NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 11, 6 September 1842, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND.

’The London Morning Herald of the 15th of April, has the following remarks upon Lord Stanley’s Bill on New Zealand: — Lord Stanley’s explanatory statement, in moving", on Thursday night, the second reading of his bill for “ regulating the survey and sales of lands belonging to the Crown in the Australian colonies and New Zealand,” will scarcely satisfy our land speculators in these southern dependencies; hut by those who more reasonably desire the establishment, hy the legislature, of a mere frame-work of a national system of emigration, to be moved by the spontaneous (low of labour and capital to these New Britains, Lord Stanley’s measure, as well as his statement, will be generally regarded as the commencement of a better, though far from a perfect, emigration system. The application of one general system of land sales to Australia and New Zealand, will remove much intercolonial irritation and* ill-will, and will, most probably, increase the funds applicable to the further development of their vast resources, and to the increase of British colonial greatness, and maritime and manufacturing power. On one point only is there matter of serious objection to Lord Stanley’s bill: the noble Secretary of the Colonies persists in retaining the nineteenth clause, which gives only a moiety of the land fund to emigrating and which will leave a part of the expenses of civil government in those colonies a charge on the other moiety. This setting aside a portion of the land fund for other than emigration purposes, is identical with that precipitate policy which killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. It must inevitably check the sale of land in the colonies, keep down its price, impede the flow of British labour thereto, and limit the demand for British goods therein. To charge certain items of the cost of civil government in the colonies, and certain local improvements, on the land fund, is to mix up together two subjects, not only distinct from, but antagonistic to, each other. It is to deprive the Legislative Councils of these colonies of that power over local taxation, which constitutionally ought everywhere to accompany British dominion : it is just possible that it may defeat the very object of Lord Stanley’s own measure. The reason for thus jumbling up together irrelevant matters, is very obvious. There are, in two of the Australian colonies, certain political embarrassments, which have caused much criminatory and recriminatory discussion between the Colonial Office, the Governors, and the Legislative Councils thereof, on the past misdirected application of the land -funds; and the clause is to give, inferentially, a sanction to the fiscal policy hitherto pursued by the executive authorities,.and to enable governors to avoid the consequences of colonial legislative opposition, economy, or niggardliness. There is no principle in the matter; save, indeed, the principle of getting money with the least possible inconvenience, and spending it without any effective popular control. The waste lands of all British dependencies are vested in the Imperial Crown for the use of the British people, by whose enterprise these distant transmarine possessions were discovered, or by whose valour they were acquired. To appropriate, then, any portion of their proceeds to other than to or for the direct and immediate advantage of the population of the mother country, is an abuse of the trust vested in the Sovereign; and to discharge any part of the cost of the civil government of the colonies in which they are situated therefrom, is to make the people of the United Kingdom pay for that Government. And such a breach of trust is practically quite as impolitic as it is theoretically vicious.

Lord Stanley’s explanation, as to New Zealand, will be satisfactory to all, save the jobbers, who desire to make those islands their own, and their dependents and writers. The noble lord justified the proceedings of the vilified and well-abused Captain Hobson, and very skilfully overturned the vituperative attacks on that gallant officer, by the application to his conduct of that philosophical principle of colonisation, which has been the theme by fire-side emigrants of so much laudation, and, in South Australia, has, in operation, produced so much misery and suffering. Not a word was uttered in reply to the noble lord, though there are seven honourable members of the House connected with Captain Hobson’s detractors.