PAPERS RELATIVE TO STATEMENTS

A.—No. Ib.

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of importance to you from this office, should be a Despatch of this nature. I endeavour to make every allowance for the feelings of an Officer who is consciousthat he has rendered important services to Her Majesty, and who conceives himself to have been left without due protection from cruel and -unfounded imputations. But it is wholly impossible that the Government of the Colonies can be carried on if such language as you have addressed to my predecessor is to be applied on such grounds as you have alleged by an Officer representing Her Majesty (I repeat my words), to the Minister whose function it is to communicate to him Her Majesty's commands. I will add no more now. I hope that a cooler consideration of this painful question will have convinced you of the impropriety of the language which you have used ; and will lead you to take what appears to me to be the course which is due, not less to yourself than to others, viz., that of recalling both your Minute of the 13th June, and your Despatch of the 30th. In this hope I now refrain from considering what would be the duty of Her Majesty's Government, should you unfortunately come to a different conclusion. I have, &c, Governor Sir George Grey, K.C.B. CARNARVON.

No. 11. Copy of a DESPATCH from Governor Sir George Grey, K.C.8., to the Right Hon. the Earl of Carnarvon. (No. 11.) Government House, Wellington, My Lord, — 12th January, 1867. I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Lordship's Despatch No. 41, of the Ist November last, in relation to certain accusations which had been made by Colonel Weare, C.8., against myself, my Ministers, the Military Authorities, and the inhabitants of this Colony. 2. I am very anxious not to enter into any controversy on this subject, and shall therefore make as few remarks as possible in relation to it; but as your Lordship has undertaken, upon receiving my reply, to pronounce a decision upon it, I beg to be permitted to state a few points which have been overlooked, but a full understanding of which is necessary to enable anyone to form a just opinion regarding it. 3. The main question which has sprung out of the correspondence under consideration has been overlooked. That is, the right of the Military Authorities to execute subjects of Her Majesty without making any report regarding such execution to the Governor of the country. This in one instance has been done, and it raises a question of the gravest importance, regarding which authoritative instructions should, without delay, be issued by Her Majesty's Government. 4. Colonel Weare's letters are treated, in your Lordship's Despatch, as private letters, communicated, without his wish or permission, to the Secretary of State. This is not, as I apprehend it, a correct view of the subject. Colonel Weare, in his letters to his brother containing the accusations under consideration, expresses, in language which cannot be mistaken, his hopes that the purport of his letters may be made known in England. I think a perusal of his letters will show that his brother, in making them known, carried out Colonel Weare's wishes, only perhaps in a manner different from that which he had intended. I feel satisfied, if your Lordship peruses the letters and Colonel Weare's expressions, you will admit that his intention was that the purport of them should reach the public. 5. A most objectionable feature in Colonel Weare's proceedings is now also dropped out of sight. I especially pointed it out, in my Despatch of the 13th June, 1866, in the following words: —" Colonel W^eare either believed that these " barbarities were or were not being perpetrated. If he believed they were being " perpetrated, it was his duty to have reported the fact to me, that I might have " instantly interfered to prevent the continuance of such barbarities, instead of " reporting these in a private letter to some unknown correspondent in England, " so that I did not hear of the circumstance until more than five months had " elapsed, when any interference on my part was impossible. If Colonel Weare