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March, which must have reached me before the departure of the April mail, I should have considered it necessary to notice it in my correspondence with the Secretary of State, and that he, therefore, sent it at once to put the Secretary of State for War in possession of the whole case. I could understand this if Sir D. Cameron had been defending himself against accusations I had made against him. But whence this undue and indecorous haste to send home shameful and unfounded accusations against myself and my Responsible Advisers, before we could reply to them. 8. Lord de Grey, Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for War, received these accusations against me from Sir 1). Cameron in a confidential letter which I have never seen, and His Lordship has now, in a public letter, signified his approval of Sir D. Cameron's having made them in the manner he did. 9. The statement made by the W Tar Department that they were made by Sir D. Cameron in a private letter which he had not sent home officially, taken in connection with the other statement that a careful perusal of Sir D. Cameron's Despatches proved, in Lord de Grey's opinion, that General Cameron had not assumed to himself any latitude inconsistent with the high position he filled in New Zealand, may perhaps be said not to meet the question; indeed whilst the latter statement seems to explain all, the former statement shows that the real question is left untouched. 10. If it was thought right to leave it in this state, because the question was one which it was difficult to meet, then, I think, instead of casting blame upon me who had been so wronged, as has been directly or inferentially done in every one of the Despatches, Her Majesty's Government should have seen that some , reparation had been made to me for the wrong that had been done. 11. It is right that I should notice incidentally other points which have arisen in the correspondence. 12. General Cameron in his letters relating to the matter under discussion alludes to the publication in the local newspapers of a Memorandum from my Responsible Advisers dated the Bth of April, and Lord de Grey adopts the same view of the subject as General Cameron. I have already pointed out that the Government did not publish the Memorandum in a local newspaper, but that it Avas copied from a Parliamentary Paper into a newspaper. 13. Again in reference to this Memorandum Sir D. Cameron repeatedly states that he never saw the Memorandum until he read it on the 15th of May, in a local newspaper. This is a mere play upon terms. Upon the Ist of May, he received from me in a letter the whole substance of the Memorandum expressed in the same words as the Memorandum. This was the way in which I ought to have communicated it to him. I feel sure if I had simply transmitted to him a copy of the Memorandum he would have complained that I had treated him with disrespect in so doing. 14. I enclose a copy of a Memorandum which shows the opinions I expressed upon communicating General Cameron's letter to my Responsible Advisers, and the line of policy I urged them to pursue. I still entirely adhere to the opinions I then held. It was only by communicating to my Ministers the purport of Sir D. Cameron's letter that I should have been justified in advising them to follow strictly the line of policy. When Mr. Weld and his colleagues knew my reasons for requesting them to act as I did, they felt the necessity of such a line of conduct as keenly as myself, and none can deny that the result has been good, and that the Colonists have done their duty. Eor their forces since that time there have been no winter quarters, no shrinking from any danger, no rest from operations in the field, no halting whilst an enemy was to be met, and, in a few months, more has been done by them for the pacification of the country than years had previously achieved. To what the Colonists and Her Majesty's Native subjects have recently done, unaided by British Troops, I can justly point as the best refutation of the accusations that —either myself or my Ministers wished for war for the profit and gratification of the colonists —that we did not care how many British Officers and soldiers were lost in an operation so long as we gained some end of policy, or that we were as sorry as the rebels that they could not inflict a loss upon the Queen's forces with little or no risk to themselves. 3

Mr. Cardwell's Despatch No. 50, July 26, 1865.

Sess. Papers 1865, A. No. 1, p. 15.

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ZEALAND TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE.