WHAT DOES GOVERNMENT MEAN TO DO WITH NEW ZEALAND?

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 25, 27 August 1842, Page 100

WHAT DOES GOVERNMENT MEAN TO DO WITH NEW ZEALAND?

[From the Colonial Qatette.} The second regular colony of New Zealand — Nelson — has actually been founded; and intelligence has been received of its beginning the business of life under excellent auspices, on the shores of a commodious harbour in Blind Bay, on the northern coast of the Middle Island. Although the site selected is good, it is not the one which a perfectly free choice would have pointed out. The reason why it was selected is one which may very probably turn out to be of little practical importance as regards the mere placing of settlement, but it is of great in other respects. To comprehend that reason thoroughly, a little retrospection is needed. New Zealand has been in process of an unauthorised colonization for a number of years ; and in that way a settlement of some size grew up at the Bay of Islands, on the north-eastern shore of the North Island. The first colony direct from England was established on the south-eastern corner of the same island, at Port Nicholson. A body of settlers from Plymouth placed themselves on the south-western corner; and on the southern coast of the Northern Island were to be found the great bulk of the European settlers. On the south-western corner of Middle Island is Dusky Bay, the most important of the whaling stations. Over the British territory, which was first planted by private enterprise, and then recognized by her Majesty's Government, a Governor was appointed. In the King's ship Rattlesnake, Captain William Hobson bad surveyed, some part of the coasts of New Zealand, and had " discovered" Waiteraata, a port which may yet possess considerable importance; but it is not sufficiently open to the sea, nor so eligible in respect of neighbouring lands, as to have been thought of by any of the bodies of settlers which have already peopled the shores of New Zealand. Perhaps it was the vanity of a discoverer which induced Captain Hobson to fix the seat of his government, not where the bulk of the regular colonizers were to be found, on the northern shore of Cook's Strait, nor even on the north-eastern coast, at the Bay of Islands, where the great body of stragglers from New South Wales had settled, but in the vicinity of Waitemata, at a spot, hitherto uninhabited, on the north-western coast. Other motives have been attributed to Captain Hobson, some of them not much to his credit; but of these we decline the investigation. Suffice it to state that, once committed to establish the seat of government at a distance from the governed, he found'himself engaged in a profitless war with circumstances. Some kind of government at the other settlements was necessary ; and hence, as he persisted in maintaining a staff of Government officers where they were not needed, other staffs of officers had to be appointed where they were needed ; and a double expenditure had to be incurred, one set for the colonists, and another set for the complete maintenance of what may be called his abstract government at Auckland. But, inasmuch as a government literally without a people on the spot to be governed was an absurdity too monstrous to be endured, Governor Hobson has found it desirable to induce some persons to come to Auckland to be. governed, for the credit of his office ; and high wages, opportunities of land-jobbing, and expectations of patronage, are said to have been the inducements that assembled a small number of adventurers round his person. In the mean time had arrived a body of French settlers, charged to maintain a claim set up on the part of France to a concurrent right of occupation in New Zealand. They landed, under protest of a British officer, at Akaroa, on Banks's Peninsula, which projects from the eastern coast of the Middle Island, about half way down. They asserted, but without hostility or vehemence, their right of occupation : a body of British settlers, equal in number to themselves, were drawn to the spot by the opportunities of trade; and the French claim was gradually expiring under the extinguishing influence of numbers and the force of events. Such was the state of affairs in New Zealand when the second great body of colonists from England approached its shores, to found the settlement at Nelson. Before their arrival, the Company's chief Agent, Colonel William Wakefield, had caused a survey to be made of part of the coast of Middle Island, which was thought likely to suit the purpose. From the report of the surveying party, Captain Arthur Wakefield, R.N., the leader of the second colony, fixed upon Port Cooper, a capacious harbour on Banks's Peninsula; and there Nelson Vould have been founded, but that Captain Hobson interposed his veto. There was in New Zealand no person so well fitted to select the •ite for the second colony as Captain Arthur Wakefield: as the Company^ Agent he had the authority to make the choice for their interests ; and as a naval officer of great experience and high repute, at the receipt of the best accessible information, and a thorough master of the new theories and practice of colonizing, he was most able to form a correct judgment. * Port Cooper is a fine harbour for shipping : it res well for communication with the most distant European station, Dusky Bay: it is situate in the very midst of the widest interval on the eastern coast (the western coast is not so well furnished with harbours) between the British settlements ; and a colony founded there would have helped to consolidate the British authority within the shores of its new territory ; and even considered in reference to the neighbouring settlement of the French, the planting so large a body on the spot would have been a peaceable and an effectual way of smothering the claim of the foreigners, which is now of more importance

as a possible source of future embarrassment and contention than o/ real danger to British rights. Port Co6per, however* happens to be a few miles to the south of the boundary of the Company's territory; and, seizing advantage of that circumstance, Captain Hobson, instead of forwarding the sale and settlement of the land, forbade the choice. In the absence of any publicly-declared reason for so extraordinary a proceeding, we are driven to conjecture. Had another large settlement been formed so far south, Governor Hobson's position at Auckland would have become more untenable than ever; if the New Zealand Gazette is right, he has confessed that if the second colony were placed in the Middle Island, either he must move the seat of government to Cook's Strait, or tjwfre must be a second Government specially for the Middle Island. It is even asserted that he has so far forgot his station as an officer of the British Crown, and his duty as the paternal guardian of the infant dependency, as to set up the claim of a French company in bar of British occupation! It is consistent with this view of his conduct that he endeavoured to persuade the leader of the Nelson colony to take up a position in the neighbourhood' of Auckland, where the numbers of the new-comers would swell the population of his own peculiar plantation. A portion of the Middle Island, however, had beenrecognized by the Home Government as belonging to the New Zealand Company; and within the bounds a suitable place was found for the location of Nelson. Thus the British colonization of the second island, in spite of every obstacle, has actually commenced. And, no thanks to Captain Hobson, the haven upon which Nelson is pitched proves to be, though^ less than the great harbour of Port Cooper, by no means the' worst in a country which is among the richest in the world in fine harbours; whilst its position in regard to the older settlements of Port Nicholson and New Plymouth, with which it forms a triangle, will probably turn out to be for the immediate advantage of all the settlers. There are a few facts in this short history, which we have endeavoured to set forth with as much calmness as possible, worth the attention of the home politician and the statesman. The great value of the islands — their prospective importance to the British empire — is admitted on all hands. By a lucky chance, the British Government did not miss the opportunity of establishing priority of occupation; partly, to give him his due, through the activity of this very Captain Hobson, who strained his instructions, to cut some difficulty at the moment, by declaring the British sovereignty over the whole of the New Zealand groupe. To consolidate our authority there — to have it established in the smoothest manner possible — to make the uninterrupted course of our colonization compensate for the short time of our occupation — should all be paramount objects with the representative of the British Crown. That person, however, has a crotchet of his own, to which those great objects give place. Instead of taking a central position, to extend the power of the Crown over the widest practicable area, he buries the government in an obscure and remote corner of the land. In a country only just born to the civilized world, as yet destitute of a revenue, he launches into heavy expenditure in pursuit of his unauthorized object; counting upon the indulgence of the Home Government, and upon the rising trade of the very settlers whom he wrongs, to supply him with a customs revenue. Other resources failing, he actually addresses himself to training Up, as it were, a dispute with France; encouraging an alien occupation of the larger half of New Zealand, in order to drive the settlers, who are extending the British race over its shores, back within the boundary of the little settlement which he patronizes. The great act of Captain Hobson's administration was to assert British sovereignty over the islands : that sovereignty he himself now seeks to undermine. This plain unvarnished tale of Captain Hobson's deeds has two morals. He may be a skilful sea-captain : until a recent attack of palsy, he may have had a clearer understanding : but, at all events, he now labours under a total misapprehension of the use and duties of a Governor. Every day that he manages the affairs of New Zealand there is imminent risk to weighty interests : he should be removed to some post more suited to his capacity. But here a rule of the Colonial Office in Downing-street intervenes: whatever the complaint against a Governor — however glaring the proofs — whatever the distance — it is an official punctilio of Mr. Mothercountry, that the complaint must be transmitted through the accused himself, accompanied with his own gloss, before it can be listened to at home. That rule may be fair enough in a particular case of inculpation, where individual interests alone are at stake, and where individual evidence alone supports the charge : but where accumulated testimony proves fhe utter unfitness of a man for the exercise of a high discretion remote from the guardianship of the Imperial Government, no individual considerations should prevail. A mere defeat, unexplained, will cause a military commander to be superseded, though some special success alone has been missed; but, in the case of a Colonial Governor, the welfare, perhaps the existence, of an entire' country is involved. New Zealand is many thousands of miles off — the most distant of all the British possessions: we now, in March, learn misdeeds performed in October and November: it will be July, August, or September, before the earliest admonition can be given to the erring Governor : and, supposing that admonition to be of the clearest, most complete, and most peremptory nature, what mischief may not have been added in the interval? It is rtally time that the Government should

begin to appoint Governors of colonies, as well as Consuls at foreign ports, with some view to their qualificatious for the office. As to thegr former, Sir Robert Peel has declared himses% with sufficient explicitness ; but what is Lord Stanley about ?