[From the Morning Chronicle, July 17.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume II, Issue 62, 13 December 1845, Page 3

[From the Morning Chronicle, July 17 .]

The Petition which we laid before our readers on Friday last, recently addressed to ths House of Commons by some gentlemen from New Zealand, at present sojourning, in England, but wi h the intention of returning to the home of their adoption, " in lose the country should obtain a tolerable government,! 1 is of a kiod ttrongly to interest tie sympathies of the public and the. legislature. Those vrhoiu th# petitioners virtually represent, are the 12,000 British settlers in the districts of Wellington, Nelson, and New Plymouth-r-a body of our countrymen who, in point of station^ character, education, and property — not to speak of the ordinary colonizing virtues of Englishmen, industry, patience, fortitude,'- and the spirit of

tnterprise-— are richer in all the elements of British power tnd civilization than tny set of colonist! that have left these shores for two centuries past. The grievances of which they complain, though many, may be summed up in the fewest words. These brave countrymen of ours, who h.ave addeil New Zealand to our empire, tell us^that they are without a government. They have officials of, various kinds and degrees quartered on them, and drawing salaties from their property and industry; but of a government, discharging the most ordinary duties of government towirds them—--caring for them, sympathising with them, directly or indirectly respon&ible to them — of a government rendering protection in return for | allegiance, they have never, by any chance, seen or felt (he presence t from the hour that British authority was first established in New ; Zealand. The redress -flinch they seek is the simplest that can be imagined. They merely ask to be admitted to "that inestimable blessing of local representative government, which has, time out of mind, and by the highest legal authorities, been deemed the birth-right of Englishmen." Theft ask for that which, in one shape or another^— with but two or three exceptions, of a kind that serve to prove the rale—is enjoyed by every colony that Englishmen have founded. They ask that the general maxims of British colonial policy may not be violated to their prejudice-! that the noble country which their energy and enterprise have added to our colonial empire, may begin to he something better in law, than an offshoot and dependency of the penal colony of New South Wales. Could we hope, with any sort of confidence, that the case of our countrymen in New Zealand would be dealt with by the Government simply on its merits — in other words, were there no Lord Stanley in the question — we should almost feel that it was enough that such 4 petition as this had been presented to the House of Commons. It seems something like an impertinence to attempt to strengthen, by special arguments, the claims of men who only ask not to be excluded, without a reason, from what may he called the common law franchises of English colonists. We cannot, however, omit to observe that all the ordinary grounds for giving representative self-government to a, colony are powerfully reinforced by the peculiar circumstances of New Zealand, The social and moral status of the Cook's Straits settlers eminently qualifies them for self-go-vernment, and their remoteness from the mother couutry renders this guarantee of good government absolutely indispensable. The only real difficulty in the matter, is — whatto do with the aborigines. In whatever way Sir Robert Peel may think fit to treat a petition, to the prayer of which he has already, by anticipation, sufficiently intimated his assent in the abstract — one thing is perfectly plain. If we are to keep New Zealand as a colony, something must be done to give the-colonists & potential -voice in the management of their own affairs, and the guardianship of their own interests. The present system, or any system in the least degree resembling the present, is what no community of Englishmen can be expected to endure an hour longer than- their weakness -renders obedience a virtue of necessity. A legislature, consisting of a gcvernor and three orfvur of his nominees, removable at pleasure, is not a form of government to which men of the class that found colonies and empires can pay any other than a prudential and provisional allegiance. We think better of our countrymen in New Zealand, than to imagine they will ever rest satisfied with a constitution fit only for convicts. Granting the possibility of such a constitution working tolerably well in good hands, the New Zealand colonists have been so long accustomed to see and feel it work intolerably ill, in bad hands* that their contented endurance of it, by whomsoever administered, is not to be thought of. We cannot expect them to put up with the chance of a good governor,, now and then.