A.—No. Ib,

through the Governor of the Colony. Parliament and the Governments of the Colonies have had frequent and deliberate pledges given to them that such letters are, and always shall be, in the office of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. A due regard for the safety of the lives and property of British subjects requires that they should be there. No one or tAvo Secretaries of State can be justified in conforming to the wills of irresponsible clerks in their department and of Military officers, and in agreeing that such letters shall go wholly to the military department; Parliament and the Governments of the Colonies and the nation at large being left ignorant that such a vast constitutional change has been secretly made, and being still assured by the Queen's Regulations that it has not been made. It would be hardly an exaggeration to say that such a change gives the War Department the power of at any time suspending the Constitution and laws of any one of the British Colonies. No one yet knows when prisoners were put to death in New Zealand, and at least one chief secretly executed, nor in what terms these facts were immediately reported to the Secretary of State for War, nor what excuse wa^ made for concealing them from the Civil Government of the country, nor the reasons Avhich led the Secretary for War to approve and ever since to support such unconstitutional proceedings. A consideration of this subject will, I am sure, convince your Lordship of the justice of the remarks I am making. Had the great change I have thus noticed not been privately made in the conduct of the public service, by which the highest poAvers entrusted by the Queen to the Civil Governments of Colonies may, at any time, be taken out of of their hands, and secretly assumed by entirely irresponsible Military officers, Avho either report their acts to the Military authorities in England, or conceal them, as they think proper, subjects of the Queen, who are stated by the best authority to have been put to cruel and unnecessary deaths, Avould have been iioav alive. Indeed, to deprive the Government of a Colony of the powers assured to it by the Constitution, the law, and the Queen's Regulations, and to alloAV those powers to be secretly exercised by an irresponsible Military officer, is to treat a British Government as a foreign power Avhich is inimical to the English Government, to treat British subjects as foreigners, and a British possession as foreign and conquered territory. The remarks I make do not relate to a past system but to what is now taking place. The foUowing remarks from Sir G. Bowen will illustrate this : — " The Governor further reminded Ministers that all control over the troops " remaining in this Colony had been taken out of his hands; that he had not re- " ceived from the Colonial Office copies of the orders respecting those troops, " issued to the Naval and Military authorities in this command; and that, when " the Under Secretary of State (the Right Honorable W. Monsell) had recently " been asked, in the House of Commons, if the Governor of New Zealand had' " poAver, under any circumstances whatever, to delay the departure of the 18th " Regiment, Mr. Monsell had replied most emphatically in the negative ; that, in " fact, the final orders for the immediate and entire removal of the troops had been " sent, not to the Governor, but to General Chute, and that General Chute, as " Avas seen from his letter of the 17th June ultimo, had already taken steps, Avith- " out any reference to the GoA Ternor, to carry out those orders forthwith; further, " that though styled in his commission ' Commander-in-Chief of New Zealand, " the Governor Avas left so entirely without discretion, and even information, Avith " regard to the Queen's troops, that (as was already known) he had no means of " acquainting the Colonial Ministers with the dates at AAdiich the head-quarters of "the 18th Regiment at Auckland, and the detachments now garrisoning the " principal towns in disturbed districts (Taranaki, Napier, and Wanganui) would " be withdrawn, so that the necessary arrangements might be made for replacing " them with detachments of the Colonial forces." The General so placed, really in a position superior to that of the Governor of New Zealand, was the same officer who had, whilst concealing his acts from the Governor, taken upon himself the power of putting, to death subjects of the Queen, in the manner stated by Colonel Weare. As a natural result of this system, it may be added that Sir George Bowen,

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AND THE GOVERNOR OE NEW ZEALAND.