The Anglo-Maori Warder. THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1848.

Anglo-Maori Warder, Volume 1, Issue 19, 31 August 1848, Page 2

The Anglo-Maori Warder. THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1848.

In another column will be found some pungent observations of the Times upon the New Zealand constitution, well worth perusal. It is pleasant to observe how the higher class of English journals is coming round into acknowledgment of thi ibsurdity of LordGßEY's pet piece of handiwork. Althongh they were betrayed for the most part into approbation of it in the beginning, softened into good humour by the apparent liberality of the concession, they have now fallen away from his Lordship, one by one, vieing with each other in ridicule of the elaborate scheme. And it is still more pleasant to perceive that the plain, practical good sense of the Northern settlers, who were never led away by the specious offer, but repudiated it from the first, is How openly confessed. With a simple inversion of terms, GovernorGßEV's famous dictum would have been true enough. It was not that they i were unfit for the constitution, but that the constution was unfit for them, which tbey now enjoy the credit of having been the first to perceive. The Governor's visit to the South, with power to bring the constitution, or something at all events very like it, into operation in that province, has revived the interest of the subject. The inconsistency of Lord Grey, who spoke some while ago of " the inconvenience that would arise from granting to one part of the colony institutions that are withheld for a season from the other," is not worth dwelling on. Possibly the opportunity of pleasing both provinces at once—if such a thing be ever considered—the Southrons, by granting, and the Northmen, by rejecting it, might still prove too tempting to be thrown away. Tfet we cannot bring ourselves to believe that Captain Grey would so far stultify himself, as to make trial of the scheme in all its original completeness of miscontrivance. But a slice of it, and a thick one to boot, he must concede, under penalty of being driven to acknowledge that he once talked a little too fast about the comparative fitness of the two provinces to be entrusted with local self-government. There is no escaping from the dilemma, for words and promises alone will no longer go down, even in that quarter. But what if it should prove, after all, that they care no more about it in reality than we ourselves! There are many here who hold a shrewd suspicion—a most uncharitable one, it must be allowed—that the main cause of that impatience of delay which they have shewn, is generated by the very excusable desire of maki lg manifest to the world, by a practical illustration, that superiority of intelligence which now only rests on the frail support of a dispatch: that they are willing to saddle themselves with an incumbrance, for the sake of saying to their northern neighbours, " we have obtained what you are not yet trusted with." Were we maliciously disposed, we should wish to see the whole, in its original intricacy of design conceded to them, '" animorum fmpulsu et cat ca magnaque cupidine ductis, (always, of course, excepting the spoliation paragraphs), that they might lick it into shape for us against the time when it shall be wanted iu the North.