WITHDRAWAL OF TROOPS FROM THE COLONIES. [ From the Times.]

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 549, 19 July 1851, Page 4

WITHDRAWAL OF TROOPS FROM THE COLONIES. [ From the Times.]

Lord Grey lias announced his intention to the Governors of Now South Wales and Victoria of reducing the troops in those colonies to a guard for the cities of Sydney and Melbourne, and of only retaining those guards so long as the colonies shall see fit to provide them with suitable quarters. His Lordship reraaiks, with great truth, that there are are no native tribes there capable of engaging in serious hostilities, that there is no fear of a rising on the part of the convicts, and that the duties required from the troops are such as ought rather to be discharged by a corps of police. The colonies, he also remarks, have received representative institutions, and the restrictions heretofore imposed on colonial trade have been removed. We fully acquiesce in the propriety of the step taken by Earl Grey, which we trust will be a precedent for reduction in the enormous military and naval establishments at New Zealand. The colonies will be losers to somo extent by the cessation of the Commissariat expenditure, and by the necessity of providing themselves with a local militia; but these things are not for a moment to be considered in comparison with the interests of the British taxpayer, or tho obvious impolicy of supporting a military force large enough to provoke insult, white it is too small to afford defence. But we do not acquiesce in the justice of this step without having maturely weighed its necessary consequences, and accepted them to their fullest extent. We are of" opinion that it is wise to withdraw our troops from Australia, because the only purpose they could serve there would be tho coercion of our own colonists, and because we think the value of such coercion to the empire is not worth either its expense or its disgrace. It must not be supposed that ■without physical force the old system of governing our colonies can be maintained. The notion of governing by Act of Parliament must be given up for the future, together with the power of enfoicing those acts, and the only influence we can employ to regulate the internal affairs of our colonies must be admonition and persuasion. Not only must this be our course for the future, but we must carefully review tbe past, and tako the utmost care that nothing regarded as a grievance by public opinion in tbe colonies be unredressed. To withdraw our troops, and at the same time to maintain a central Government in Downing-street and obnoxious Acts of Parliament, which have been repeatedly protested against by the colonists, is to expose our laws and authority to insult, and our empire to disruption. The communities of Australia are, we believe, thoroughly loyal, and attached to the British connexion, but to offer them the alternative between laws and institutions which they believe to be ruinous to their interests, and a revolt against those institutions certain to be attended with perfect success and impunity, is to expose that loyalty to too severe a test. It therefore becomes of immense importance to ascertain whether all that is required in the way of redress of giievances imposed by act of Parliament has been done, and whether we have renounced all invidious and irritating pietonsions to interfere with thoae whom we shall put it out of our power to coerce. We presume Loid Grey is of opinion that by passing the bill last session for the government of the Australian colonies he removed for ever all causes of dissention between them and the mother country. He could give no bet'er proof of the sinceiity of his belief than the withdrawal of the troops, and yet we apprehend it will not be difficult to show, that so far from removing the causes of discontent from Australia, the effect of the act of 1850 will be to give the means of expressing it with more bitterness and vehemence through accredited and regular organs. The act gave semi-representative, which will no doubt immediately transform themselves into wholly representative Legislatures ; but with the exception of this privilege, which being sure to be exercised, might as well have been forestalled by Parliament, these Legislatures have no greater powers than their predecessors. The colonists are provided with machinery well adapted for complaint or remonstrance, but impotent for redress. Tho main want of the Australian colonies was not so much liberal as opposed to oligarchical institutions, as local instead of cential government. 'Ihe question was rather how power could be acquired for any authority resident in the colonies, than who that authority should be. Tho main question with them was how the power could bo got out of tbe hands of the Colonial Office ; and until that was solved the future depository of power was little thought of or cared for. And yet it is only to tins secondary and subordinate question that the act of 1850 addresses itself. All the invidious nnd mischievous power of interference with the local affairs of the colonies which tha Colonial Office possessed before the passing of tho act it possesses still ; in that direction not a hair's breadth ha 3 been conceded. All that has been done in to arm the colonies with more efficient instruments of conflict with the home Government, and, by the withdrawal of the troops, to secuie the impunity of any violation of the law. We have mci eased their powers of resistance, but we have in no degree diminished those circumstances which necessarily generate a spit it of discontent. This state oflhings is so pregnant with present peril and future disgrace," that we will not require our readers to take it for granted on our geneial assertion, hut will proceed to illustrate it by details, which will show only too clearly that unless a much moie senrching change in tho relations of this country to her Austialian colonies be effected, must renounce tho hope of governing by affection and loyalty those whom wo no longer claim to coerce by fear. If we are to govern the Australian people on maxims and principles which they do not admit, we ought to retain, or even increase our military force. If we are to recognize for the future no governing power in these colonies but the will of their inhabitants, we must carefully weed from the statute-book every enactment which they disapprove ,but which the theory of their constitution forbids them to repeal. It is perfectly possible to allow them to govern themselves— it is equally possible to force upon them maxims of government which they disapprove ; and to disclaim force, and at the same time to seek to govern them against their will, is an impossibility so glaring and manifest, that we shonld not bave thought it necessary to expose it if wo were not on the point of seeing it attempted. Nor will it be enough to say that the colonists maybe ' mistaken ,in many of their views, since the practical question is, not whether they are in the right, but whe- i ther they believe themselves so, — not whether we approve their views, but whether they are likely to poi« severe in them. The following are some of the principal points in which the colonists of New South Wales and Victoria believe themselves to be aggrieved, — the power possessed by the homo Government to refuse the Royal assent to any act of the Governor and Legislative Council at any time within the limit of two years from the receipt of such act; the power of transporting convicts to the colonies without the consent of their inhabitants ; the powers of the Colonial Office to appropriate large sums out of the colonial revenues raised by local taxation for the payment of salaries, pensions, and the expenses of public worship ; the abuse of patronage by the appointment of incompetent persons, and the virtual absence of responsibility in colonial officials ; the tenure of judicial office at tho pleasure of the Crown, insteaed of on good behaviour; the exaction of long arrears of quit-rent, often more valuable than tho estate out of which they issue ; the appropriation of the revenue derived from Crown lands by the Lords of the Treasury ; and last, and of far greatest importance, the raising of the price of those lands to one pound an acie, with all its results, social, moral, and political. These questions have repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, been urged on the attention of the Colonial Office; they remain at tbis moment unsettled, aud still continue to agitate and excite the public mind in the colonies. We are now about to withdraw the force which has enabled us hitherto to resist the will of the colonists on these points, and we have been at no pains to accommodate or concede the matters in dispute. How long do we expect that mere reverence for an act of Parliament will restrain the wishes of the people? And, when that is once broken through, what other authority are we to invoke ? Were it not wiser to concede what we cannot maintain to respectful entreaty than to see it wrested from us by force, to which wa are prepared beforehand to yield