5

A.—3

necessary to impose upon the principle of local self-government in its application to New Zealand. Of course I do not mean by this the general control and supervision of the Imperial Parliament, and of the Queen's Advisers, which is necessary without any reference to such restraints, for the purpose of drawing the line between Imperial questions and such as may justly be considered to belong to the colonial sphere ; but I advert to the necessity tor a due caution in the regulation of the relations of the colony with the aborigines, and of a due vigilance in the maintenance of their just rights. I conceive it to be an undoubted maxim that the Crown should stand in all matters between the colonists and the Natives ; and the reasons which recommend to my mind any arrangements for securing to the former the control of the concerns and of the members of their own community, by no means carry the same presumptive weight if it be attempted to extend them to the support of the proposition that the authority so conceded to them should cover the whole territory of New Zealand, and all persons alike who inhabit it. Independently of any jealousy or suspicion, or of the apprehension of positive evil in any form, I am disposed to think the most natural and obvious mode of providing for our relations with the Native tribes would be to reserve to the Crown a very large share of authority, real as well as nominal, active and not merely dormant, in that department of the functions of the Colonial Government. How this course may be kept free from practical difficulties, by assigning local limits to the exercise of municipal or other representative authority; how to prevent the very injurious consequences which might arise from a separation too sharply defined, in perpetuating jealousy between the races, and in discouraging the incorporation of the less with the more advanced; how to preserve a full scope for the operation of the plan of Native reserves, which, if it can and shall be executed according to its spirit, well deserves, in my judgment, the commendation it has received from a Parliamentary Committee: these are among the problems for the solution of which I expect to derive the most material aid from the free communication of your views. I have no occasion, in a general sketch of this kind, to address you with respect to the New Zealand Company, further than to state my anticipation that all your measures in regard to it will be governed by a desire not only to be in harmony with its agents, but also to render it, according to its powers and within its own sphere, an efficient instrument of colonization. I have, &c, "W. E. Gladstone.

No. 5. Copt of a Despatch from the Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone to Lieutenant-Governor Geet. Sir,— Downing Street, 26th May, 1846. Since I last addressed you on the 18th March, in a Despatch numbered 12, with reference to the affairs of New Zealand, information has been received and events have occurred in this country to which I shall cursorily refer, inasmuch as they form the basis of the further [observations which, on the part of Her Majesty's Government, I have now to convey to you. Her Majesty's Government have learned the failure of Captain Eitzroy's negotiations, and have found that up to the close of the last year the insurgents continued in arms, and no progress other than in the way of preparation had been made towards their reduction. The general effect of the intelligence received from the northern portion of New Zealand has been by no means to diminish, but on the contrary to magnify, the idea which had been previously entertained of the difficulty of the work in which you are engaged, and of the demands which its nearest exigencies are likely to make on your time and attention. It has also appeared from the despatches of the late Governor, and their enclosures, relating to the grants of land at Wellington and Nelson, and from the correspondence between this department and the New Zealand Company, that the difficulties of a different order which have obstructed the progress of the southern settlements, and have effectually shaken the public confidence in this country with regard to their stability, have not been mitigated. The grants of land issued to the Company have conditions annexed to them, of which it is far from my present purpose to determine or to discuss the intrinsic propriety, but of which the consequence has been that, whether wisely or unwisely, the Company and the Company's settlers have declined to avail themselves of them, and have chosen rather to forego the opportunity which they ought to have afforded for an attempt by their means to set at rest those questions with regard to titles to land which have been up to the present time so embarrassing and obstructive. The Company's settlers have also transmitted to this country a petition in which they detail at great length what they conceive to be the causes of all the evils that have so much retarded the prosperity of the colony, and so ruinously wasted the resources of many of its European inhabitants. Nor can it be doubted by Her Majesty's Government that, whoever be the parties to blame, however just or however unjust, the reasoning in which this petition abounds, the case of the parties themselves is one that loudly calls upon the Government and the Legislature for sympathy and, if it may be so, for aid. Lastly, a correspondence with the New Zealand Company has been in progress, from which it has now appeared that, while the assets of that body amount to only £52,000, its liabilities are not less than £349,000; that its means of carrying on the work of colonization are exhausted; and that its restoration to a condition in which it can be made serviceable to the public for that end has become a work of the greatest difficulty. The occasion for speedy relief is urgent; unless, indeed, it be speedy it must be unavailing; and yet the accounts which have been received from the colony all point towards the conclusion that a long time might elapse, even under the most favourable supposition, before measures devised on the spot and recommended by you for adoption at Home could, in the ordinary course, receive the sanction of Her Majesty, and then, after their retransmission to the colony, be carried into effect. The New Zealand Company itself has submitted to the Government a remedial project, which they have found it their duty to decline, for reasons which you will find indicated in Lord Lyttelton's letter to Mr. Harrington of the 30th April, of which a copy is annexed. It is, however, an object of great importance to re-establish, if it be practicable, and with the least possible delay, the confidence of the British public with respect to the colonization of New Zealand,