THE NEW ZEALAND BILL. (From the "Spectator," May 29.)

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 673, 25 September 1852, Page 4

THE NEW ZEALAND BILL. (From the "Spectator," May 29.)

Tlie New Zealand Government Bill must be disposed of somehow. It must either pass as it is — or be altered, for better or worse — or be abandoned, or thrown out. No one can dispute these ■alternatives ; no one, we think, will hesitate as to which is the best. It is impossible to affirm Sir John Pakington's measure to be perfect. It has many blots : a nominated upper chamber — a nominated provincial superintendent — the veto reserved to Downing-street upon all acts of the General Legislature, of whatever kind, great or small, local or imperial — a civil list withdrawn from the control of the colonists — an apple of discord thrown down between the Central and Provincial Legislatures by giving them a common field of jurisdiction, — these are faults obvious and undeniable. It may be hoped that the obstinacy of Government in maintaining them will not be insuperable, and that the opportunity of Committee will not be lost, for amending the bill in these particulars. Still, upon the whole, we arc inclined to agree with Mr. Gladstone, and, seeing the good which it contains, we would take the bill even with its faults. It has some distinguishing excellences : the exclusion of the nominee element from the Provincial Councils— the surrender of waste lands to the colonists — the power of passing local acts through Provincial Councils without reference to England, — these are mighty steps in advance in the art of constitution-making for our Colonies. Sir William Molcsworth's objections to the bill are entitled to great consideration. Sir William is an earnest and sincere friend of the Colonies ; he is besides a thinking politician, and whatever subject he addresses himself to, lie masters, according to his own theory. It is impossible to set aside the weight of his authority, or indeed to refuse assent to much which he urges. But we think he exaggerates the importance of some of his objections, and is disposed to overlook some of the better features of the bill. _ The great point of controversy is the constitution of the Provincial Legislatures with full powers except over specified subjects. Sir William Molesworth's objection to these Councils is, as we understand him, one of degree only ; he would give the separate settlements full powers of ordinary municipal Government — like English corporations — but not more. He would confine all legislation properly so called to a central authority. He is afraid lest such extensive powers as those of the Government bill may lead to chance-med-ley legislation, and to ponflicts of law between the Central and the Provincial Legislatures, and between the Provincial legislatures inter se. Doubless it would improve the bill to deiine exactly the proper limits of jurisdiction to the Central and Provincial Legislatures ; but more is made of the objection than it seems to us to deserve — there is in it more of ad captandum rhetoric than of practical substance. We take for granted that the new Colonial Legislatures, whether Central or Provincial, will commit prodigious blunders. We do so ourselves ; we keep on from year to year amending and amending acts for the amendment of former amendment acts. So it will be with Colonial Legislatures ; but, doubtless, they will improve as they grow older and used to their work. That is the way of education. Our great fault lias been, that wo have hitherto deprired our colonists of all opportunity of such wholesome exercises; we have given them no school of political gymnastics to tumble ..about in. But we have none of Sir William Molcsworth's fears as to practical inconvenience from supposed conflict of laws. That scorns to us sufficiently

guarded against by the common veto of the Governor, whose special office it will be to prevent mischief of this kind. But there is one panacea in the bill for all^ its organic defects — the power of alteration. This power, vested in the Central Legislature, has a covering force like that of charity. It makes the Colonial Legislature a constituent hody ; and in this one fact all subordinate objections are swallowed up. If practical evils should be discovered, and proper remedies he not found, the fault will be Avith the colony, not with us. One word as to the surrender of waste lands charged with a specific payment to the New Zealand Company. Sir William Molesworth gallantly protests against this charge, though he himself is a shareholder in the Company whose claim he resists. This is manful, unselfish, and patriotic. It is impossible not to admire the man, though we do not entirely agree with him. lie says, perhaps truly, that the New Zealand Company have no moral title to be paid their debt out of the colonial land futtd ; that the lands should be given up clear and unencumbered. It may or may not be so ; but it would be absurd to attempt such a discussion under present circumstances. There stands the Company, with its act of Parliament, declaring it entitled to a charge of so many thousand pounds, payable out of the land fund, after certain undefined deductions; and there stands the Government, having, undor the advice of its law officers, made a virtual bargain with the Company to pay them a specified proportion of the land fund in satisfaction of then* claim. Then the Crown proposes to surrender the lands to the colonist^ subject to the terms of that bargain. So far, and primu facie, the arrangement is irresistible. ]f there be ground for impugning the debt, or the Government arrangement with the Company, the time for raising- that question will be after the Colonists shall have been put in possession of the lands. Then, and not till then, will they have a locus standi for appealing to the justice of Parliament to redress any present wrong. At all events, the advantage offered transcends largety, in our estimation, the drawback with which it is accompanied ; and we scarcely anticipate on this ground any serious resistance to the bill. Should the measure fail, what then ? We suppose Government will try a suspension act; and in the hurry of closing work, we suppose such an act may pass. But that would inflict on the Colony a grievous injury ; another year of misgovemment, of disappointed hope, of fretting disaffection, of suspended energy; another year Qxregnant, who shall say, with what mighty consequences ! ) with a gold-fever raging in the neighbouring colonies — it may be in its own vitals — and without the power even of uttering a cry for help.

(Fiom the "Times," May 25.) To frame a constitution for a new and distant country, to regulate by laws made here, the destinies* of persons as far removed from our shores as the structure ol our planet will permit, is a duty so responsible and bo awful that one would think no assembly of men would be bold enough to undertake it or wise enough to perform it. If, however, these scruples were overpow ered by a sense of gioat and paramount necessity, no consideration could be too weighty for the due exercise of so important a duty. The notion of haste and precipitation, of surrender and compromise of opinion, not to secure uniformity but to save time, Avould be utterly rejected, and a Parliament worthy of the task of laying the foundation of future entires would never be hurried into doing negligently that which by any expenditure of time it could possibly do better. We are sorry to see that these principles, self-evident as we think them, were utterly disregarded by almost every speaker in the New Zealand debate. Not one of the objections which we have urged against ! Sir John Pakington's intended constitution for New Zealand has been answered or even eluded. I They have derived tenfold force and weight from the' able and \manswerable enunciation of similar views by Sir William Molesworth, an authority second to none on colonial questions, and yet, with the honourable exception of Mr. Vernon Smith, no one has been found to suggest that a measure so vastly important should not be hurried over without due deliberation, and that it is better to leave New Zealand in its present unsatisfactory state for a few months longer rather than inflict on it evils of which the latest posterity may feel the weight. It is much to be regretted that Mr. Gladstone was not present in the house the speech of Sir William Molesworth, for so many portions of his argument were in that speech answered by anticijxition that had he heard it he would have scarcely brought them forward, and without them he could hardly have arrived at the conclusion that the bill should pass. Mr. Gladstone's statement is, that the bill should jjass because he finds in it so many beneficial measures and principles. It is curious, however, that every one of the beneficial rebults which Mr. Gladstone attributes to the bill is clogged by a corresponding disadvantage, which deprives it of the very merit which he attributes to it. Had Mr. Gladstone heard the explanation of the three ways in which the law of the local legislature could be repealed, of the three ways in which it might be made void ab initio, and of the manner in which the law might be kept suspended by the action of the central legislature and the coercive forces brought to bear upon it, he would hardly have expressed the opinion that tlie interference of the home authorities is dispensed with. Nor can Aye see that it is any very great triumph or deliverance from " the nightmare of Crown influence," that the nominees, instead of being mixed up with the representatives of the people, should sit in a chamber by themselves, and that a body representing- nothing, and respected by no one, should possess an absolute veto on the Acts of the Assembly. Another merit in Mr. Gladstone's eyes is the power of disposing of the lands of tlie Crown ; but this power, desirable as it is, the eolonv is made to buy exceedingly dear. Mr. Gladstone himself showed that by this act the New Zealand Company is converted from third into first mortgagee over these lands, and that instead of a right to be paid after all demands for emigration had been exhausted, which is really equivalent to no right at all, the power of managing the Land Fund was purchased by surrendering- to the company five shillings on every acre of the land sold — a price at which the management of the Avasto land was dearly purchased. Another ground of satisfaction to Mr. Gladstone was the power contained in the 69th clause to alter the powers of the local councils, but that power must, we apprehend, be read in subordination to the express enactment of the 10th clause, which forbids the provincial legislatures to meddle with thirteen reserved subjects ; and if so, the result is that it is competent to the central assembly to curtail, but by no means to increase the powers of the local councils. Surely it would have been more statesmanlike, if instead of enumerating singly these several and very questionable merits, Mr. Gladstone had grappled with the subject as a whole, and told us, not what Averc the good principles involved in the measure, but what Avould be the Avorking of the machine Avhen once set in motion. Mr. Gladstone is an admirer of small political communities, lie Avorships the ancient constitutions of America, and the Avisdom of our ancestors, Avluch seems to have consisted in driving forth our best citizens by bigotry and intolerance, and recklessly leaving- them to perish or prosper as they might on the inhospitable shore of an unknown continent. We presume that Mr. Gladstone is of opinion that the ultimate Avorking of the Now Zealand Bill Avill bo to absorb the central in the local legislatures ; that the mission of the central legislature will be one of self-destruction, and that the desirable and natural operation of the Constitution Avill be that the subordinate of the two elements of which

it is compo&cd assimilate and absorb the other. This is, also, evidently tho view of Mr. Adderley, and we confess) that we ourselves entertain a bhnilav opinion. On the other hand, Sir John Pakington, the author of the measure, and Mr. F. Peel, believe that the central legislature ■\\ ill, as tho s) stem becomes fully developed, curtail and destroy the powei^> of its local rivals, and, having power over the purse, will starve them into submission and insignificance. Thus the bill is neither assailed or defended for the sake of what it is, but of what the stiuggle it will engender will give birth to. All parties agree to treat it as the commencement of a bitter political conflict. Mr. Gladstone approves it because he believes that conflict will terminate one a\ dj ; Sir John Pakington because he believes it >\ ill terminate another. It occuis to us to ask what need of any conflict at all? Why are the people of New Zealand to be set by the ears — why aie we deliberately to devise a system of discord and ill-feeling in order to pit the central principle against the local, or the local against the central 1 It is always assumed, by an astounding paradox in regard to colonies, that a period of slavery is the best preparation for freedom. On the same principle we are going to soav discord that we may reap peace, and cngiaft strife on the stock on which we -wish harmony to flourish. If it be thought desirable that New Zealand should have six co-oidinate and independent Governments, by all means give it six ; and if, on the other hand, one central legislature, by all means give it one ; but do not create local poweis to be ultimately destroyed by central, or central by local. If Parliament bo fit to leg\shto at all, its vocation surely is to lay down the predoin'ma'ing principle which ought to govern, not to turn two hostile principles into the lists, and leave them to fight the matter out as they may to the detriment of the colony and its own infinite discredit. Nor do we think there ought to be any doubt in the choice. The qne&tion is simply as to the size of a political unit. Mr. Gladstone seems to consider that no community can be too small for self-government, and argues boldly from the analogy of the United States to New Plymouth, which contains a population scarcely more than a hundredth part of that required for one of these confederated republics. He disdains to consider the conflict of laws, he scorns to reflect on the ruinous burden of expenditure, on the endless multiplication of labour which can be so ill spared — on the miserable spirit of local antipathy and jealousy which made Greece the prey of Philip and of. Mummius, and Italy of every invader from Charles VIII. to Itadetzky. We, on the other hand, apprehend that for twenty-six thousand .Europeans to support a single Legislature and Executive will tax their resource, intellectual and pecuniary, to the utmost; that the alleged differences between these communities will speedily die away as they advance ; and that the obstacles to their intercourse would easily be removed by a single steamer, which would place the most remote colonies within thiee days' sail of one another. It is vain to suppose that if we now allot to different portions of these islands different laws and legislature 0 , we shall ever unite them again into one State. The experience of the United States, with their thirty codes of law and Houses of Assembly, is conclusive on the point. The question really is, shall the wishes and interests of New Zealand be sacrificed to Canterbury ] and whether, in order that that most questionable adventure may, in addition to its other pretensions, assume, at least, the semblance of self-government, the principles of political experience are to be disregarded, and a system full of expense, jealousy, and discoid is to be forced on New Zealand ? The bill should be opposed by every man who does not wish to see a Parliament in every village and a central legislature in every county.