OTAKOU.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume II, Issue 93, 20 June 1846, Page 3

OTAKOU.

The preparations for the first expedition of settlers to the new settlement at Otakou are in a forward state, as will be seen from the following extract of a letter received by the New Zealand Company's Principal Agent from London, dated sth Dec. 1845 : " Mr. Cargill, the intended Resident Agent of the New Zealand Company at the settlement of Otakou, is now in Scotland, making active exertions, with the assistance of the Association of the Free Church of Scotland, for the promotion of the undertaking ; and it is desirable therefore, that no delay be allowed in any preparations necessary for the reception of the first body of settlers."

The following despatch received by Col. Wakefield from the New Zealand Companywill in some degree account for the non-ar-rival of the Ralph Bernal. From private letters which have been received we learn she had not sailed from Plymouth on the 15th Dec. and it is probable that the taking on board the Government stores alluded to in the despatch may have occasioned some further detention, while it is known that the vessels which sailed from England for Sydney about that time, from the bad weather that then prevailed, all made long passages. (Copy,) New Zealand House, Broad-street Buildings, December 9, 1545. Sir, — When the official reports of the repulse encountered by the troops at the Bay of Islands, on the Ist July last, were made public a few days ago in the Times newspaper, directions •were given by the Government to send a thousand stand of arms and a certain quantity of ammunition by the ship Ralph Bernal, then un- : der despatch for the colony. A statement being made to the Court that the whole of these were j addressed to Auckland, and it appearing from j your despatches of Ist and 19th May, 1845, Wellington, Nos. 22-45 and 27-45 ; and Mr. Fox's despatch of 9th April, 1845, No. 16-45, i that the Cook's Strait settlements were unprovided with arms, except such as happened to | be in the stores of the Company, the Directors addressed a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, representing the necessity of supplying to these settlements some additional means of defence. In consequence of this, a communication has been made by the Colonial office to the Ordnance Department, requesting that (as the Ralph Berna/has now left London) five hundred stand of arms may be shipped at Plymouth, if there be room for them in the vessel, in addition to those already on board ; and that instructions may be given to land at Wellington such portion as may be required by the officer in command of the troops there, if he consider it necessary to make any such requisition. By aid of these supplies it is hoped by the Court, not only that the colonists will possess the means of self-defence, should such a measure unhappily become necessary ; but, what is of yet greater importance, «that a knowledge of the ability and intention of the Queen's Government to afford them protection, while it imparts confidence to the European population, will prevent the effusion of blood, by convincing the natives of the futility of armed resistance. I have the honor tobe, Sir, Your most obedient servant, (Signed) T. C. Harrington, Secretary. Colonel William Wakefield, Principal Agent of the New Zealand Company, Wellington.

[The following extract was omitted in our \ last number to make room for the English j news received by the Kestrel. — Ed. N.Z.S.] " The fundamental idea of the older Bri- j tish colonial policy appears to have been, that j wherever a man went, he carried with him the rights of an Englishman, whatever these were supposed to be. In the reign of James I. the state doctrine was, that most popular rights were usurpations ; and the colonists of Virginia, sent out under the protection of Government, were therefore placed under j that degree of control which the state believed itself authorised to exercise at home. The Puritans exalted civil franchise to a republican pitch ; their colonies were therefore republican ; there was no such notion as that of an intermediate state of tutelage, or semiliberty. Hence the entire absence of solicitude, on the part of the mother country, to interfere with the internal government of the colonies, arose not altogether from neglect, but partly from principle. ' This is remarkably proved by the fact, that representative government was seldom expressly grauted in the early charters ; it was assumed by the colonists as a matter of right. Thus, to use the odd expression of the historian of Massachusetts, 'a house of burgesses broke out in . Virginnia' in 1619, almost immediately after ! its second settlement ; and although the constitution of James contained no such element, it was at once acceded to by the mother country as a thing of course. No thought war ever seriously entertained of supplying the colonies with the elements of an aristocracy. Virginia was the only province of old foundation in which the Church of England was established ; and there it was abandoned, with very little help, to the caprice or prejudiced the colonists, under which it speedily decayed. The Puritans enjoyed, undisturbed, their peculiar notions of ecclesiastical government." — (P. 103.) — "After the separation of the thirteen old provinces, England remained in

possession of Nova Scotia, which had a constitution already, and of Canada and its dependencies ; provinces which had been conquered from France, and possessed no constitutions of their own. Representative forms were gradually conceded to them ; to Canada hy Mr. Pitt's government in 1791, the immediate object of the measure being to attach the Canadians to the British Government, in order to secure their aid against the people of the States, and also to exempt the inhabitants of British descent from the burden of French laws, under which they were subjected to some oppressions ; to Upper Canada at the same time, on its separation from the lower province ; to New Brunswick when separated from Nova Scotia in 1785 ; to Newfoundland in 1832. In all these the frame and government is similar in the main to that of the old crown colonies, which has been already described. But the greater degree of control which the mother country has exercised, both in the formation of these constitutions and in the internal arrangements of the colonies, may be estimated from various circumstances. The reservation of land by the authority of the mother state for the churrh establishment ; the control exercised by the mother state "over the sale of all other waste lands, perhaps the most important function of government in new countries ; are altogether inconsistent with the principles of the founders of most of our old North American colonies. In some of these the people elected the governor himself; in some, many of the executive functionaries ; in some, neither the crown nor the governor had any negative on the laws passed by the assemblies." — (P. 195.) — " Still more striking is the difference, when we regard the spread of our establishments in other parts of the world. The pc- I nal colonies afforded the first instance (a very necessary one, no doubt) of settlements founded by Englishmen, without any constitution whatever. Since that time, the example has fructified. We have of late years seen the foundation of three different colonies, in which convicts are not admitted, and yet all of them governed, for the present, directly by the crown, with only a prospective j provision for the future establishment of a constitutional system. This is a remarkable novelty in British policy." — M'erivale on Colonies and Colonization.