The New Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 300, 14 April 1849, Page 2

The New Zealander.

Be just and fear not: Let all tlie ends tl*u aiuib't at, be thy Country's, Thy Goo's, and Fruth's.

SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1849.

"Never, perhaps, at any epoch was England so unpopular with the nations of Europe as at the present moment. Never was it more suspected, more denounced, more stamped as feeble, envious, malignant, and illiberal!" So writes the Daily News, of the 13th of October : — with what degree of accuracy we are unable to state. Had the allegations been of Colonial reference, we lament to know, that we must have confirmed the facts, in all their particulars, and with regard to every colony which has come within our extended personal observation. If to create colonies to coerce and to estrange them, be a means to ensure unpopularity, England may rejoice in the knowledge that — throughout that empire of hers, upon which, it is her vaunt, the sun never sets, — she has earned the merited reputation of being the most wantonly heartless of step-dames ! That reputation she has acquired by many and discreditable departures from the path of duty and of honour. By encouraging, nay, even by seducing, her children to self expatriation, under false pretences, and under fictitious guarantees of National Faith — solemn pledges proclaimed by her Colonial Ministers of today, but nevertheless, unscrupulously set aside, or perfidiously repudiated by their successors of the morrow ! Need we, in proof, do more than instance, in 1840, New South Wales enfranchised from penal bondage, and New Zealand founded, upon the distinct and positive assurance, that no taint of convictism should ever sully her shores: — pointing, now, in 1849, to New South Wales re-felonized, and New Zealand menaced with a like pestilence ? What but an odious unpopularity — what but a bitter, because most unwilling, estrangement can result towards a nation which permits any minister thus to trifle with the feelings, to trample the liberties of the distant scions of her remote and oppressed possessions I We perceive, a paragraph, going, as it is called, the round of the press, to the effect, that the erection of a new Colonial Office is to be undertaken forthwith. It would be well, were England, ere she squanders her people's hard won means in construction of such a pile, to institute a searching inquiry into the good or the evil which her Colonial Office system has achieved. If that system should be found to be as rotten as the crypt its familiars wish to evacuate, will England seek to perpetuate such an unconstitutional bureaucracy — imparting additional potency to a domination, already the most ! intolerable to her transmarine possessions 1 Let her sift to the core that Oligarchy, so fatal to Colonial liberty, so ruinous to Colonial prosperity, and so subversive of British supremacy. Let her unravel its mysteries, unveil Its ignorance, and expose its hollow pretensions, and we much mistake if she prove it not to be more oppressive in its acts—more incapable in its conceptions, more calculated to provoke revolt than the worst middleman that ever rendered Irish landlord and Irish tenantry detestable to each other. The Colonial Office is the proven incubus, the baleful curse beneath which every Colony writhes, against which every Colony exclaims. Without pausing to- question its enormous amount of misplaced Patronage — Without calculating the shoals of parasites and pinmakers, — veritable offspring of the horse leech, — it annually quarters upon every dependency, let us merely consider it in its legislatorial capacity.

Does it ever deign to ascertain the wants or the wishes of the Provinces for whose behoof it must be presumed to be established ? Does it listen to their prayers ? Does it regard their local experience and yield a ready assent in matters of purely local importance — of especial local advantage ? Is it prompt to redress a colonial grievance ? Prone to listen to colonial complaint % If a mistaken policy be exhibited, and a sound one demonstrated is it ready to renounce the error and adopt the truth? Is it scrupulous in observance of its engagements with individuals — in fulfilment of its obligations with communities ? Let j England put the Colonial Office on its trial. — | Let Ijer call the colonies in evidence, and by the concurrent testimony of ALL she will find j that every obstacle to colonial prosperity is an emanation from the Colonial Office — every excitement to colonial estrangement is of Colonial Office growth — every restraint upon colonial industry — every fetter upon colonial developexnent — every motive to colonial discontent and disgust has its beginning and its end in Colonial Office ignorance aggravated by Colonial Office insolence. It is a galling thing to an English spirit to find itself subdued to a colonial endurance ;—; — to witness an eternal and arbitrary intermeddling with the local affairs of far distant provinces, of whose means and motives of prosperity the intermeddlers are as grossly ignorant as they are perversely regardless ; their rules of oonduct evincing no fixed or recognizable principle of justice or equity \ but, on the contrary, being, apparently, the mere escapades of whim or spleen ; an allegation in support of which we would point to the weak colonies, these presenting a safe means for experimental indulgence of quack legislation — subjects for the privileged erratics of Downing-street to test the efficacy of patented pills and potions administered with the most reckless indifference whether they kill or cure. Our friend " Caustic," of the " Weekly Dcs- ! patch, " inquires " What is the use of our j Colonies 1 " We have shown him above that they are, at least, very pretty playthings for the Solons of Downing-street to conjure withal. They are Mammets wherewith to hocuss a nation : — unfailing tributaries to the cormorants of patronage, and place. Caustic insists that his " is a question which is beginning to be very seriously discussed, and to which the ruling powers will, before long, have to give a very explicit answer." In our heart of hearts we rejoice to hear it, because the true use of the colonies is a question of such practical importance to England — of such momentous consequence to the colonies — that the sooner and the more searchingly it is discussed, the sooner " the dark will be light, and the wrong made right -." — for it will, we are convinced, be conclusively shown that England has been as grievously injured, as the colonies have been foully outraged, by the SYSTEMATIC ABUSE they both have suffered. If the Colonies are, and have been, burthens to the parent state, it is no fault of theirs. It is attributable wholly and solely to that foreign and despotic influence which England tolerates and which they are compelled to obey. Reverse their position, and imagine the Colonial Secretary's Office of Australia the controlling pov> er to which England was bound to render implicit obedience. Fancy the legislature of St. S.ephens,its local administration, coerced by that of the Honourable Deas Thomson, and his corps of clerks ! Caustic may smile, but the principle is the same, it is only the power of controul that constitutes the difference, and, as Caustic well knows, tyrannous controul is only endured so long as the ability to resist is wanting. Resistance,however,is a question which, if justice were done, would never require to be mooted. We are English in heart and in spirit. We seek but to be limbs of the same glorious empire. — We contend but for that for which Englishmen in England would never have occasion to open their mouths. We aim at no desire of Imperial legislation. We wish but to order our own local affairs in the way that reason and expe- ' rience demonstrate to be for our own immediate advantage and for our Native country's most especial good. Why should we be bound, as we are and have been, to render passing and passive obedience to the dogmas of a Glenelg, a Normanby, a Russell, a Stanley, a Gladstane, aGrey 1 ,? — all incapable of understanding our HECESSITIES, YET ALL ISSUING THEIR CONFLICTING DICTATIONS WITHIN THE PETTY LIMITS OF TEN Years ! Is there a shadow of sense or reason in such abject subjection 1 Justice there can he none ! Is it possible that the Serfs of a system, which compels them to a course diametrically opposite to their advantage, or drives the^n to take citizenship beneath a foreign flag —is it' possible that they can be other than a burthen to the parent state t We expend money, toil, and life upon our colonial possessions, (writes Caustic,) we tend our brethren to perish abroad, while we are o nelves taxed at home for them. We have gocd reason to ask what are they worth ? But when thia plain question is put, or even hinted at, what a storm of indignation, or what a groan of contempt puti it down in the House of Com mom ! What phrases are turned about dUmembei ing the empire 1 How inipired are Whig and Tory with the glory of the dominion "on which the sun never sets 1 " Well they may be, for whatever may be the value of the co« lunieg to us, there is no doubt whatever about their value to tbt monopolist factionitt*. They see in them the ipieadid viceroyaltirs'to which they can lend their connexions and supporters, and the convenient dustboles iuto irhicb they can Bweep such iuoumbrauccs it

disgrace them, but which venal party declares they must provide for. What a delightful thing it is to be indignant and sublime in the defence of one's own perquisitei ! Hovv magnificent to look down with disdain upon the paltry economists who question the glorious advantage* of providing for the oligarchy ! Precisely ! The crying evil is that the Colonies are made " convenient dust-holes ;" — That the parasites and panders of a class are privileged to jostle the native born, or the old experienced, colonist from almost every available office he could fill to the profit of the State, but which the provided for is too frequently unable to occupy with common ability. The working staff of our Colonies is gigantic — their labours dwarfish to a decree. In fact, they and the Colonial Office are beneficial for no earthly purpose, save an inordinate consumption of stationery, wasted in concoction of despatch and counter despatch, which tend but to mutual mystification and distrust. We hope this pen and paper rule is waxing towards its close. The immigration prayer of Australia has evoked an emigration supplication from Britain. Emigration has induced a consideration of colonization — and that consideration will, we trust, lead to a detection of the good, and an excision of the bad from the Colonial System. Our attention to a subject, upon which we have dwelt with, perhaps, a tedious pertinacity, has, on the present occasion, been elicited by an article, taken from the London Commercial Journal, which we give in another page. That article may suffice to show that the question of Emigration is becoming a National one : — that it is no longer debated as a mere means whereby vent may be found for a section or two of the " o'ercloyed" masses ; but as a principle involving the mutual weal of England and her possessions. Let it once accomplish this position, and " Justice to the Colonies " is certain. Theorists will fail to confront men of practical sense ; and expediency give place to demonstrable efficiency. Let our readers ponder the truths evulgated by the London Journalist. In the past portraiture of Adelaide, drawn by Mr. Sidney, who can fail to be struck with the present likeness of Auckland, which it presents. Is it not, in truth, a fac-simile. And, yet, there is a difference ; for, although our colonists are congregated upon the shores of the Waitel mata — although they are doing a huckstering and unhealthy traffic with each other,— a traffic not of legitimate birth, but an exotic, the fruit of commissariat nurture-— yet they | are doing so upon compulsion. They would gladly till the ground and eat bread by the sweat of their brows, but the land is closed against them. The spirit of Wakefield rules the Colonial Office. It has crushed New South Wales. It has cramped Port Phillip : — and it controuls New Zealand. Again, again, and again we reiterate that until the land restrictions are removed it is hopeless to expect progression much less 'prosperity. We repeat this fact not to enlighten our fellow -colonists or to win their approbation. To them it is a truth too painfully and too detrimentally known — but we proclaim, and we re-echo it, in the hope that it will elicit attention and enlist the sympathy of British Journalists, many of whom delight to eulogize the fertility of our soil, the beauty of our clime, and uphold our claim to the title of the Britain of the South ! These, we assure them, are neither false nor fanciful, but they are empty praises. In the finest Agricultural territory of the Southern Ocean we are dependent upon foreigners for bread, because Downing-street has sealed our rural Jands with a Twenty shillings an acre lock ; whilst suburban patches are closed with a five and twelve pound an acre bolt. — These are barricades as fatal to us as those of Paris to her sons. We implore, therefore, every I brother of the British Broadsheet to speed to our rescue. Let our "Crown Lands be sold for what they will fetch. They will bring their full value. And — to place «//the colonies on an equality — give the emigrant to New Zealand, a land credit for the difference of the cost of passage between Auckland and New York. Do this,^and mark if New Zealand will not speedily deserve her title — "The Britain of the South." — She is especially the country to which (land ! at its marketable value) small capitalists should bend their steps. The droughts of Australia are to her unknown — Failure of crops are unknown — And she possesses, besides, ample elbow room for man and beast to increase and multiply — to create countless happy retreats — innumerable flourishing komesteads.

The Rev. Thos. Buddle, by request of the Committee appointed at the Public Meeting, has, we are informed, prepared a Memorial, in the native tongue, addressed to Her Majesty the Queen, praying that she will graciously be pleased to avert the curse of Convictism from these shores. This Memorial having been drawn up for native signature, it strikes us that it might not only be well to cause it to be circulated by means of the " Maori Messenger," but that it might, moreover, prove judicious were His Excellency the Grovernor,throughthesamech»nnel, to direct the native attention to the subject, and endeavour to elicit their opinion thereupon.