New Zealand Spectator AND COOK'S STRAITS GUARDIAN. Saturday, February 22, 1845.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume I, Issue 20, 22 February 1845, Page 2

New Zealand Spectator AND COOK'S STRAITS GUARDIAN. Saturday, February 22, 1845.

JJy the Slams Castle's mail, we have English intelligence up .to ihe 25th October. The :Jaews is good and bad, — #ooi, iuasmuch as there seems now a certainty -of the Questions, of the Land Claims, and of the Maori Policy, being 'finally and satisfactorily arranged ; — bad, inasmuch as a further delay •of several months is Inevitable. The New Zealand Company are resting on their oars unable and unwilling to move a single step «tintil they are assured that " the Committee's Report " will be fully and fairly carried out. Lord Stanley is in the sulks, determined not to yield, and yet conscious apparently of his utter inability to stem the tide of public opinion whioh has set in so strongly against „ himself and Mr Secretary Stephen's. Lord Howick (the chairman of the Committee) will bring the Report before the House at an early period of the session, and most assuredly * the duty could not have devolved upon one more thoroughly conversant with colonies and colonisation. As to the issue of the contest, - knowing, that Sir R. Peel will not make it a Cabinet Question, — that all the members (of - .whatever party) connected with the different i colonies, have agreed to uuite and make the New Zealand Report their Champ de bataille against the Colonial office, — and that the press Metropolitan and Provincial have, with an .- unanimity hitherto unparralleled, adopted the Report, and earnestly advocated the carrying out of its recommendat'ons as the only means of saving this colony from utter ruin, -we feel that we have every reason to look upon the triumph of our cause as certain and complete. We also understand that addresses will be moved in the two houses, praying her /Majesty to reinstate in the Commission of the Peace at Nelson, those Magistrates whom, by an arbitrary stretch of his power, Capt. Fitzioy dismissed on his first visit to the settlement. "But the most cheering part of the intelligence, is that which relates to the views taken of his Excellency's conduct; all condemn it in the most unqualified terms ; — in fact, his career as Governor seems to have excited feelings of universal disgust, and his recall is " talked of as a thing already determined upon— Nay, his successor is openly . named in the different Clubs ; but as we are not authorised to mak* public the information given us in private letters, we cannot further allude to him than by assuring our readers that he is represented to be, a man of talent, integrity, and decision ; — vc shoi t, the very , opposite of him, whose sole object during the last year has apparently been to render New Zealand too hot to hold this couutrynen. Mr. Rennie was residing at Boulogne, waiting for intelligence that the site for New Edin- ' burgh had been purchased. As he would receive this information last November, the next ship will probaby bring out decisive news as to his ultimate intentions. No progress seems to have been made in the formation of the Church of England Settlement, though private letters still speak of its being- established in the Wairarapa. As to commercial news. Our furniture woods appear to have already prevailed over the prejudices which" offer Iso fc~ef ioles" an/lm-' pediment to "the introduction of a new article into the Home market; and we. feel certain that the cargo about being sent by the Caledonia, (aided by the exertions of Mr. Jerningham) will at once establish 4 our woods as a most valuable export. The hinau knots are much sought after, and the totara is said to meet with a ready sale. No prices, however, have been quoted, owing probably to the quantity sent being 100 small, to render it possible to ascertain the precise value. The private letter which we publish, will fthew that they are in demand with parties wholly unconnected with New Zealand, and also with the first cabinet-makers. The flax hitherto sent home, would' appear to have arrived in such a bad state, as to render it if not valueless, certainiy not. a .profitable apeculation. But should Mr. Etonian's process now being tried at Nelson by Mr,"

Edwards, and Mr. Clifford's manufactory here, answer their expectations, we shall probaby not have much cause to regret that the native plan of dressing the flax has turned out so badly. The price of oil and bone were in advance — the former being quoted. at £32 per tun, and the latter at £290 rtr ton. We have not received any account of the baiks. Such is the brief abstract of the Engluh news ; and, althongh the further delay is a great and serious evil in our present position, we have no hesitation in expressing it as our opinion, that there is much in the intelligence to cheer and encourage vs — much to streng- ! then and confirm our belief in tre ultimate prosperity of the colony ; more especially as are assured that the enthusiasm with which it is legarded in England as a field for emigration, is greater thai ever, and that we may confidently calculate upon a great influx oi capital and labour, as soon as the Parliamentary verdict is pronounced in our favour and Captain Fitzroy recalled.

Among the many evidences that New Zealand affairs are attracting the attention of the public in England, that the truth is silently but surely working its way, is the fact that both the London and Provincial press are employed in discussing the various questions arising out of the colonisation of this country. Even the Times, the leading Journal, has at length entered into the arena; five times in one month New Zealand affairs occupy a prominent place in its columns, and or. three occasions form the subject of leading articles. One of these devoted to the consideration of Captain Fitzroy's interview with Rauparaha at Waikanai about the Wairau massacre we pretermit for the present, and proceed to offer a few observations on the other two, one of which will be found printed entire in another part of our paper, from the other we make a few extracts. The Editor begins by stating that " The Report from the Select Committee on New Zealand is a full expose of that most melancholy story. It describes witn a vigorous yet delicate - hand the series of blunder through which we have struggled from the first enthusiasm which seized the English mind down to the miserable, because most causeless and .most careless, loss of British life at Wairau. After a night of confusion and errors, we are at last presented with a gleam of practical truth., It only remains to hope that the working of that practical truth will not be attended by the same difficulties as its slow discovery." He then proceeds to obsarve that "the first error of the British Government — as perhaps time alone could shew — was, that it did not follow closely enough on the track of British enterprise and legitimatize the spontaneous settlement formed by British Missionaries and Colonists who for thirty years have been making their way in New Zealand, increasing in numbers, in the stability of their position, and their acquaintance with the country and its inhabitants." The second error in his opinion was, that " the scheme of a larger and more systematic self-sown colony was suffered to grow up in the public mind, The projectors of the New Zealand Company were allowed fur many years to cherish and elaborate their very attractive scheme. Whatever nature t>r prejpdice-deriied *t home/ was to be accomplished by our British antipodes'. The parent stock was worn out and vitiated* so a seedling settlement was to be tried* unheld, unled, nngoverned, unfettered, unprejudiced, uncorrupted, almost unassisted, and if possible, even unheared of by the capricious and tyrannical sire. . The colony sent out at last by the New Zealand' Company was not enough of a British colony." After shewing what he calls " the workingof these two errors on the great question— the possession of the soil," and Imputing *' to the New Zealand Company, or rather to the Government which undertook to! overrule its 'operation* " the great error of supposing that " the whole soil of New Zealand, or at least the Northern Island, — for, happily the compromise , does not extend to -the Middle and Southern — was vested' in the chiefs,;'' They conclude by observing 4 - i -" It certainly is strange that a party so

intent as the Liberals were on humbling the the aristocracy and the predominance of landed wealth at home, should so gratuitously have imagined and created an aristocracy and a landed interest in those almost uninhabited regions. New Zealand consists of a group nearly as large altogether as the British Isles, with a population estimated at about 150,000, if so much — not much more than the number of trampers, Gipsies, and toher itinerants, who, in a certain sense, occupy and divide our surface. Their chiefs cannot be many, if powerful, — cannot be powerful, if many ; and any how cannot be supposed to hold continuous possession of 60,000,000 acres. They do not hunt, and therefore have no idea of extended occupation. They cultivate, and their movements, as also their idea.*, are necessarily tied to the circuit made by their cattle round their huts. Probably their is not a chief with the actual occupation ' of a large English former. At least ninety-nine-hun-dreths of the land is unoccupied, unpossessed ; common to the natives— common to the world. With the rudest cultivation, and pettest range, they are to the surface of those islands as an ordinary English village is to an ordinary English county. Yet the suggestive, created jealousy of a circle of Liberals, making the thing it hated, the very lion it dreaded, exalted these scanty wanderers, flinging the shores and the rivers, always moving, always driving about one another, into a settled, rightful, awful, Jove- born landed aristocracy; thus transferring to New Zealand the very evils — the very struggles of money with land, which they were flying from at home." These are the arguments of the Government organ, this is the defence of the Government policy. Like the elephants of Pyrrhus such advocates trample down and destroy those they are employed to defend. But a few short months since the 1 imes was pleased to designate as thieves volicv, the notion that labour conferred the chief title to land, now it entirely subscribes to the principle ** that the uncivilized inhabitants of any country have but a qualified dominion,, over it, or a right 6f ocoupancy only ; and that until they establish amongst themselves a settled form of government, and subjugate the ground to their own uses by the cultivation of it, they cannot gjjant to individuals not of their own tribe any portion of it, for the simple reason, that they have not themselves any individual property in it." This opinion obtains so generally-araong writers on Political Economy that it is considered by Sir George Gipp*, and by the Select Committee who adopt win approbation his able views, to be admitted and received as a political axiom. In hi* Moral and Political Philosophy, Paley in treating on the origin of property in land or " in what the right of property is founded," says "that fach man's lhnbs and labour are his own exclulively; that by occupying a piece of ground, a man inseparably mixes his labour with it ; by which means the piece of ground becomes thenceforward his own, as you cannot take it from him without depriving him at the same time of something which is indisputably his ;" and adds " This is Mr. Locke's solution, and seems indeed a fair reason, where the value of the labour bears a con • nderable proportion to the value of the thing, or where the thing derive*, its chief use and vfiluefron the labour" . nF apjJUes forcibly to the uncleared, uncultivated wilderness of New Zealand. The Times' admits that there is no right of property which is not founded on occupation, that land till occupied is as common as air and water. What shall we say then of the cruelty, c' the inhumanity of a government which can wilfully and of set purpose, prevent its sub« jectsfrora occupying the land which is admitted to be as common to their use as the other elements, which is as necessary to their existence, and to which no others can advance any just claims. For five years we gave struggled on against a complication of .misfortunes entailed on us by the blunders and hostility of this government, and though Local Ordinances and Acts of Parliament are set aside to gratify the cupidity of Land jobbers at the north, w,e have not yet .got a Qrown grant to a single &ere, from the determination of our rulers to, uphold what

they call the Native title, a title which a'i rational men agree, is but a mockery of jus* tice and calculated to hasten the fate of the native. It is beside the question to talk of the New .Zealand Company having gratuitously imagined and created an aristocracy and a landed interest in these almost inhabited regions. It is idle to say that the suggestive jealousy of a circle of liberals has exalted these savage and scanty wanderers into a settled, rightful, awful Joveborn landed aristocracy. This is the act of the Government not of the Company. They bought land of the natives, because at that time there was no other way of acquiring it ; on the first intimation from the Government, they ceased from further acquisitions. They readily surrendered to the Government any claims they might have to land by purchase from the natives^.and considered as the purchase money^ not; the amount paid to them,' but the amount spent in giving value to the land by colonization on a systematic and organized plan ; and for this amount so expended the Government engaged to grant them an equivalent in land. It ia worse than idle to talk of our not having been enough of a British colony. True it is we have been unbeld, ungoverned. unassisted, unprotected, would that we could add untaxed by our cupricious sire. But when the British Government refused to protect us, we were obliged to adopt some precautions to protect ourselves where all was new and untried. Si fuit errandum, causas error habet honestas. The British Governmentforraerly repudiated the sovereignty of New Zealand, and she owes her present undisputed title to this fair countiy. to the energy and enterprize of the settlers of. Port Nicholson. Even now the colony can hardly be said, in a proper sense to be } governed, when all is confusion and anarchy among the natives, and the settlers hold together more from principle and the recollected- associations of the institutions of their father land than from any inherent vigour or efficacy in what is by courtesy styled the Government. A full expose of our most melancholy story has bsen made up to the time of Capt, ' ! Fitzroy's first acts, but what shall be said of his subt-equent doings ? They beggar description. It is an old adage that experience makes even fools wise, but Captain Fitzroy refuses to be guided by the experience of others, or to profit by his own. Though Sir George Gipps has so ably laid down the principles by which these questions shall hi determined, it profiteth him nothing. Though these principles are pro* claimed and sanctioned by a Committee o - the House of Commons, the justice of whor c report all parties agree in praising, wrfcar it will profit nothing. *• Who would put edged tools into the hands of a child or a madman ? Why give unintelligible rights to a savage " We leave Captain Fitzroy to answer these questions. His penny an acre Proclamation, and th 3 fruits it is daily producing, furnish the best commentary on this text. Unfortunately we are obliged to trace some of the consequences of this fully: Throughout these islands his Excellency has caused the British authority to be so lightly esteemed by the natives as to tender " a sanguinary lesson " at the north and south in his own opinion indispensably necessary. He is no alarmist ; and yet he has appealed so often in ; his *hort career to SirGgorge* -Gipps fo^txsftistince/ «b T^cfeate-areaSwiiDle^ apprehension whether assistance will be given, whether, he, has not cried wolf too often. "It is not humane to treat children and lunatics as if they were reasonable men;'* but Captain Fitzroy has co treated thejn that we fear a tragic catastrophe wiU conclude his pompous farce. In fine it may be said. that after a night of confusion and error, we ' are at last presented by the Committee with ' a gleam of practical truth ; but while Cap* tain Fitzroy continues Governor this trsth will remain, barren, inoperative. Under * wise and prudent successor it may become the harbinger cf a brighter and more prosperous state of affairs.