THE CANTERBURY SETTLERS AND SIR GEORGE GREY.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 731, 16 April 1853, Page 3

THE CANTERBURY SETTLERS AND SIR GEORGE GREY.

[From the “ Lyttelton Times,” Feb. 19.] The following Address to the Governor is in course of signature at Christchurch and Lyttelton. It is, we understand, to be forwarded by the “Minerva ” which will not leave probably till Alonday. To His Excellency Sir George Grey , K. C. 8., Governor-in-Chief of New Zealand , dec., do. Sir, —AVe, the undersigned inhabitants of the Canterbury Settlement, beg to address your Excellency for the purpose of submitting to you certain apprehensions and anxious hopes which have been excited in our minds by reflection on the critical circumstances in which this colony' is necessarily placed by the approaching introduction of a totally' new form of Government. Having regard to the organized state of hostility between the executive and popular party, which has invariably subsisted in colonies peopled by the British race so long as Representative Institutions were withheld from the colonists, and from which, of course, New Zealand has not been exempt, we cannot help fearing that, as has happened on many like occasions, the important and most valuable public objects which the New Constitution is calculated to effect, may be seriously impeded, or even for a time entirely frustrated, by those mutual feelings of animosity and distrust which have arisen out of past collisions; and we pray of your Excellency to believe that it is our most earnest wish to sec all past differences and angry party feelings buried in oblivion, to the end that Your Excellency, as the Representative of the Crown, and those who enjoy the confidence of the people, may sincerely concur and co-operate, with a view to the future alone, in the task of carrying into effect the purposes of the Crown and British Parliament, in bestowing upon the people of this country the inestimable boon of Provincial and General Representative Institutions. AVe are in hopes that these assurances may be acceptable to your Excellency, and that they may have some weight with the popular leaders in other parts of New Zealand, where the heats and animosities to which we have alluded have taken deeper root than amongst ourselves. AVe could have wished that the inhabitants of the Canterbury Settlement were able to convey to Your Excellency without delay some expression of our apprehensions and desires, in the more weighty form of Resolutions passed at Public Aleetings; and we have onlyrcsorted to the less eligible means of an Address signed b} r those who may concur in its object, in order not to lose the early opportunity of communication with Wellington which is afforded by the sailing of the Minerva . AVe have the honour to he, Siu, Your Excellency’s most obedient, humble Servants. Canterbury, Feb. 22, 1853.