Opposition have to say against the Government policy ? Does it all amount to a few elegantly expressed and nicely delivered complaints ? Can this be the man that for so many years governed New Zealand who now delivers a most elaborate speech after four weeks' lucubration, containing no practical ideas, and ending in no practical conclusion — not even in the most abstract resolution. The colony will at once be surprised and pleased — surprised at the Assembly, after a two months' sitting, being turned into a debating society, for a speech concluding with no motion can only provoke more useless talk, and pleased to find that the Government policy comes out of this most elaborate criticism of the leader of the Opposition perfectly unscathed. The people of New Zealand will learn from it what the more reflecting have already discovered — that Mr Staffard, as a statesman, is a perfect failure. He can find fault with great volubility, and even elegance, and, on occasion, whiningly and with tears, but he can enunciate nothing practical — nothing which, if carried into effect to-morrow, would advance the colony by even one step. He talks well, and that is all that can be said of him. No mon has had a better chance of showing what he could do, and all he has done for New Zealand is to excite bitter contention among certain sections of the European population by a policy of aggression, and to embroil the Maori population in an unnecessary and wasteful war by a policy of "drifting." Unabashed, he now tells the colony that he meant to do great things, but during all the time he had a chance of giving effect to his meaning — a chance which probably no future statesman will ever haye — he never propounded any of those grand schemes which he would have ug believe were constantly occupying his thoughts He boastfully spoke of " the late war," but he sketched out no policy of progress to be entered upon in a time of

peace. Nothing remains in New Zealand at the present day to mark his connection with its history but the indebtedness arising from the huge sums he squandered in a fruitless war, and some strange passages in an Ap pendix to the Journals of the House, illustrating his conduct when ejected from office. After aLI his schemes of destroying existiii institutions, the only one he conducted is the County of Westland ! Since he left office there has been more real work done, more systematic colonisation, than in all the ministries put together of which he was a member. The present Government, we repeat fearlessly, and Mr Stafford's speech provokes the contrast, has done more for New Zealand than all the former Governments put together. They havo secured a longer duration of peace ; they have achieved a far greater measure of progress. Their management of native affairs, and their colonising schemes have alike inspired a confidence in the future of New Zealand, never felt before. The settlers in the North Island have been replaced upon their farms, whence in the Stafford administralion they were driven by murderous savages ; and the latter have been diverted from rapine and bloodshed to the pursuits of peaceful industry. The conquest of peace is being effected, not by a ruinous war, but by a peaceful colonisation. In the Middle Island the attention of the people is no longer engaged in miserable and chronic agitation against the General Government as an obnoxious aud arbitrary power, but in endeavoring to secure the laigest share possible of the benefitsof its benign policy. The whole colony, in one word, is now recalled at once fram European and Maori anticolonising feuds, to the work which forms the very end of its existence, the '• heroic work" of colonisation. Practical reforms, too, have not been lost eight of in the interest arising from these great colonising measures, A University has been established and scholarships founded ; vote by ballot has become a fact ; a cheap method of land transfer has ben introduced ; a system of Government annuities and insurance has been inaugurated ; telegraph lines have been extended and reconstructed, and the charges for messages reduced ; a new postal service has been established ; numerous railway lines hare been surveyed ; sites for bridges hav<? been examined, and the work of j construction commenced; immense , tracts of valuable land have been peacefully and cheaply acquired from the natives ; and great efforts have been put forth for the development of the resources of the colony. In short, the contrast between the present and the past, wh'ch M r Stafford raises by his speech of last night, is as great as between peace and war, progress and stagnation. The colony appreciates the difference, and Mr Stafford's labored attempt of last night will be regarded as but the vapouring of a greatly over-rated politician, incapable from overweening self-love, spleen, or incapacity, to do justice to the policy of his abler, more practical, more farseeing, and more patriotic successors.