THE MAIL.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 189, 17 August 1870, Page 2

THE MAIL.

THE NEW ZEALAND LOAN.

The Saturday Review says : —" It is often a subject for congratulation when a powerful Cabinet sets logic at defiance. A minister who has committed himself to anjunsound principlt can very seldom be induced to confess and repudiate his blunder. Sometimes, when parties are very equal y divided, this great humiliation may perforce be accepted, but a Cabinet with a majority of more than a hundred must have developed an unusual amount of Christian meekness when it submits to an unequivocal acknowledgment of error.^'ln such cases the utmost that reasonable men will expect or ask is, that the false step should at the same time be justified and retraced, and the true path regained by a sacrifice of logic instead of by a sacrifice of fancied dignity. The modified tone of the colonial policy of Lord Granville affords a remarkable illustration of this wellknown metho t of escaping from a false position. If ever a man committed himself to anything, Lord Granville stood committed to the doctrine that the relations between Great Britain and her colonies were to be governed by the sternest doctrines of political economy. The theory was perfect in its logic, however alien to the feelings of the kindred people at home and beyond s a to whom Lord Granville would have applied it . . . Within a very short time after the promulgation of Lord Granville's doctrines in the matter of the New Zealand war, two occasions have arisen to test the soundness of his unsympathising policy. One was the Red River difficulty in Canada, the other was the New Zealand project of a loan-. In both of these emergencies we are happily able to congratulate the Gove nment on their judicious inconsistency. If it was right to refuse to the New Zealanders the assistance of Government troops in their hard struggle wit h the savage tribes around them, it would, a fortiori, hay • been right to leave the Canadians to put down their rebellious half-bre ds by their own strength; but in the brief interval since Lord Granville's unfortunate despatch to New Zealand a flood of light had been thrown upon the whole subject, and the Government agreed without demur to share the burden of the little expedition by which

Riel and his half-breeds were to be brought back to their allegiance and punished for their crimes This of course was frightfully il!o_ical but it was right, and it will go far to neutralise the mischief of any number of scornful despatches Another evidence of the conversion of th i Cabinet from their sceptical views on colonial matters has just been afforded by the resolution to assist the New Zealanders by guaranteeing the loan which is nc.essary to enable them to fight their battles without the direct support of English troops . . . The colonies had asked for a regiment in their distress, and instead of it they got a sermon, and not all a pleasant sermon, on their duties and responsibilities. ■ s some consolation after this unpalatable dose, it occurred to Lord Granville that the Government might send ' out 50,000 emigrant? in place of 1,000 troops. The project was clumsy, and the precedent rather dangerous, and we do not regret that the Cabinet declined to back it. Emi* gration will go on quite as fast as it ought to do without official forcing, and a much greater effect will be produced by making the Colonies the most attractive places for English emigrants than by paying any number of passages. Lord Granville's newly developed sense of duty to to the Colonies was not exhausted by this first failure, and he fell back upon the plan of guaranteeing a loan, which is perhaps of all things what the colony most desires. Without attempting to lay down any general rule on the subject, we confess we do not see the force of the objections commonly urged against this policy. The risk in the case of any progressive colony —and all our colonies are progressive— is almost imaginary, and the value of the guarantee is very subs'antial . . .It would be difficult to find an instance in which any such guarantee had done a particle of injury to either party, while the pecuniary benefit to a colony of borrowing at three and a half instead of 6 pe_ cent, is tolerably obvious. But it was neessary for" the maintenance of Ministerial consistency to say that their present concession was wholly indefensible, and as the effect on the money market will not be diminished by the singular course which the Government have adopted in reommending their policy, we may congratulate the colony on the arrangement, and the Ministers on their tardy and not very intelligible recognition of principles which they still affect to condemn. The loan is not a matter of very great moment, but, coupled with the Red River arrangement, it may be accepted as a sure indication that the Cabinet have finally broken with the fatal theory of colonial independence which for a time exercisd so strange a fascination over some at least of them."