New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK'S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, January 13, 1847.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 152, 13 January 1847, Page 2

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK'S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, January 13, 1847.

It is with feelings of the most unfeigned -satisfaction that we publish in our present number the letter signed by the Company's Principal Agent, for it affords ample evidence that our recent -strictures upon the proceedings of the Gompany have not been unavailing ; seeing that even the Company's Principal Agent is aroused <by the strong and repeated expression -of public opinion from that apathy which has been so Fatal to the interests -of the colonists, and that even he feels that, unless he can once more throw dust into the eyes of the settlers, or create a diversion m favour of his Masters in 'Broad Street, the cause of the New Zealand Company is utterly hopeless, and that he and his co-conspirators will not even have a^ chance of " slipping the slave's collar around the neck of the settlers" much .less "of snapping the lock." j Whether this letter is the production of the Principal Agent, or the joint-concoction of the " Court of Inquiry" now said to be sitting in "Wellington upon the settlers, we neither know nor care to inquire, for we are satisfied that it will fail in its object, whether that object be to lull the suspicions of the settlers, or to destroy that unanimity which at present actuates all classes against the pretensions of the New Zealand Company. As to ourselves, we can assure the Principal Agent and his Court of Inquiry, that we derive from the tone, spirit, and substance of his [letter, the most oheering encouragement to persevere in our present course, of analyzing dissecting and exposing to public gaze, the underhand and dishonest schemes of the Company, and of asserting and vindicating the claims of our fellowsettlers against a body, in whom (thanks to the all-powerful influence of a few in their councils at home, and to the managers of their affairs in the colony), all confidence is, we fear, completely and for ever destroyed. As to the settlers, the Company's Agent may rest assured, that they are no longer to be put off by fair speeches, specious promises, or by supplications to defer their judgement upon subjects, on which they have after long and mature deliberation sglready irrevocably expressed their decided opinions. The settlers know ton well, from sfld experience, that the tactics pursued by the Directors of Broad Street and their Agent, have been to worry and starve them out, by protracted and vexatious references and negotiations, to be now induced by a mere mandate of the Principal Agent, to stay for one moment their present proceedings. The settlers appreciate too justly, the importance of the objects involved in the present contest, viz., — Representative Institutions, and the deliverance of the colony out of the hands of the Family Compact, to listen to any advice (still less to that coming from such a quarter as the present) which might prevent or delay the acomplishroent of such objects. The settlers are all far too thoroughly convinced that, if they be but true to themselves, if they treat with merited contempt the sneers and insinuations levelled at them by those, whose chief apparent interest in the colony is their salary paid out of the Land Fund of the Land Purchasers, if they repel all the attempts so insidiously made, to create discord and division in their ranks, if in short, they will

•only for yet * brief period, evince the same determination and firmness of purpose, which they displayed in their long and harrasing contest with the Colonial Office and the Local Government, the same success must and will inevitably attend them in their present contest with the New Zealand Company—a Company which has violated all its engagements, a Company whose bad faith has been proclaimed and denounced by the settlers in every settlement in Cook's Strait. But time presses, and we must hurry on to notice (very briefly for the present) the main points in the Agent's letter. ; In.reply to our complaint of the mysterious silence maintained by tim respecting the plots in which the Company was represented, according to the last accounts from England to -be engaged, the Company's Agent affirms that his mysterious silence arose entirely from his knowing nothing whatever about the Company or their plots, from his %aving in fact nothing to communicate, and then he goes on to -say " His Excellency the Lieut. Governor received no information from me which is not equally within the reach of every person in the settlement." We gratefully acknowledge the condescension here manifested towards the settlers generally, and are -ready to admit that if the Company's Agent had maintained that daily and friendly intercourse with all classes of the settlers, which appears essential to the proper discharge of the duties of his oflice, in all probability our charge would have been rendered unnecessary, for many would have then had no objection personally to solicit the information desired ; but knowing as he does his present .position in regard to the settlers— the feelings with which 'his management of the affairs of the Company is regarded — knowing also that the greater part if not the whole of the expences of his office are a charge upon the land fund ; knowing all'tlris, we -submit that the Principal Agent is bound to circulate the substance of the Directors' despatches •amongst the settlers, without requiring them to beg it as a favour. Nay, we maintain that the Company's Agents are not only bound to give unasked at afi times the fattest and earliest explanation of the views and schemes of the Company to the settlers, but that they properly ought on all occasions to inform tfhem of the-substance of their own- despatches to the Court of Directors, more especially of those relating to the immediate interests of the colonists. We are o£ooarse perfectly willing to believe £he JJotap&n'y's Agent's assertions that he is in the dark as to the present plans of the Company, but still we cannot retract our statement that had it not been for 'Certain letters and -despatches received by the Principal Agent, and by him communicated to the Governor, his Excellency would have gone on with his arrangements for erecting the settlements in Cook's Strait into a separate and independent colony. Let these despatches and the parts of the letters bearing upon the subject be published, and then the public can judge whether they are perfectly immaterial or unimportant, whether they had no influence in causing his Excellency's sudden departure. We come now to the very essence of the letter, to the object for which it was evidently written, to the announcement, in 'fine, of the important discovery made by this novel Court of Inquiry, of a veritable mare's nest, upon which the Principal Agent proceeds to descant at considerable length, and with great apparent gusto. He first quotes our article of last Saturday, in which we called the Company's last invention " a burlesque," and then rakes up a passage in a long article written so far back as the 15th Novr., 1845, in which we expressed an approval of the Victoria scheme as being with some modifications, ,at that time, of all others the best suited to the Southern settlements ; and upon these two quotations, he founds against us, a charge of gross and glaring inconsistency. Verily a charge of inconsistency comes with a good grace from the Agent of a body of men who have not hesitated to stoop to the most degrading expedients for the purpose of effecting their own selfish ends, who have advocated so many and such totally opposite plans, than even the prime concoctor of them was himself forced bewailingly to declare, that if his last was rejected, his inventive powers were completely exhausted, and that the Government must consult, if they desired any fresh nostrum, some other quack. Verily the charge of inconsistency sounds well in the mouth of the representative of men, who after having denounced in the most unmeasured terms, a scheme one day, (as for instance the colonising of Auckland) humbly supplicated its adoption the nejrt, of men, who after having condemned, Ctptain Fitzroy's policy as fatal to thecolva/inow openly proclaim that the onlft ox%ns of its salvation . consist in " Oflt that very policy to its g£satt*s^J»ssi^le extent, by abandoniog^i|flHf^i^ the

country to the uncontrolled dominion of its savages — of men who, after having heaped the most offensive and opprobrious epithets upon Captain Fitzroy for having suggested the abandonment of some of their settlements, now themselves have the effrontery to urge the same suggestion not only with regard to the settlements in the North, but also with regard to their own, — we say that a charge of inconsistency coming from the Agent of such a body of men is strange and ridiculous, it scarcely deserves a reply, but we have no wish or intention to get rid of any charge brought against us simply by preferring a similar charge against an accuser. We deny, then, that the two articles are in the slightest degree inconsistent the one with the other. If any one will reperuse the article of November 15, 1845, he will scarcely fail to perceive that its object was to advocate the severance of our connection with Auckland, the erection of the Cook's Strait settlements into a separate and independent colony, and the conferring upon them of representative institutions, that the plan in reality proposed by us in that article, was essentially the very plan recommended by his Excellency and Mr. Gladstone, and which Captain Grey was making preparations to carry into effect, when the ill-timed and mysterious scraps of letters and despatches received by the Company's Agent put a sudden stop to all his proceedings. We confess, however, that in urging the plan ia question, we saw at that time so many difficulties in the way (more especially with Lord Stanley and the Colonial Office), that we gladly expressed our willingness to avail ourselves of the assistance of the Company (we had not then found them out) in promoting it by means of the "Victoria scheme, to which the Company led us to believe the Government would give their sanction, but even then we were not unmindful of the history of Proprietary Governments, we had not forgotten that in every instance the colonists had been exposed to such fearful tyranny under this form of Government, that the Home Government had always been ultimately compelled to resume the Proprietary Charter, and that it was only after the resumption of these charters, and the conferring upon the colonists, the most unlimited powers of self government, that the colonies ever made any real progress ; and therefore it was in recommending the Victoria scheme we advisedly introduced the saving clause *\ with some modifications." What some of these modifications were (which we then had in our mind) we will very briefly inform the Company's Principal Agent. First then, we should have suggested that the Company should not have had any hand in the framing and modelling of our constitution, but that the most full and complete Representative Institutions should have been conferred upon the colony by or through the Imperial Parliament ; that the Company should not be allowed in any way to interfere in the affairs of the colony, or even to exercise any of their proper functions as a colonizing body, until the Representative Institutions were brought i fully into operation, and that then the Company should in all respects be subordinate to the local legislature, and that it should not on any account have the appointment either of the Governor or Executive. Council ; we should in short, have urged such modifications, as would have prevented the disasters which occurred in the Proprietary Govern^ ments of Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, &c.,by taking the most stringent precautions against the Proprietors obtaining an undue influence, especially at the commencement. Other modifications might be mentioned, but we have probably adduced a sufficient number to satisfy the Principal Agent that there ie really no discrepancy in the two articles, — and that the saving clause " with some modifications " repels this accusation. Our opinions are unchanged — and of the justice of the principles we have advocated we are more than ever convinced.. But the Company have neither opinions nor principles, and hence we can readily imagine, that in making their somersets, in so rapidly turning round to every point of the political and moral compass, they may fancy they see something like a "discrepancy" in those who remain true to their principles. The Compaay's Agent however compels us to proceed further, and to assert that even if we had expressed our approval in 1845 of a scheme precisely similar to the one now suggested (the Victoria scheme is however totally different from the farce of an Inside and Outside Territory) the proceedings of the Company during the lasteighteen month* would justify, nay would imperatively demand a reversal of such approval. If, believing our servant to be strictly honest, we place unlimited confidence in him, wear© not surely, when we discover him to be a. rogue, debarred from withdrawing bur previous confidence. If, satisfied that the.pr'o-j fessions of our friend are sincere, we treat him as such, we cannot sorely in the 'event-

of our finding him treacherous and faithless, be charged with ingratitude and inconsistency, if we discard him and treat him as an enemy. Apply the same principle to the relations existing between the New Zealand Company and the settlers, and what becomes of the Principal Agent's complaint against us ? If the Company have betrayed us what inconsistency can there be in our protesting against their being intrusted with any power, much less despotic power over the colo' ny even for a single day ? But when we remember the manner in which they have ever disregarded their professions and sacrificed the claims of the settlers, with what indecent greediness in August 1845, they swallowed the bait of £100.000 held out to by the Government and then threw the settlers overboard, how, in reply to Dr. Evans they repudiated their liability to make the Land Purchasers x any compensation at the very time they were urging their own claim for compensation upon the Government, when we bring to our recollection the Nelson regulations, the avowed object of which was to defraud the Land Purchasers there of nearly one half of their land, when we reflect upon the strange admission recently made by the Company's Principal Agent that the motto of the New Zealand Company is " Caveat Jimptor',' and that under cover of that motto he would evade the payment to the unhappy Land Purchasers of the costs of the suit instituted against them by Mr. D. Scott, in consequence of the invalidity of the Company's purchase ; when we remember these and other acts committed by the New Zealand Company, we confess we were not prepared for the surprise expressed by the Company's Principal Agent at the alarm so unequivocally manifested by all classes of the colonists, at the very rumour of a Proprietary Government, more especially after the admission of one of the Directors that the Company had made an unworthy sacrifice of the interests of the settlers, and that Lord Grey had expressed, a similar opinion ; but if certain other rumours prove well founded,' we fear, that the Company's Principal Agent's feelings of surprise wiU be even yet more fully excited. Although we have not half gone into the questions raised by this letter, we find that our space compels us to defer the subject, but we cannot close our observations without indignantly repelling the unfounded accusations of the Principal Agent, that our coldness on Captain Grey's first arrival in the colony, or that the tone first adopted by this journal towards him had done much mischief, and may be the very cause of the substitution of a new Governor. We challenge Col. Wakefield to prove the assertion by reference to a single article, and we tell him plainly, that if he expects thus to screen the real authors of the attacks made upon Capt. Grey by the Company at home, if he dreams for one moment by such insinuations as these, to pave the way for the rumoured Governor, if he thinks by his present proceedings that he will obtain an opportunity to "adroitly slip the collar on and snap thelock" — he is most wofully mistaken, he most strangely miscalculates his power.