THE GOVERNOR OF NEW ZEALAND.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 5, 13 July 1865, Page 1

THE GOVERNOR OF NEW ZEALAND.

[From the|Economist, March IL] The debate on Mr A. Mill’s motion in the House of Commons can scarcely receive any adequate comment from us. But there is one point in the documents recently presented to parliament on which there can scarcely fail to have been some discussion, and on which we think all parties ought to be able to come to a distinct conclusion, —we mean the vacillating and unworthy conduct and policy of the Governor of New Zealand. Upon any one who will follow honestly the innumerable misunderstandings and tortuous paths through which the Governor leads his so-called “ responsible advisers,” one inference, if no more, will at least be forced, — that the Governor of New Zealand ought to be recalled. It is obvious that he commands the confidence of no party in New Zealand, —neither the peace party in Canterbury, headed by Mr Fitz Gerald, nor of the war party in the northern island, nor of the natives, whether at peace or in rebellion, nor of any one. Whoever may be able to settle those perplexities, Sir Geo. Grey can never do so, because to make a durable peace demands a confidence in the Executive, first on the part of the settlers, then on the part of the natives, and lastly on the part of the Home Government. What confidence Mr Cardwell may feel in Sir George we cannot tell, but we should think that any impartial man who has read the last little controversy between him and his Cabinet on the confiscation policy would find it difficult to feel any considerable confidence in the straightforwardness of his actions or the candour of his language. But whatever inferences (if any) Mr. Cardwell may have drawn from the huge mass of uninviting and ill-digested evidence that has been laid before him, we know very well the opinions entertained of the Governor by the Maoris and the settlers of all classes, and we know that it is one of deeply-rooted distrust. Even the new Minister, Mr Weld, had to extract from the Governor, in writing, a promise, to support a definite policy before he would attempt the task of forming a Cabinet. The old Ministry have expressed their opinion of Sir George Grey’s unhappy forgetfulness of the view to which he had pledged himself in various emphatic ways. And the natives in their quaint language explain that Sir George Grey burrows “ like a rat,” or moves in a circle, or is in other ways a slippeiy man to deal with, though they can trust the lieutenant-general and even the Ministers.

We might give many illustrations of this, but they would be too technical, and involve too many unpronounceable names and mysterious matters to carry conviction to our readers. But there is one little matter which lies within a small compass. There can be no doubt that the late Duke of Newcastle was more favorable on the whole to the policy of the settlers than his successor Mr Cardwell. Mr Cardwell explains the difference by saying that the policy approved when only a few of her Majesty’s troops were in the colony, is rightly disapproved and changed when we become responsible for a much larger portion of the expense of war. However that may be, it seems pretty certain that during the Duke of Newcastle’s illness in the spring of last year, while the Government were getting seriously alarmed about the war, the tone of the instructions from home suddenly changed,—a change which is as suddenly marked in Sir George Grey’s tone to his Ministers on native land questions in May 1864. On Mr Cardwell’s accession to office in April 1864, the change was still more emphasised, and we find a corresponding veer in Sir George Grey’s attitude in June, when he first received Mr Cardwell’s instructions, and addresses his, replies to him in place of the late Duke' of Newcastle. Of course it is not of this that any reasonable person will complain. If a Colonial Governor does not obey his instructions from home, be is not doing his duty. Mr Cardwell instructed Sir George Grey very explicitly to limit as closely as possible the needful Confiscation of the native lands, and it is clear that for a month or two before Mr Cardwell’s accession ha had been pressed from home in like manner, to soothe

the natives and conciliate them into peace. For obeying these instructions he certainly deserves no blame. But what does seem to us utterly discreditable in his conduct is that having been, as is clearly shown, up to the spring of 1864 one of the most zealous for the confiscation policy which he had formerly carried out in the Cape of Good Hope, he now turned round upon his Ministers, strove to represent himself as having always endeavoured to curb their zeal for confiscation, and to gain the credit with the Home Government of having stood between the policy of the settlers and the interests of the natives.

The crisis on this question (which had been preparing throughout May) came on the 28th June, no doubt on the reception of Mr Cardwell's first despatches. Sir George Grey, in a minute on the 28th June, expressly charged his Ministers with having refused to carry out the more moderate policy which he had advocated from the first of confiscating only a little bit of the Waikato lands in the interior for the military settlers, instead of giving them a frontier to protect extending from Raglan to Tauranga, as had been agreed upon. The Governor suddenly discovered that he had all along wished the military settlers to be located in the interior, and had frequently urged it on his Ministers. “ The first time,” he concludes his memorandum, “ the Governor was made aware that no part of his plan would be acted upon, was by the Minister for Colonial Defence, at Pukerimu, on the loth April last.”

This was, in effect, to charge the Ministers with having distinctly thwarted the Governor’s plans (sanctioned by them) for the pacification of the colony, and this Sir George Grey reiterates in a more or less indistinct form throughout the subsequent quarrel. The particular question at issue was one between giving the military settlers a more advanced or less advanced line to defend—the less advanced line (the Governor’s) being in fact quite inadequate to settle more than 1300 of them, while the plans agreed upon had invited 20,000 to the colony for this purpose. The Ministers were naturally both surprised and aggrieved, and replied to Sir George Grey, that so far from not intending to act upon his plans at all, they supposed till that moment they had been carried out in every detail; the smaller plan referred to by the Governor was not and never had been one for the military settlers, but was a plan of campaign, the posts in which were to be held by regular soldiers only as a basis for further operations. The plan to which the Governor now referred to as his own plan for a permanent military settlement had been stated by the Ministers and accepted by him a year before in the following words, as the plan “ which (the Governor) would recommend for the defence of the southern frontier of the settled districts of the province of Auckland and the establishment of a basis for further military operations in the interior of the enemy’s country.” And as such it had been carried out, the military posts had been occupied by soldiers, the further operations had been successfully pursued, and now when the Governor was asked to establish the permanent frontier of military settlements, he refers back to bis old plan for the campaign, and tries to persuade his Ministers that he had never intended to go further. Mr Reader Wood, the Colonial Treasurer, who came to England last year expressly to explain the plans of the Colonial Government, and to negotiate our guarantee of the loan, reminds his Excellence that, upon leaving New Zealand in December, 1863, he expressly asked if Sir George Grey was quite in harmony with the colonial administration on the point of confiscation and military settlements, and that Sir George Grey replied, “ i/ anything, he went further” than his Ministers. Mr Wood asked, “ In what direction ?” and Sir George Grey said in reply, “You would give them (the rebel natives) back their land, but I would not.” Mr wood said, in that case, the natives would be driven to despair. The Governor replied, “No, that would not be the case, as other tribes in different parts of the country would give them land enough for their wants.” Of course, Sir George Gr*y “is unable to recall

to his recollection this conversation in the form in which it is stated, 5 ’ but he cannot either deny it, or say it was absolutely irreconcileable with his views. The Colonial Ministers show by the most explicit and numerous extracts from their own manifestoes, that there was no manner of doubt about their policy, and that the Governor had expressly acquiesced in it. Instead of adhering to a scheme which would settle ouly about 1300 military settlers, the Ministers had on the 13st July 1863, received the assent of the Governor to a plan for settling 5000 ; and when the Assembly met the number 5000 was increased to 20,000 —the Governor still assenting to all the measures, the <£3,000,000 Loan Bill amongst the number, rendered requisite by that enlargement of policy, and which would have been absurd without some such policy to back it. The Colonial Treasurer had traced with his own hand before leaving for England, in an interview with the Governor, a line for. the proposed military frontier far beyond that now asserted by the Governor as bis own, and the Governor himself produces the tracing. In a speech of the Colonial Treasurer, from which the GoGovernor quotes as a proof of the intermediate nature of the Colonial Minister’s schemes, Mr Wood had said——“ The interest and sinking fund of this loan will be, in the first instauee, of course charged upon the general revenue of the whole colony, but when the lands in rebel districts are taken and sold, the loan itself will be a first charge upon the proceeds of the sale thereof. Exactly what amount of Land will be available it is difficult to say but if we take all the land that belongs to the rebel natives in the Thames and Waikato, at Taranaki and at Wanganui, I think there will be nearly, after locating the settlers upon it, a balance of something closely approaching to 2,000,000 acres. And we consider that though it will be impossible to realise upon that all at once, yet before very long the proceeds of these sales will repay the whole of the expenditure that we now ask the House to grant.” In his speech in the House of Representatives on the second reading of the Loan Bill, as reported in the Southern Cross newspaper, and substantially correct, the Colonial Treasurer said “If we take the whole area of land in rebel districts it will be found that it amounts to eight and a half million acres, and we have obtained information from persons well acquainted with the districts and the quality of the land, that one-half of it will be available for settlement; therefore we have for settlement 4,250,000 acres. If we deduct the quantity required for the location of European settlers and natives, there will be a balance of 3,000,000 for sale, reserves, and for the preservation of the territory of those loyal natives who may not be desirous of disposing of their lands. I said there was a balance of 3,000,000 of acres, and supposing we set apart 500,000 acres for roads and reserves, and 1,000,000 for land that may be retained by loyal natives, it will still leave 1,500,000 acres for sale. Of course it would not be desirable, if it were even possible, to dispose of this land at once, but by bringing it into market judiciously, it appears to us that 1,500,000 acres economically dealt with and properly sold, will realise at the very least £2 per acre, and £3,000,000 will be obtained at the time these arrangements are completed.”

This surely was explicit enough to show that the Government never dreamt of proposing a scheme of confiscation which would support at most some 1300 or 1500 settlers, and at this time Sir George Grey had never once intimated any doubts as to the desirability of carrying out these measuies. Indeed ho had formally written his approval of a plan far larger than the one on which he now falls back as his own,—and which was his own, but never meant as apian for defending the permanent frontier, but only a plan establishing a base fora campaign. We can scarcely believe that the Colonial Office can itself trust a Governor capable of taking credit for a policy which was not only not his own, but utterly inconsistent with all his steps and measures. It is not Sir G. Grey’s changes of policy, it is bis attempt to throw discredit on a policy demonstrably his own a short time ago, which renders all genuine trust in him on the part of either settlers ur

natives impossible. No correspondence more discrediting, more crushing to a Colonial Governor, than this little correspondence with the late ministers on his startling but unconfessed change cf view, has ever come under our notice. The first condition of any permanent solution of these perplexities is his recall.