A.—No. 1

20

DESPATCHES FROM THE GOVERNOR OF NEW

5. That, at least in some of the communications made to the Press regarding me, the General interfered directly, will be shown from the enclosed extract from an Auckland newspaper of the 14th August last. In this case an officer of his staff was the means of communication employed, and the information he furnished regarding me was clearly untrue and injurious. 6. In another Despatch to you I forwarded a copy of a most offensive letter in relation to myself which Sir D. Cameron published in his oWn name in the Colony of Victoria, which was so published as to go home by the same mail as Sir D. Cameron, without giving me any opportunity of reply. 7. All this I have submitted to in silence. I neither provoked it, nor defended myself against it by any recourse to the Press. All editors of newspapers in this Colony and elsewhere will testify for me that I have never, either directly or intlirectly, taken steps to have anything inserted in a newspaper, even in my own defence. 8. On the other hand, persons who were daily attacking me in the papers were living at General Cameron's Head Quarters as special correspondents, rationed and in various ways assisted at the public expense. The consideration with which they were treated by the General, and their opportunities for obtaining information, necessarily imparted an importance and probable authenticity to their statements, adverse to myself, which were most injurious to me. No necessity existed for public funds being expended in rationing or aiding in any way these persons. No other Officer in command of the Porces in New Zealand has ever done so, at least to my knowledge, and I have never done it myself. The power of doing this exercises a most injurious influence on the Public Service. It has been used to embarrass and thwart me ; and I earnestly recommend that the War Department in reducing its expenditure in this country should get rid of this unnecessary and mischievous item. I have, &c, The Right Hon. Edward Cardwell, M.P. G. GREY.

Sess. Papers 18G5. A. No. sa. p. 8.

Enclosure 1 in No. 14. Extract from the " Morning Star," of the 12th of May, 1865. The following is an extract of a letter from an Officer serving in New Zealand: — " Head Quarters, 4th February, 1865. " Here we are in the field again. Every one is heartily sick of it, from the General, downwards. How long are the people at home going to allow this to go on ? If they depend on the Governor, they are placing confidence in a broken reed indeed ; for it is apparent to every one here that he is seeking popularity among the Colonists by retaining the Troops, and will not allow a single man to go out of the island, unless he is ordered unconditionally and unreservedly to do so. " So long as he has ten regiments at his entire disposal, he is a great man ; but directly he allows them to go, he is shorn of all his splendour and greatness, and sinks down to the comparatively insignificant level of a constitutional Governor, with all power lodged in the hands of his Eesponsible Ministers, and he knows this, and feels it. There was no earthly reason why three or four regiments should not go home this and the next month. The Waikato frontier was securely established; the Military Settlers placed on their lands. The Natives, at a large meeting they held, almost unanimously declared for peace, and agreed not to meddle with us unless we did with them. The Tauranga Natives, after a short and unsatisfactory trial of their new religion, had returned to their lands, and settled down quietly in the neighbourhood of tho Europeans. At Taranaki the Natives, after taking and occupying all the positions of strength in the neighbourhood, were coming in every day, and giving themselves up — many of them being among the list of ' murderers.' Everything looked as peaceable and as promising as could well be imagined, when the Governor, seeing, I suppose, that unless he kept the Troops employed he would be unable to retain them in the Colony, suddenly directs the General to commence operations down here, working in the direction of Taranaki, the ostensible reason being to occupy a block of land we had purchased (!) from them (the Waitotara) and through which they declined to allow us to make a road. Now the real facts of this so-called purchase are these, and I suppose the English people will hardly credit it. Talk of the Waitara question! why most people believe even now that that was a fair and legal purchase ; but this they cannot defend on any one point, except the necessity of obtaining land for the Europeans somehow. The Superintendent of the Province of Wellington, Dr. Featherston, agreed to purchase this block some time ago from certain Natives, and paid them an instalment of £500. When the time came for concluding the bargain and paying the balance due to them, the Natives wanted one particular piece (where their fighting pa now is) to be reserved for them. This Dr. Featherston would not agree to, whereupon the owners tendered back the £500, and said they would not sell at all. This Dr. Featherston refused to take, and got some other Natives, who had not the smallest title to tho land, to take the balance and sign a paper in receipt thereof, saying they had sold us tho whole block. The lawful owners naturally enough resented this, and this is what we are here for, to eject the lawful owners from the land they did not wish to sell; and for this England is spilling her best blood! The General formally pro-