SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1848.

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 245, 4 October 1848, Page 2

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1848.

K. M. Ship" Dmo," with His Excellency Sir George and Lady Grey, arrived yesterday morning, from Port Nicholson, whence she sailed on the 23id ultimo. A guard of honour, with (he Band and Colour of the 58th lcgiment, were in attendance to receive his Excellency, hut, inconsequence, we presume, of theie being no Government house, to which to marshal the Governor, the troops were marched off; Sir George and his lady landing privately in the course of the We have Wellington papers to the 23rd of September ; and what is better, they are more than commonly amusing. The province which vaunts itself as composed of the most choice exotics ; the province, than which " there n ever was a body of settlers to whom the power of local government could be more wisely and judiciously entrusted," was in a self- representative fever. Its perfectionists have given " a taste of their quality," not in one, butin two spirited exhibitions of their ravenings after political power. We have copied the details of both at full, as also the replies of his Excellency to the Deputations sent to catechise him. To the looker on, the farce must have been an admirable one. The gravity of Sir Gkoroe, the pertinacity of his suitors, who having been long patted on the head, and told they were the very best boys in the world, went clamouring after the lollypop, the promised rewaid of their good behaviour, but which not being, at the moment, healthful for their constitution was denied to their importunity, to their utter disgust and bitter dissatisfaction. They were good, not " upon compulsion," but upon condition, and the condition having been departed fiom, they, also, departed, full of patriotic indignation, or, what amounts to the same thing, of selfish sulks. We congratulate His Excellency on his fortunate escape after such baitings and such badgerings. He may, perhaps, begin to discover that these testy Southrons are " no such great things after all," and that the reviled of Auckland and the North, are " not the worst among the bad." At all events, we have proved our political perceptions to be fully more keen than thoseof oursouthernfellow-colonists ; since, on the in&tant,we deprecated infliction of a constitution,which Governor Grey decried— which New South Wales denied — which Van Diemen's Land despised— which common sense defied— and which none but the Lycurgi of Cook's Straits desired ! It is admirable to •mark the complacency with which these impatient legislators dilate upon the appropriation of the revenue which they say they contribute. They contribute, forsooth! we in our ignorance, deemed it had been derived from the Imperial treasury ! Between the Constitutionalists of the 7th, and the Constitutionalists of the 12th, we could pardon Sir George, if tempted in extremity, to exclaim— 11 A plague o' both your meetings !'' As for the reply of the Governor-in-Chief to the deputation of the meeting of the 7th, we regard it as a very straight forward and sensible exposition of facts. The memorialists indulged in ad captandum analogies of their own form of government, to that of Norfolk Island, not that they believed for one moment ( a syllable of their allegations, but because they j thought the phrase would tell elsewhere. Had i any other settlement, ourselves for example, liave dared to draw such derogatory comparisons, we should have been visited with the | outpourings of the indignant wrath of the outraged Wellingtonians. The Deputation, however, waited upon Sir George, for a specific reply to their clamorous memorial. In plain English— they went with a desire to bully, or to bother him into a consent to afford them an opportunity of demonstrating the truth that " there never was a body of settlers, et ccctcra" They sought to impale him upon the horns of his own assertions— hence, therefore, his reply proved " evasive and unsatisfactory." As to the absolutism of which the Port Nickians complain, we trust it will not be disturbed until we have a constitution on the same basis, (but with a larger infusion of the popular element), as that which, with all its defects, has worked so well in New South Wales. We deprecate, heart and soul, that puppet-show machinery— a Nominee Council ! —that hollow semblance of representative rule, but iron substance of mcsponsible Dictatorship. No, no— Give us the responsible absolutism by which we are now ruled.^ It is. imnnggihlft. reasonably, to question Sir Geokob

" No person can regret more than I do the extent of the powers with which I have been pnti uslcd, and the heavy weight of responsibility which has been thrown upon me." If the weight be wisely and honourably borne, the beaier will deserve the highest honours a grateful country can confer — if he faint, or flag beneath the burden, it is a stone which will crush him to insignificance. Away, then, with that safe political landing place, a Nominee Council ! Naked Despotism is Liberty indeed compared with its fallacious pretences. Colonel Wakefield died on the 19th ultimo, after a severe illness of four days. He was seized with an apoplectic fit as he was leaving the Wellington Baths. Medical aid was of no avail, and he fell a victim, in his foity -eighth year, to that relentless leveller of frail mortality. Death, in his case, appears to have extinguished all hostility. His merits — as they should be — are honourably recorded, his defects buried in a geneious oblivion, liis lemains were followed to the tomb by all the civil and military authorities of Wellington and a large concourse of the population Native , as well as European. The Governor-in-Chief had an interview j with Rangihaeta, at Otaki, on the 13th Sept. The old savage played Captain Grand to the ! life. He asserted that he was unconquered and unchanged, and that he made peace more in accoLdimce with the spirit of the times than in indulgence of his own. Petomi, the murderer of the boy Hobman, will be given up. That excellent old chief, EPuni of Petoni, the friend and one of the chief mourners of the late Colonel Wakefield, has come up in the Dino, with the view of purchasing a vessel here. He is attended by six of his tribe. Licuts. Balnkavis and Coover, of the 58th Regt., are also passengers. The Cornelia, from London the 9th of May, with goods and passengers, arrived ut Wellington the 6th Sept. She was to sail for this port on Monday the 25th. She had but a very small mail, as the Blundeix had sailed from London, with 185 passengers, for Otago, some days prior to her departure. The Hope had arrived in England, and was again laid on for New Zealand. Both the Cornelia and the Raymond are advertised to load at Wellington for London. 11. M. S. Calliope, Captain Edward Stanley, sailed from Wellington for England on the 24th of Aug., but having encountered the Dino off Barrett's Reef, Captain Maxwell detained the frigate until the 2b'th, in order that she might convey the despatches of the Governor-in-Chief, in reply to those received by the Dido. In our next we shall insert the complimentary address presented to Captain Stanley by the Executive Council of the Southern province, and that gallant officer's reply thereto.

In the debate in Parliament, which we, some time since, published, relative to the observance of the Treaty of Waitangi ; allusion was made to a letter of Captain Sotheuy, of 11. M. Sloop Racehorse. We this day transcribe that letter at full, from the Blue Book of 3rd February, illustrating as it does the powerful excitement produced on the Native mind by the spoliatory mistakes of Earl Grey/.