The New-Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 3, Issue 192, 1 April 1848, Page 2

The New-Zealander.

Be just and fear not: Let all the ends tliou ainib't at, be thy Country's, Thy God's, and Truth's.

SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 184 8.

A most delicious comedy has lately been pJayed in Broad Street Buildings. A special general court of proprietors was held, for the purpose of authorising the directors of the company, to accept a loan of £1 36,000 from the Lords of the Tieasury. Even this, the main purpose of the meeting, although a necessary formality, as every one knows, provokes an involuntary smile ; there is something ludicrous in this shew of delicacy about acceptance of the money, which seems to have given a similar tone to the rest of their proceedings. The secretary opened the meeting by reading a report, from which, as usual, nothing is to be gleaned on any subject about which we could have desired more particularly to be informed. It "begins by telling us how all the demesne lands of the Crown in the whole of the Middle and of Stewarts island, and in the southern part of the northern island, are absolutely vested in the New Zealand Company, " confided to them," to use their own expression, in the fullest simplicity of trusty By which phrase, " demesne lands of the Crown,"— while carefully and remarkably avoiding any allusion to the recent purchase of the Wairau— they evidently affect to understand what Lord Grey himself at one time understood, and still look forward with complacency to that wholesale spoliation of the natives, which was threatened in the notorious instructions. Whatever the Company may deem it expedient to say, it is difficult to believe that upon that point it could be still deceived ; that it was still unaware -what bitter disappointment lay in store. For of the ultimate security of native rights, it may be assumed that no reasonable man can any longer entertain a doubt. The mischief that has been already done by the bare proposal of an infringement of them, the expenditure of" British blood and money," that would be required to put the Company in possession, is argument decisive enough, even were every principle of justice sunk and forgotten. But his Lordship's wholesale generosity resembles that of the Pope who graciously bestowed a couple of continents on the Kings of Spain and Portugal; on the one, whatever he could find towards the west; on the other, possession of all discoveries in the east, There was an amplitude of liberality about such matters in the sixteenth century, which would seem to have called up a spirit of corresponding emulation in the nineteenth. The only difference to be perceived is this, that our modern free gifts are something less in value, and something rcore troublesome when it comes to entering upon actual possession. The next paragraph of' the report is so remarkable, that we copy it, word for word,

•' The aim of this Company is not confined to mere emigration, but is directed, as you have been long aware, to colonization, in its ancient and systematic formi Its object is, to transplant English society with its various gradations in due proportions, carrying out our laws, customs, associations, habits, manners, feelings, — everything of England, in short, but the soil. We desire so now to cast the foundations of the colony, that in a few generations New Zealand shall offer to th world a counterpart of our conntry, in all the most cherished peculiarities of our own social system, and national character, as wel! as in wealth and power." Would that they could do it— that it were even possible to be done. But it is all a vain and empty boast. For the habits, the manneis, and the feelings are not to be preserved. No man loses his nationality so quickly as the Englishman. Once transplanted from his home — whether towards the west or east, no matter — he immediately assumes the characteristics of the American, to a greater or less degree. He may be as good a man as he was ; a better, perhaps ; for it is all a matter of taste ; but he is no longer an Englishman. And the older the colony, the longer the succession of generations in it, the more clearly is this distinction marked. The company will transplant " everything of England, but the soil." It will transplant nothing of England, but the soil; and that it may do at pleasure- There would at fill events, be excellent and ancient example for the ceremony. For we read in Plutarch, that the day which gave birth to a city or a colony, was celebrated by the Romans with imposing rites, one of which was the filling up of a large hole which had been dug for that purpose, with handfuls of earth, which each of the settlers had brought from the place of his birth, by way of adopting his new country. An Irishman would have shewn them how to overcome this difficulty with ease ; for transplantation of the soil would have been no novelty to him. Sir Condy Rackrent's electioneering device can have hardly been so soon forgotten. •' Many of our freeholders," —-it is honest Thady Quirk who tells the tale. — •' were knocked off, having never a freehold that they could safely swear to, and Sir ' Condy was not willing to have any man perjure himself for his sake, as was done on j the other side, God knows, but no matter for that. — Some of our friends were dumbfounded, b> the lawyers asking them, Had I they ever been npon the ground where their freeholds lay ?— Now, Sir Condy being tender of the consciences of them that had not been on the ground, and so could not swear to a freehold, when cross-examined by them lawyers, sent out for a couple of cleaves-full of the sods of his farm of Gulteeshinnagh ; and as soon as the sods came into town, he set each man upon his sod, and so then, ever after they could fairly swear they had been | upon the ground." The Company's impossibilities seem feasible enough, while its undertakings remain impracticable. The report then goes on to expatiate in glowing terms upon the rights and institutions, offering the benefits of local and municipal self-government, which Her Majesty has been pleased to confer. That we are now in possession of something like a Charter, is true enough ; but that we either have, or shall have, rights and liberties more than we had before, no one here seems blind enough to suppose. We shall find ourselves still powerless in the hands of government, as we have been hitherto. The machine hits been taken to pieces, and reconstructed with a different arrangement of the wheels, but its force remains the same. The difference, if there be any at all, is too small to be appreciated ; we ourselves, at all events, have no eye for such microscopic distinctions. The shadow of representation has been offered to the colony, but little of the reality ; control over the supplies has been nominally conceded, but the sting, by a single reservation, has been carefully extracted irom it. It calls to mind the time worn joke of acting the tragedy of Hamlet, the part of Hamlet himself being unavoidably left out. Not only that, but the very mass of ordinances in which we are entangled, hold us safe in a net, through the meshes of which not even a minnow, or a stickle-back, — much less a full grown gudgeon — would be able to escape. We do not utter this by way of complaint ; it is very possible that self government might be fraught with as much danger to so young a colony as it would be to a child ; but still would much prefer to hear things called I by their right names, and assert without hesitation, that a greater delusion than Lord Grey's so called gift of rights was never offered to a country. And that will be clear to all so soon as our constitution shall come to work. His Lordship has underrated us in supposing that we are likely to receive with thanlis his gracious permission to play at politics, — to waste time that might be profitably employed in amusing ourselves with so mere an unreality. But the most amusing part of the Secretary's lecture is the lively anticipation by the

directors, of advantage to the Company, 3nd to New Zealand generally, by the appointment of John Welsfo/d Cowell, Esq., as Her Majesty's commissioner. Advantage to the colony m ay be possible enough, {or anything that is yet known to the contrary ; but to the Company — with which he has already contrived to play at cross purposes in the most ludicrous manner — it is already more than problematical. For his comments upon the memorial which was some while since sent home by the Cook's Straits settlers, representing the injustice of the Company's proceedings, and signed by nearly all the influential men among them, are said to have driven them nearly frantic with rage. And it is matter of small surprise, if all that we have heard of the Commissioners diatribe be true. The next arrival fiom the south will have a tale to tell. Perhaps the most remarkable feature about the meeting, although of a negative character, was this ; that not one word, if the Report be complete, fell from the lips of auy one there about the Natives. Yet nearly every other important question connected with the Colonywas touched upon, directly, or incidentally, while the existence of a Maori population,-— which we at Auckland are accustomed to consider the most valuable portion of her last acquisition to the Mother country — seemed to be unrecognized or altogether forgotten. Could, any surer sign have been given, of the spirit in which this great enterpnze is henceforward to be conducted ?