NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR, AND COOK'S STRAITS GUARDIAN. Saturday, July 26, 1845.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume I, Issue 42, 26 July 1845, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR, AND COOK'S STRAITS GUARDIAN. Saturday, July 26, 1845.

We understand that, in consequence of a difficulty in negotiating the £50 debentures of the Local' Government, no pay has been issued to -the militia for the last month. It is, we believe, anticipated that small debentures will be received from Auckland at the next arrival of the Government Brig, and that then these arrears will be discharged. The difficulties now experienced -suggest, however, some considerations to which we deem it important to advert. The estimated expenditure of the colony for the present year is, we believe, in round numbers, £25,000. Allowing for contingencies, we shall not perhaps err, if we assume that it would, independently of the militia, amount to £20,000, exclusive of any sums received from England. The additional expense of the militia, we shall certainly under estimate at £20,000, in the whole £40,000 for which the colony is called upon to provide.* That this amount is altogether disproportioned to the resources of the colony, will be at once obvious to all of our readers ; but a mere statement of this kind, of a gross sum of money to be raised, does not ordinarily affect the imagination so as to enable individuals to realize the amount of the burthen actually imposed. We are apt to forget that money has only a representative value ; but if instead of so many pounds sterling, we direct our attention to the commodities which that amount represents, weshall attain a far more practical conception of the effect which such an expenditure cannot fail to produce. Taking the price of flour to be£ls perton, and of sheep to be 25s.pe'r head,thissumof£4o,ooo will amount toi;sootons of flour, and 1 6,000 sheep! — more,'certainly, than the whole produce of the colony at the present moment. Such an expenditure, therefore, if defrayed by the colony, can only be paid out of the capital of the settlers, and in the course of one or two years would probably absorb the whole of their remaining property. Or, if not now paid, it would, as its first effect, subject them to all the evils of a depreciated and daily depreciating currency, and would end by leaving them burthened with a debt altogether disproportioned to their scanty resources. Whether, therefore, the expenditure were defrayed by taxes raised within the year, or by debentures -which will form hereafter a permanent charge

* This estimate "is mnch lower than we -might have assumed, -ds was proved in a recent number, in which we shewed that, at its present rate, the Government expenditure would he We cannot, however, suppose that the Auckland militia will be kept at its present amount, and we have consequently taken this low sum.

upon the colonial revenue, its operation will be equally ruinous to the colony. We are inclined to imagine that too little attention has hitherto been directed to this subject. We have been occupied more by considerations arising out of the unequal expenditure of the revenue, than by its actual burthen. The obvious unfairness of applying taxes raised in this settlement to objects in which we were only remotely and indirectly, if at all, interested, has blinded us in a great degree to the fact, that the taxation itself was not merely absorbing the whole profits of the colony, but was trenching upon the capital of the colonists. That such has been the iact, however, we imagine no one can doubt, since no one can believe that the I net profits of the colony have in any one year equalled the Government expenditure. Every j year, therefore, some portion of capital has been spent unproductively, and some deduction has ■been made from the funds destined for the employment of labor. And this has been done during a period in which capital has always been inadequate, and when the obstacles in the way of its productive employment, arising out of the unsettled state of the land question, should have dictated a more than ordinary frugality in public as well as private expenditure. It would answer no purpose now to trace in detail the effects produced by this excess of expenditure over income. Those effects, however injurious, are accomplished, and cannot be averted. But the future is, in some degree at least, in our own power.; and we are bound to remonstrate against the continuance of a system which is of itself sufficient to keep the colony in a stationary condition. At the present moment we are required, by means of the militia ordinance, to maintain 900 men who contribute nothing to the productive industry of the colony ; and this in addition to the support of a government constructed and paid in most of the departments, with reference not to the actual wants, still less to the resources of the colony, but according to an English scale. We should have no objection to the scale of the Government, and we are willing to admit that, in many of the subordinate departments, the officers are even underpaid ; but we wish to direct attention to the circumstance, that the colonists cannot bear the burthen thus imposed upon them, and that the measures now adopted to provide for the expenses of Government, involve evils altogether independent of the actual amounts of taxation. Either, therefore, we have a right to require that there shall be an unsparing reduction in the Government establishments, or that the expenses beyond such an amount as can be easily raised in the colony should be borne by England. In whatever degree the efficiency of the Government -might be diminished by the reductions which would be requisite, the evils, both immediate and ultimate, thus arising would be far less than those which must inevitably result from the system now pursued. In asking for this, we require nothing more than has been conceded to every English colony, established prior to the adoption of the Wakefield system of colonization. South Australia was, we believe, the first instance of a colony where there was not either a free constitution under which the colonists elected the whole, or nearly the whole, of the officers of Government, and fixed the amount of their salaries, or in which, if the officers were appointed, they were not also paid by the Home Government. With what frugality Colonial Government was carried on under the former system may be estimated from the circumstance, that thirty-five )) r ears after the -establishment of the colony of Massachusetts, when the population amounted to 40,000, the whole expenditure was £1,200 per annum. And, on the other hand, how much the 1 colony was fostered by the profuse Government' expenditure Under the latter system ; may be seen in the rapid progress of the two neighbouring colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's' Land. We neither wish the more than republican parsimony of the one, nor hope for the jobbing profuseness of the other system, as ex-hibited-in these instances ; but we do complain, and, we think, justly, that we have a form of : government which has many of the evils of both systems, without any of the advantages of either. In the meantime, however, it is more easy to

point out the evils of the present system than to suggest an immediate remedy. The issuing of debentures to any amount beyond that which will be absorbed by the payment of taxes, must necessarily produce a depreciation, the amount of which is not easy beforehand to calculate. But though we are not indifferent to the evils which such a depreciation might cause, and may take an early opportunity of returning to the -subject, our present object is rather to call attention to the excessive amount both of taxation and expenditure. To illustrate the subject 4n another way-; assuming that our estimate of the probable expenses of the militia for the year is accurate, the expenditure thus occasioned would be nearly £2 per head for the whole community, which is as though the military establishment of England should cost -£fty millions a year! And this expenditure is employed in withdrawing labourers from productive employment, and, consequently, diminishes the power of the community to bear the burden thus im- • posed. Even if this amount was paid by England, it would, under the circumstances, be a very questionable boon to the colony, since no community could be -expected to prosper when one third of the whole adult male population; were uuproductively employed. But if the colony itself should be required to maintain this force, it is obvious, that if continued, it must endin our utter ruin. We are not -aware that we have in any degree exaggerated the mischiefs that have been produced, and are likely to arise, from the excessive expenditure of the Colonial Government. And we -confess that we see no effectual remedy but that of bringing the subject temperately bburt r strongly under the notice of the Colonial Minister and the Imperial Parliament. The principle of centralization in Government has been too extensively adopted to leave us any hopes of an immediate effectual controul over the colonial, expenditure, and if we had this controul, the r evils of such reductions as would be found ne- . necesary, though less than those arising fromexcessive taxation, would be of no trifling character. .But we have founded this colony, not alone nor principally for ourselves. We have founded it for the benefit of the English em-, pire, and of the whole population of the British isles. We have not merely extended, but we, have strengthened and secured the British dominions in this hemisphere, and we have provided a home for thousands of the English people, and a widening market for the manufactures of the United Kingdom. It is therefore neither generous nor even just in the English Gorernment to throw upon us the whole cost of the undertaking, in which, for the common benefit of the empire, we have engaged. And we cannot believe that they will continue to do this, if their attention is fairly directed to the subject. But if they do, then they are bound upon every principle of justice, and by every rule of constitutional law, to allow us a complete and effective controul over the whole revenue and expenditure of the colony.

The science of political economy does not contain a clearer axiom than this — that all classprivileges are an injury to the public. If, therefore, the creation of such in any newlyformed community wei'e put hypothetieally, it would appear almost an insult to common sense and experience, to suppose that persons could be found blind or wilful enough to attempt to carry out such measures ; and yet with abori-gines-protection societies scattering their libels upon civilized men and civilization, and with the missionaryism of the colonial government staring us in the face, we are forced to confess the painful and humiliating fact, that under the specious garb of philanthropy, men self-deceived, and therefore deceiving, are labouring for the establishment in this colony of privileges for a peculiar class, that must necessarily be hateful in their character, and fatal in their effects. It is true that the objects of these privileges, instead of being the educated and influential, such as were the ancient noblesse of France, are the uneducated and savage ; but this circumstance, while it increases the danger, supplies a curious illustration of the re-action that occasionally takes place in communities as well as individuals. Modern colonization may be said to have commenced with that kind of policy that has made the names of Cortes and Pizarro synonymes for rapine and desolation. The natives of Peru seemed, in the eyes of these fell destroyers, to have been only formed to gratify their insatiate thirst for " barbaric gold," and hence their path was marked by blood, and

a country, the ghosts of whose slaughtered inhabitants howled for vengeance from the ashes of their homes, was the meed of their unhallowed conquest. A time of reflection came. Men paused to consider the waste and profligate expenditure of human blood. The cry that arose from Mexico, from Guiana, from the Caribbean Isles, from Africa, assumed a startling distinctness. "Am not I a man and a brother ?" seemed whispered in every breeze, and borne on every wave. The sympathies of England were aroused. Her pride, too, was somewhat flattered. She would go forth in her strength not to destroy, but save. Her navies should visit untrodden shores, to convey the arts of civilization, and the blessings of knowledge, instead of aiming at the extension of her empire. From and in this excitement of feeling missionary societies date" their origin. From objects of sympathy the natives of heathen lands became proteges, and while the transition was so natural and easy as to escape observation, it has proved to be a real change, and one whose consequences will be as disastrous as any of those which are now matters of history, unless a sound judgment be allowed to contr6l the ebullitions -of an excitement that has become feverish and morbid. We have already shown the effect this spirit has upon the prosperity of our countrymen who are settled in these islands ; and we now address ourselves to consider it in that relation which must have most effect upon the persons who- peculiarly manifest it, proving first its existence in the form we have alludedto, and then the injurious effect it will eventually have upon the natives themselves. Upwards of five years have now elapsed since the European settlers of New Zealand were brought into contact with the aborigines of the islands. However those settlers may be calumniated, and their motives suspected, we do not hesitate to declare our conviction, that none of the professed, or, as we had almost written, the professional, friends of the natives, felt more kindly towards them, or more desired their welfare, than did the majority of the settlers in jCook'sStraits. But with regret we are obliged to add, suspicion has taken the place of confidence, and jealousy or fear is only checked by positive contempt. This lamentable change of feeling is the certain index of the existence of that partiality in the government, that makes its adopted pets rebels, by its misjudging kindness, and its own subjects repining and discontented, by .the manifest injustice of which they are the victims. If more tangible proofs be required, such proofs can easily be adduced. When the members of the Council chose to try i their skill in legislation, by poncocting an ordinance for -the regulation of dogs, all dogs "belonging to aboriginal natives were expressly exempted from its operation.. The " Love me, love my dog" principle, so absurdly manifested in this instance, abated the surprise, though it could not the disgust, with which the community witnessed the climax of these " sucking Solons" in the " Native exemption ordinance," by which a rateable value is affixed upon all crimes short of treason and murder, and a positive bonus held out to robbery; for a native who may have stolen two or twenty horses or cows, has but to pay twenty pounds as " security" for his appearance, and forthwith he walks off scatheless, to enjoy the balance of his successful " raid," and to laugh at the folly and weakness of the white man who thus allows him to indulge his propensity for plunder at such an easy rate. If this were all, our risibility would overcome our anger; but when the butcheries of the Wairau are remembered, and the " cry of our brother's blood" is still heard from the ground, and mingled with the heart-sickening aoinnd we hear voices, whose accent only tells that they are English, excusing the horrid deeds on the ground of " native law," — while the pompous driveller who misrules in these islands declares " his determination" not to consider the slaughter of his countrymen a crime — then, while each British heart throbs with shame and indignation, until its pulsations become agony, the pen refuses its office ; — but it is felt that the proof has become cumulative. l Analogical arguments might be drawn- from the history of almost every nation, to shew the injurious effects such priviliges must have upon the natives who are intended to be benefitted thereby ; but on this point we have been anticipated by Captain Grey, the able Governor of South Australia, who says in a despatch to Lord Stanley, under date June 4th, 1840 — "The aborigines of Australia having hitherto resisted all the efforts which have been made for their civilization, it would appear, that if they are capable of being civilized, it can be shewn that all the systems on which these efforts have been founded, contained some common error, or, that each of them involved some erroneous principle: the former supposition appears to be the true one, for they all started with one recognized principle, the presence of which in the scheme must necessarily have entailed its failure. This principle was, that although the natives should, as far as European property and European subjects were' concerned, be made amenable to British laws ; yet, so long as they only exercised their own customs upon themselves, and not too immediately in the presence of Europeans, they should be allowed to do so with impunity.* * * I do not hesitate to assert my full conviction,

that whilst those tribes which are in communication with Europeans are allowed to execute their barbarous laws and customs upon each other, so long will they remain hopelessly immersed in their present state of barbarism : and however unjustj ust such a proceeding at first sight may appear, I believe the course pointed out by true humanity would be, to make them from the very commencement amenable to the English laws, both as regards themselves and the Europeans; for I hold it to be imagining a contradiction to suppose, that individuals subject to savage and barbarous laws, can rise into a state of civilization, which those laws have a manifest tendency to destroy and overturn." This extract would be as pertinent as it is pointed, but for one circumstance, which even Captain Grey never contemplated. He speaks of natives being amenable to English law in all matters relating to Europeans ; but it is notorious, as indeed we have shewn above, that the natives here are protected from the operation of English law in all cases. Not only was the native who shot the seducer of his wife within the limits of the town in broad daylight, permitted to escape, but the murderer of Mr. Milne was allowed to continue his predatory career until the wretch became his own executioner ; while in the former case, the fact of the native having committed murder has been gravely urged by a police magistrate as a reason why a warrant should not be issued against him, when he robbed the house of an industrious settler. With one other fact we conclude. The socalled " Christian" natives have been induced by their instructors to give up the use of arms, and discontinue their warlike practices, the only effect of which, under the present system, is to expose them naked and defenceless to the tomahawks of rival tribes. The proper assumption of British sovereignty would save them from the sad fate that has befallen the devoted Malagasse , and we therefore confidently and earnestly call upon the missionaries to join their efforts with ours, that so Mje prosperity of both settlers and natives may be placed upon the firm basis of " equal justice and equal rights for all."

We beg to call the attention of our readers to the letter of " an Old Settler," and that of " a Landholder." We shall probably offer a few remarks on them next week.

By the Louisa Campbell, which arrived on Thursday night from England vid Nelson, we have received news of the most interesting nature. The House of Commons had been occupied with New Zealand affairs and Captain Fitzroy's conduct ; two debates had taken place, and a third was appointed to take place on Tuesday, March 1 8th. We hare no room for comment, and can only refer our readers to the debate of March 15th, which we have printed, slightly abridged, in this day's Spectator. For the same reason we are compelled to defer any notice of Lord Stanley's despatch published in theNewZealander. In the debate on Mr. Somes's motion, Mr. C. Buller said — v When they had indisputable evidence of Capt. ' Fitzroy's incompetence, they ought to recall him in- * stantly, not as s punishment, not as a warning — though * he thought such a warning wanted — but as a means to 4 save a colony which could not be safe for an hour so ' long as such incompetence was intrusted with its dest inies. He did not ask the Government what they ' were going to do. But he would tell them what a 1 wise and energetic Government would have done : ' They would have sent out a keeper and a successor for 1 Captain Fitzroy by the next ship that sailed after the * arrival of this intelligence."

Hinau Bark. — It is said that the dyeing property is as strong in the wood as in the bark ; and we have heard that at Auckland as much of the one as the other has been shipped for dyeiner purposes. o ■

We are happy to state that last Saturday the persons despatched by Captain Robertson succeeded in recovering a box containing one thousand sovereigns, which they immediately brought round and deposited in the Bank for salvage. They retwned to the wreck the same evening, but have since lost their grappling implements ; they have however received a fresh supply, and have been busily engaged during the week, but their exertions have not as yej been rewarded by the recovery of more specie.

The Rover's Bride, a small vessel of 40 tons, left this port with thirty persons on board, besides a full cargo, and we cannot refrain from asking, Why is not the Passengers Act inforced in this port by the local authorities ? This duty, we believe, devolves on the customs department; but the responsibility of seeing that the laws affecting the health and safety of the colonists are duly inforced must rest with the Superintendent, if this office is something more than a sinecure with a high salary. The provisions of the act are stringent, and declare that no ship shall proceed on her voyage with more persons on board than in the proportion of three persons for every five tons of her registered burden, the master and crew being included in and forming a part of such prescribed number. The amount of water, provisions, &c, is regulated by the act, and before any ship shall becleared out for the voyage the officers of customs are required

to survey, or cause to be surveyed, by some competent person the provisions and water, and to ascertain that the directions of the act are complied with. The penalty for the infringement of its enactments is a fine of not less than five pounds, nor more than twenty pounds, on summary conviction, and no governor or colonial legislature has the power of making any enactment or order in any wise repugnant or contradictory to this act. We are informed that this act is enforced at Sydney, and if its provisions were carrisd into effect here, they would be attended with the happiest results. The small vessels which leave these settlements for the neighbouring colonies, would not then be so crowded with passengers, to the danger of their health, and some arrangement could at the same time be made to put a stop to the practice of taking French leave.

The schooner Carbon arrived on Tuesday evening 1 from Wangaroa and New Plymouth with a full cargo, the produce of the latter place, which Capt. Fitzroy has done his utmost to proscribe. From Mr. Varnham we learn that the settlers are proceeding energetically with the work of cultivation. The Mongauraki settlers have* removed, according to Capt. Fitzroy's arrangement, to the Home district, which is level and covered with fern from six to eight feet high. This is cut down and burnt off, and the bushes of tutu grubbed up. They then break up the ground with the plough with a team of eight, and sometimes ten oxen, ploughing from eight to ten inches deep, and after taking out the fern roots, sow with wheat. Every one is fully employed, and it is expected that there will be five hundred and sixty acres of wheat grown this year in that settlement. The natives who have only used the land question as a means of extorting money by the aid and countenance of the Governor, are now eagerly pressing the settlers to buy the land from which they have been removed, and offer it at a price quite insignificant compared to their former demands, but the settlers will not buy, because they have had sufficient experience of the Governor to know that he is sure to oppose any arrangement which may benefit them. The mills are grinding wheat, one at s£d., the other at 6d. per j bushel. What a comment are these facts on Captain Fitzroy's statements ! If he has any feeling, he must appear as degraded m his own eyes, as he does in the estimation of those whom he has so deeply injured. Taranaki is now doing more than any other settlement in New Zealand. The settlers are carrying on a profitable trade by exporting their own produce. When will they grow enough wheat for their own consumption at Auckland ? When will they be able to grind their wheat there at 6d. per bushel ? The Carbon returns immediately to Taranaki, and we understand her next trip will be to Nel- ' son with a cargo of flour and other produce.

By the Carbon we learn that on the 26th June the Rover's Bride from Wellington for Tahiti had put -into Auckland with fever on board* and that before her arrival in that port Edward Johnson, Esq., of the firm of Johnson & Moore of Wellington, and another passenger, whose name we have not learned, had died at sea of it. The vessel was immediately put into quarantine by the Government authorities. Mr. Constable, a settler at Taranaki, who brought this afflicting news, left Auckland for Wangaroa the day after the arrival of the Rover's Bride. The Carbon was two days from Wangaroa to Taranaki, and five days from the last mentioned settlement to Wellington — in all, seven days from Wangaroa to this port.

Prices of Lumber at Quebec. — Standard pipe staves, 70s. per 120 pieces, 72 inches long, 5 in. broad, l£in. thick; the prices range from 60 to 90s. Puncheon staves, per standard thousand, £1 0. Red oak staves for molasses casks, £8 per 1200. Deals, 12ft. by 9in. by 3in. £7 to £9 per 120 pieces. Mill sawn boards £2 10 to £3 per 1000 feet. Inferior boards 425. per 1000 feet.

We reprint from " J. L. Nicholas's narrative of a voyage to New Zealand, Lon. 1817," an account of a fortified pa at the north, as not without its use at this particular season. Our readers would imagine it to be a description of the pa in which Heki was attacked by Col, Hulme ; the treble rows of palisading, the loop holes left for the musketry, the moat filled with water, the mound raised for defence, all exactly correspond with his pa. This account was written in 1817, and yet Col. Hulme proceeds to the attack in complete ignoiance, if we may judge from his dispatch, of the nature of the defences to be opposed to him. We may also draw attention to Captain Fitzroy's statement that " the jebels are beaten and dispersed, their pa or fortifications, impregnable to musketry, trebly stockaded, with walls, embankments and ditches, is abandoned to the loyal natives," It would require a more skilful casuist than Capt. Fitzroy to reconcile this statement with the fact that the attacking forces retreated from Heki's pa, leaving him in possession of the field. " The first objects that attracted our notice, as being the most prominent, were the fortifications ; and these might well deserve the term, for they displayed in their construction a skill

and ingenuity most surprising for persons so totally ignorant of all principles of science. The fortifications we had hitherto seen round the towns we had visited, compared with these, evinced neither design nor execution, appearing only as the clumsy devices of wild barbarians, while by a parity of contrast, the others would seem finished specimens of civilized workmanship. A strong palisading of heavy posts, placed quite close to each other, and rising above twenty feet in height, formed the first bulwark that encompassed the town ; the entrance was by a postern five feet in height and two in breadth, on the outside of which were some carvings of human heads, cut out with all the semblance of stern vengeance, and seeming to' grin defiance at the rude invaders. Within the palisading, and attached to it all round, was a strong back of wicker-work, which the inhabitants had constructed for the purpose of obstructing the lances of their enemies ; but at convenient intervals they had made port-holes, through which they could keep up a fire of musketry upon the besiegers. At a short distance from this strong rampart, on the inner side, was a space of about thirty feet, where >they had dug a moat, which being filled with water, defended that part of the hill that was most accessible to external assault ; and behind this moat they had thrown up a steep mound, on which was constructed another line of palisades, of the same height and strength as the former* The moat, which was at least nine feet in breadth, defended an entrance formed by another postern ; and between this and the last approach to the town, there was an intermediate space of eighty feet, at the extremity of which the hill was cut down perpendicularly about fifteen feet ; and on the summit rose another row of palisading that encircled the hippah, and completed the works."