The Lyttelton Times. Saturday October,28, 1854.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IV, Issue 208, 28 October 1854, Page 5

The Lyttelton Times. Saturday October,2B, 1854.

The questions put by Sir John Pakington on the subject of the mal-adminis-tration of Sir George Geey in New Zealand, and the answers of Mr. Undersecretary Peel, which we published on Wednesday last, will be read with great interest in this Province. The conduct of Sir Geobge Gkey, with respect to the Constitution Act is fresh in the recollection of our readers. We would draw special attention to the article from the London Spectator, which will be found in our columns of to-day, on the subject of Mr. Peel's superficial and flippant manner of dismissing the questions of Sir John PakinGton. Grateful as itis to us to see a a statesman in the position of the late Colonial Secretary so ready to defend a small colony against the illegal acts of a Downing Street Governor, and an English journal of the reputation of the Spectator displaying such an intimate knowledge of the politics of the youngest of English cobnies; the pleasure is damped by finding that the permanent staff of the Colonial Office is as powerful as ever; and that a Governor need not fear to inflict any injustice or insult upon a colony, so long as he has the ear of the clerks of that Department. When we address the Colonial Minister on the subject of our grievances, we do not appeal to the minister of a powerful nation, responsible to that nation's representatives, but to the prejudices and interests of a powerful and patronage-loving bureaucracy. Before the British colonies are rightly governed, —before they become an integral part of the British Empire,—the Colonial Office, as at present constituted, must be destroyed root and branch. No popular feeling at home or abroad influences its proceedings—no experience teaches it wisdom. In vain does a minister, the nominal head, for the time being, of that Department carry through the British Legislature a measure granting a popular constitution to a Colony hitherto despotically governed. The Governor, a Downing-street disciple , receiving, no doubt, his private instructions from the real masters of Downing-street, drives a coach-and-four through that constitution, relying confidently upon the support of the office. In vain the fratner of the constitution, now an ex-minister, brings the delinquencies of the Governor before the House on finding that that officer has managed to thwart and insult the Secretary of the Crown and the freemen of New Zealand. Up starts a willing advocate of the Colonial Office, and one, we may say, by the bye, who is in every respect worthy of that office; Mr. Peel treats the Governor's offences lightly,—the ex-Minister's questions with flippancy, and the complaints of the Colonists as beneath consideration. We are not astonished at Mr, Peel's conduct as an individual. It was

to be expected from him, and when compared with his previous career gives him a claim to consistency which we would not willingly rob him of; but that such a neglect of the complaints of a colony—grossly wronged and expressing just indignation by means of the only Councils to which a voice had been given,—that such favoritism shewn to an unconstitutional Governor should be tolerated in England at the present day is enough to create surprise. There is only one remedy to be thought of now by Colonial Reformers—the destruction of the Colonial Office—the root of the whole evil. Compromise has been triad in vain. War to the knife must be carried on hereafter. A system invented for the Government of Penal Colonies, and matured under the baneful influences of slavery, pernicious alike to the governing and the governed, can no longer be tolerated when it attempts to spread its arms over states possessing constitutional freedom. It would be as just to place the passengers of an emigrant ship under the regulations of a convict transport. One or two more series of questions and answers such as those which passed in the House respecting Governor Sir Geokge Gbey will open the eyes of the English Legislature and'public to the iniquities of a system which shields the offender alike from the indignatioiKof the wronged, and the investigation which his judges are bound to set on foot.