The New-Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 227, 2 August 1848, Page 2

The New-Zealander.

I3e just and feat not: Let all the ends thou ahns't at, be thy Country's, Ihy God's, and Tiuth's.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 184 8.

His Excellency the Governor-in-Chief, accompanied by Mrs. Grey, will embark, this morning, on board H. M. Ship Calliope, by which vessel he proceeds on a visit to Wellington and the other settlements. His Excellency, it is expected, will be absent some months.

Her Majesty's Ship Calliope, — the first man-of-war which has spent her undivided commission in the serviceof any of the Australasian Colonies, is on the point of instant departure, from a coast where she has covered herself with honour. We are perfectly aware that orders had been received, requiring her return to England, as soon as the exigencies of the colony would admit ; but whether, when revolution is afoot in France, and the spirit of innovation in the ascendant throughout Europe, — whether, at such an eventfnl moment, it would not have been well to have held in abeyance the oider of recall, instead of disarming New Zealand of the only frigate of the thiee small cruisers which constitute her squadron, is a question of policy and of prudence, which we tiust has teen maturely weighed. Be that as it may, we could heartily, have wjshed that, after nearly three years of melitorious and harassing service, during which she has borne the heat and the bin then of the day, the departure of the Calliope had been a little less sudden, if only to have enabled us to offer that paiting tribute of honour and regiet which we feel assured all classes of the community are most desirous to pay. Although the services of Captain Stanley, and his admirable ship's company have not come so prominently before the inhabitants of Auckland, as of their fellow colonists of Wellington, there, nevertheless, are few among us who are not quite as sensible of their high desert, or who would not rejoice in rendeimg as cordial testimony to their worth. The Calliope arrived at the Bay of Islands on the 31st December, 1845, from which anchorage her Marines were at once despatched to the camp at Ruapekapeka. Thither Captain Stanley also lepaired, not with any command, but simply as an amateur. He could not however, lemain inactive, but proffeied his services in construction of a furnace, and volunteered to destroy the enemy's pah with red hot shot ; a measure, which had it been adopted, would have conferred greater renown on the beseigers, than that which they acquired by its subsequent, foitunate, surprise. On the 4th January, 1 846, the Calliope, having previously embarked Captains Laye and NuueNt, Lieutenants Page and Herbert, and a detachment of the 58th regiment, sailed for Wellington. Here commenced a series of the most harassing and perilous duties — the Calliope's dauntless blue jackets, being not only in continual affairs with the enemy, but constantly exposed to the war of elements, — boisterous, to a proverb, in Cook's Strait. There was no skulking in port, no idling at an anchorage, when the honour of either service required that the little frigate should keep the sea — and she has proved as fortunate as brave in escaping the many dangers with which she has been at various places, and on vanous occasions, environed. That she has

not left her bones at one or other of her fiequent scenes of peri} is especially attributable to the professional skill and energetic promptitude of her able Captain— one " every inch a ska man," a worthy pupil of the distinguished school in which he was trained — that of the undaunted Eymouth, and chivalrous Hardy. On the 1-1 utt, on the Porirua, and on the Wanganui rivers, the Calliopes maintained a prominent position, especially at the latter, wheie Lieutenant Holmes evinced the most determined heroism, his many gallant and meritoiious services being eclipsed by his conduct, at this spot, where he and his no less gallant and able coadjutor Captain Laye, of the 58th, reaped largely of " mouth honour breath," although, they have hitherto, been left ungiatified by any of those substantial rewaids so lavishly conferred on others, who possess not a tithe of their claim to such distinction. Justice seems to have been singularly perverted in distributing the prizes of the New Zealand war ; — few if any of the really distinguished have been distinguished, whilst others of questionable pretensions have been exalted. The comparatively insignificant servica in China poured praise on the heads and piofit into the pockets of those engaged—but the far more arduous struggle in the land of the Maoii yielded more kicks than coppers. As it is never too late to do well, we tuist the Admiralty and the Horse Guards will yet revise their accounts, rendering honour and piomotion to those who carved them at the swords point. Thioughout the entire Southern contest Captain Edward Stanley was present. Of every affair he was a participator, not, indeed, in command, because that might have impeded the prospects of his juniors, but as a daring and a dashing volunteer. By his suggestion the capture of the wily Rauparaha was planned, and under Iris able and intrepid leading was it executed, and never did our contemporaiy the Southern Cross bear more faithful record than when he proclaimed that—" The Captain who could design and execute with such despatch and success the delicate task of carrying off a powerful chief from the midst of his people, without the loss of a single man, is not unworthy of being entrusted with any enterprize requiring a combination of caution, promptitude and intiepidity." We trust that rank and honour await Captain Stanley on his arrival in his native land. He is a thorough bred of England's own True Blue, and, if there be any truth in the saw, every way worthy to exemplify the Nelsonic l'almam gui meruit ferut. No man has devoted himself more entirely to the interests of New Zealand. No man has evinced more courtesy or consideration to all classes of her colonists. No Officer in the British Navy List is better qualified, or so well entitled to the Chief Command of her coasts, and no man could hoist a broad pennant vvhich would be hailed with louder acclaim on these waters than Captain Edward Stanley. Health, happiness, and propitious gales attend him and his noble ship's company. In offering our regretful adieus we cannot do so with more heartfelt sincerity than by paraphrasing the valedictory strains of Rob Tloy. " We shall rejoice in your happiness although we may not share it — and, whenever you cast a backward glance at poor New Zealand, dinna forget your friends in Auckland."

We had hoped -we had done with the Governor's northern tour of April last, but it appears that the subject " sticks deep " in the heart of the Southern Cross, whose " chief conductor," if we may judge by his writings, or credit the mature experience of our proprietors, — would fain annihilate the New Zealander, editor, compositors, printers, publishers, and all ! Within seventeen days of the commencement of our editorial duties, the account which a\ c gave of that tour, compiled from a variety of unquestionable sources, and collated with the narratives of several unimpeachable eyewitnesses, was discourteously and unwarrantably contradicted — our polished contemporary hoping, no doubt, that longer residence, and a gi eater presumed accuracy of experience, entitled him to attempt to brow-beat us into acknowledgment of error ; of which, had we been misled, we should at once have made a full and frank avowal. But as there was no local intelligence required — as the question was one of fact, not of opinion, and as we were merely the chroniclers of passing events, we had only to compare the worth of the information supplied us, with the blustering assertions of our energetic contemporary. Of course to a person of his morbid sentimentality, any details of the movements of the Chief Authority, untainted with venom, were sufficient to evoke the denunciations of a journalist whose independence seems to exist in servile indulgence of his own passions and prejudices — in the perversion of facts — and in attributing to his neighbour an unwprthiness of motive of which he himself proclaims the inward force. Hence, assuredly, the desire to decry olr indepeudence ; hence the pitiless but pointless endeavour to stigmatize us as a couitly sattelite, — a minion of authority. We had no wish again to come into contact with the Southern Cross. We should have been content to suffer its editor to luxuriate in

contemplation of his own resplendent greatness, of hebdomadal snappings and snarlings, but that last week, a coystrel scribe, after a lapse of four and twenty days, has had the anonymous effrontery to re-open the question by a wanton attack upon the Rev. Mr. Burrows of Waimate, whose frank and manly testimony to the substantial accuracy of our impugned narrative has evoked a renewed exhibition of spleen. A gentleman of character and condition steps forward, unsolicitedly, to testify to our accuracy. A hilding without name or place is brought forward to bolster up the dicta of our contemporary. Were the writer's insinuations levelled at ourselves we should pass them with the contempt they merit, but when a fair, and honorable, and distant correspondent is falsely accused, and that because of his vindication of our truth, we have no alternative but to give to the calumniator the most full and sweeping contradiction. The anonyme alleges that Mr. Burrows contradicts, " without pointing out one single error in the account given in your journal." Of this there was no necessity, contradiction having been given to the enure account by Mr. Burrows in his confirmation of the accuracy of our statement ; and because of the Rev. gentleman's preference of truth to fiction, he is, like ourselves, stigmatized as a " sattelite," and twitted with being " intoxicated by the reflected glory shed upon his house by the sojourn of the representative of Majesty." It may be that persons of vulgar mind, — such perchance as this Anonyme, might have been " dazzled by the condescension of his Excellency ;" — for individuals unused to good society, are as clamorous against, as " ready to run a muck," for greatness, when thawed by its smiles. But the position of Mr. Burrows is a recognised one, and however courteously disposed towards Captain Grey, as a gentleman and the deputy of his Queen, it is just possible that he felt neither dazzled nor intoxicated by so great a presence. Assuredly, he is infinitely less likely to fawn and cringe, than they are almost invariably found to be, who affect to despise, or who manifest a boorish independence to those in authority. We take our final leave of this profitless discussion, by reminding the correspondent of the Southern Cross that the assertion of any man, who identifies himself, is infinitely superior to that of a concealed detractor, and that the testimony of a gentleman of Mr. Burrows' known worth will " command implicit credence," when anonymous declarations, such as his, will be regarded with suspicion and received with distrust.

The strictures — into publication of which, the proprietors of this Journal were recently and mobt i eluctantly diagged — because of unwarrantable insinuations levelled at them by " the Chief Conductor " of the Southern Cross, haye — as was to be anticipated — stirred the bile of that tetchy individual, even to oveiflow. Instead — when his aspersions were flatly contradicted, both by the Editor and the publishers of the Anglo-Maori Warder — instead of joyfully availing himself of the manly course which such a denial opened up ; with the meanness of a spirit incapable of a just, much less of a generous sentiment, he peisists in his dirty work, by striving with a pettifogging zeal, worthy an Old Bailey practitioner, to torture the true intent and meaning of straightforward words, by renewed imputations upon the proprietors of the New Zealander, and by discreditable insinuations against the truth of the editor of the Warder. However characteristic of the print in which they appear, such quibbling sophisms are unworthy the adoption of any public journalist, much less of one who so clamorously insists upon a purely patriotic independency of purpose. If he himself, indeed, be honest, wherefore so uncharitably intent in insisting upon the dishonesty of others 1 Must every opinion, must every expression, every act, antagonistic to his own, be measured by his immaculate standard 1 In his last number, the chief conductor of the Southern Cross, has conclusively written himself down an editor of finite views and faculties. He proclaims his perceptions to be so bounded — his understanding so narrow that he is positively bewildered, good, easy man, and cannot for the life of him untavel the profound mystery of " surprise and regret at the retirement of the Warder," being entertained by a contemporary who has the temerity to affirm " that the government of Captain Grey has been eminently fortunate, and in many respects, eminently prudent." This is a species of moral pons asinorum, across which his indignant virtue disdains to pass — it is a mystic problem too horrible for this conjuror of one-sided perception to solve. And yet, there is nothing marvellous that we should regret the exit from the literary field of one, whom at the outset, we joyfully hailed as a professed and philanthropic instructor of the native race, — a writer at once eloquent and elegant, — of sound judgment and deep research ; one, moreover, who when he deems himself constrained to write sharply, still couches his .articles in the language and with the courtesy of a gentleman. Can the chief conductor of the Southern Cross, cast even the most fwtive glance upon his own pages,

and be at any loss to detect a just cause of regret for the disappearance of such a contemporary ? Or is it impossible, in his idea, for men of opposite political sentiments to do justice to the ability, or entertain any personal esteem for each other ? If such be his sentiments, they are even more contemptible than those which he imputes to the Governor, whom he (we hope erroneously) taxes with placing an interdict on all future friendly intercourse between government officials and the Editor in question. We must have " confirmation strong," ere we can give credence to an alleged act of domiciliary despotism, such as would have disgraced the worst Pacha in the worst of times. We might be tempted to disclaim, had we ever been fairly chargeable with being " a fulsome flatterer of the Governor" or of writing papers " teeming with adulation and praise of the Governor and his policy," — but as the charge is preferred by a contemporary of i one sided perception and distorted vision, all we need say is that our public independence clashing with his class subservience, is weighed in that balance which has been denounced as an abomination. But the making out a case of indecorous connexion between the machinery of the New Zealanv>fr and the machinery of the Anoio Maori Warder is the pertinacious aim and ungracious object of the Chief Conductor of the Southern Cross, who, with perverse obliquity of vision, forgets that in proving the New Ze*ylandi:r a rogue he must needs stamp the swan that sang so sweetly a vagabond. But what cares he for that, so he were only " artful" enough to work his clumsy " dodge," and plant the Cross upon the necks of the prostrate New Zealander and discomfited Warder. With what a snivelling chuckle would he chant their duarchal epicede ! The indecorous connexion on which he harps is a tub he would fain cast to the whale. A precisely similar connexion to that which he wishes to make out between the Warder and New Zealander at one time existed in Hobart Town. The Tasmanian, the bondsman of Colonel Arthur, and the Colonial Times, — his scourge, both issuing from the same press, printed with the same type, and the property of the same persons — and yet, no one, who knew aught of their machinery, could question the sincerity of the views of either Journal. Our own London experience could supply other examples where rampant Tory and rabid Radicals have been thrown from the same machine : but it is unnecessary, since father and son — brother and brother — are constantly found ranged in political hostility against each other and yet no one, save a casuist of bounded perception, — would dream of stigmatizing their connexion under one roof as indecorous. On the part of the piopiictors we thank the Chief Conductor of the Southern Cross for his distinct and unequivocal reply to their question, and as the Southern Cross is now publicly gazetted as " a purely patriotic undertaking," " we hope we don't intrude" by inquiring whether its profit. 1 , are devoted to patriotic pioseiiuion of penny an acre land claims'?

The personal character of our late ruler? Captain Fitzlloy, has beenjso repeatedly, and, sometimes, so bitterly canvassed, that we cannot but think that an address to that gentleman, from the inhabitants of this capital where his private worth was best known, and accurately appreciated, would prove most opportune at this peculiar juncture, if only, by its echo, to give a vitality to the abla vindication by Lord Stanley, of Captain Fitzßoy's honour and integrity. We offer this suggestion to the unbiassed consideration of our readers.

Government House. — We copy (vm Bell's Wtehhj Messenger, of the 28th of December, 1839, thft following inter* sting descrption of Auckland's first Vice Regal Palace, now no more, The extract may be new to tome, and is, perhaps, worth preserving among the recurdi of the Northern Division of New Zealand. " A Portable House.— Friday the surveyors of the Boird of Ordnance inspected a splendid house, now constructing by Mr. Manning, of High H«]born, in the timber yard of Mr. RichauUun, in the Commercial Road. The house is wholly of wood, and will shortly be taken to pieces ai d transported ,to New Zealand, vrheie, if hen ket up it will form the government house of the colony, »nd will be first inhabited by Captain Hobson, R.N., who has been sent out by the government some months rince as " British resident" in New Zealand. It is larger, more convenient, and more substantial, than the portable housa made for tLe Emperor Napoleon at St. Helena. Its dimensions are 12 J feet in length, 50 feet in breadth, and 24 feet in height. The best Norway deals are used in building, the massive frame woik, upright posts, and roof of which are all bolted and screwed together in such a manner that although as it now stands it is as fiim as any edifice in London, every portion of it may be disconnscted and again connected, if required, in an almost incredible short space of time. The sides, too, are inclosed with stout planking, so fitted together that the shrinking of the wood cannot render the walls less tight, and when painted on the outside they will have the appearance of massive masonry. Ihe roof has two coverings, one of fir plank, furnished here, and the other of shingle, to be provided in the colony. There is but one floor, but the fpace between the ceilings and the gable sides of the roof wou.d be easily converted into h range of bedrooms, and even as it is at present would answer as lumber-rooms. The interior of the building is laid out in 16 rooms, embracing dining and drawing-rooms, d essing, b d, aud serva, ts' rooms. There are albo a school-room, and clerks' and secretaries' offices. Kitchens are to be built detached from the home. The dining aud drawing-rooms are both of great extent, and capable, by opening a large pair of folding doors, of

making a very magnificent apartment. The height of the rooms is 12 feet, and their sides arc beautiful Bpecimens of partition work, and every room will be furnished with a stove, the marble chimney-pieces, &<•,, being all ready (o set up in the colony. Every article of furniture will be fitted to the house before it it taken down, and will then be sent out with it. The most ingenious methods have been taken to present the ieaair from injuring the doors and pat ti> ions, and no glue is used in their manufacture. Theie is ingress and egress from each room by French casements, of which there are 20 pair in the entire building. The casements are already y lazed, and funmhed with Venetian shutters, opening into the terrace verandah being supporlel by iron colutnes, which will give a fine appearance to the build'ng when viewed from a distance. The surveyors of the ordnance appeared well satiofird with the building generally, and a vessel, fxpr«isly chartered dy government for the pur* pose, will convey the mansion to its destination. Its weight is calculated at 250 tons, and its coit 2000/. The interest taken by the government in the building of thia residence cf a colonial official appears to have given much satisfaction to several gentlemen in the eait of London interested in the prosperity of the co lony forming in New Zealand, and has induced a hope that it will soon be recognised as a Britit.h colony, and taken under the direct protection of the government.