The New-Zealander. AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1853.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 729, 9 April 1853, Page 2

The New-Zealander.

AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1853.

He just and fear not: Let all the ends thou aim’st at, ho thy Country’s, Thy God’s, and Truth’s.

We should feel tiiat we had been deficient in our (inly as an organ for the expression of public opinion, if wo permitted the present transition period—in which the office of Lieutenant-Governor lias ceased to exist in the colony—to pass by, without placing on record, in however brief and inadequate a form, some testimony to the general appreciation of the kind, courteous, diligent, and efficient manner in which the duties of the Lieutenant-Governorship of New Ulster have been performed by Lieutenant-Colonel Wynyard, during the space of nearly two years, in which he has been at the head of the Provincial Executive. Those duties were necessarily rendered more onerous and responsible by the circumstance that through that entire period the Governor-in-Chicf resided in the south, without having once fell himself sufficiently disentangled from the business arising out of the complicated affairs of the New Zealand Company’s Settlements, or other engagements, to admit of his visiting this Province, and that therefore — however his Excellency’s superintendence and paramount authority may have been eventually exercised through Despatches, the immediate decisions upon various matters connected with our short-lived but troublesome Corporation, with the Gold Discovery at Coromandel, and, in short, with the multifarious questions of more or less magnitude which must have arisen from time to time, necessarily rested with the Provincial Executive, it cannot he supposed that those decisions in every instance gave satisfaction to all concerned ; —that would be such a success as perhaps no Government can hope to achieve, and we do not forget (although we do not just now wish to dwell upon the fact) that the Lieutenant-Governor was on more than one occasion called upon to do things which, —as I hose w ho made the demands, for the promotion of their own objects, must have been fully aware, —were wholly beyond ins power. But we arc persuaded that, if our whole community were polled upon the subject, few voles indeed would be

withheld from a tribute to the integrity of purpose, and the constant desire to advance the prosperity of the Province, so far as the limited means and powers at Ins disposal permitted, by which Colonel Wynyard was actuated; or to the courtesy with "which he made himself at all times accessible, and the frank, ingenuous, ana kindly manner in which he entered into the various concerns that came belore him, and demeaned himself towards persons of all classes with whom lie officially came in contact —qualities some at least of which were the more worthy of notice because, however well acquainted with military duties ho may have been, this was the first lime he had held an office involving civil duties ol the character and importance of those which thus devolved upon him. We arc not of those who attach any inordinate importance to the vague, unstable, and often ill-bestowed accident called popularity: but in this case we believe it to have been attained where it was merited; and we are gratified to be assured that, as Colonel Wynyard was popular before he entered on the functions of his Lieutenant-Governorship, so he retires from the discharge of those functions still anti deservedly popular. This is the last instance in which we can be called on to perform the agreeable duty of rendering such a tribute to a LieutenantGovernor of New Ulster; for the Constitution Act lias finally abolished both die office of Lieutenant-Governor, and the designation of u New Ulster’' us a Provincial distinction. Let ns hope that the people, in whose hands the power now rests to determine for themselves who shall fill the Supcrintcndency in which the Lieutenant-Governorship may be said to merge, may so worthily exercise the privilege as that the object of their choice, at lire close of his term of office, may, in his turn, and according to the requirements of a system of representative rule, he justly entitled to such a respectful and grateful '■‘Farewell” as wo now, on behalf of the community, lender, in his official rapacity, to the last Lieutenant-Governor of New Ulster.