THE NEXT GOVERNOR OF NEW ZEALAND.

Dunstan Times, Issue 864, 8 November 1878, Page 3

THE NEXT GOVERNOR OF NEW ZEALAND.

By telegram, from London, and published in the Dunedin papers, we learn, it is rumoured that Sir W. W. Cairns has been appointed Governor of New Zealand in place of the Marquis of Normanby, who is transferred to the Governorship of New South Wales. The following short sketch of the li:e of Sir W. W. Cairns, which will be of general interest, wo extract from the Daily Times : Sir William Wellington Cairns, K.C. M.6., was born in the year 1828, and is the second surviving son of the late Captain William C ims, J.P., of Parkmount and Rustpark, County Antrim, Ireland, and of Cultra, County of Down. The eldest surviving son is Earl Cairns, the present Lord Chancellor of England. Sir William left Ireland in 1848 on a visit to the East, where he entered into a course of study to qualify himself to enter the Government Service. He attained this end four years later, when, in 1852, he was appointed a writer in the Civil Service of Ceylon. Steadily persevorirg and working his way upward, he was final'y appointed Postmaster-General, which office he held in 1865, when he took leave ot absence and returned to Gn at Britain. Early in the following year the Lieutenant-Go-vernorship of Malacca, a division of the then newly-constitured Colony of the Crow n the Straits settlement— was confer.el upon him. .Two years later he was appointee Lieutenant-Governor of St, ‘ Christopher, Nevis, and Anquilla in the West Indies, which honourable position he admirably filled until the year 1870, when he was selected to undertake the government i f British Honduras, the only British dependency in Central America, a fact that greatly added to the importance and responsibility of the office. Lord Granville had, before making the appointment, seleeled Sir William Cairns to sit upon the board of inquiry into the condition of the Indian and C liuese immigrants in British Guiana ; but t te preliminary arrangements having pro grossed somewhat slowly in England, it was decided that he should not wait for the constitution of the Board, but should at once proceed to Honduras to take up his position of Lieutenant-Government. In that capacity he fully realised all that, ills previous career predicted, and so high was the opinion in which he was held by the Home authorities, that in 1874 the Earl of Kimberley obtained for him the distinctive niaik of the royal favor in his advancement to the rank of a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St George, and offered him the government of Trinadad, which he accepted, and filled the responsible position with satis faction to the p :ople, amongst whom he secured numerous friends. The climate, however, was to much for his constitution, and as his health was rapidly failing, at the advise of his medical advisers ho resigned his appointment Shortly after his return to Europe, whither he had proceeded on leave of absence, he was offered the Governorship of Queensland, which he accepted and retained until he was appointed Governor of South Australia, early in 1877. At the beginning of the present year he had to relin qnis that governorship on account of illhealth, and to return to England, where he was created a K.C.M G.