New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK'S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, November 13, 1850.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 551, 13 November 1850, Page 2

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK'S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, November 13, 1850.

The formal dissolution of the New Zealand Company, the authentic information ofwhich was received by the Camilla, requires something more than the passing notice we have hitherto been able to bestow upon it. After having been put in a position by the liberality of the Government to make a fresh attempt to renew their operations, having by the arrangement in 1847 had their own terms granted to them, the Directors find, at the end of the prescribed period, that the only honest course open to them is to abandon their undertaking, and this course they unanimously recommend to the shareholders; their Governor resigning his office, and assigning as a reason his opinion that the Company ought to be dissolved. But even in their last hour, in their expiring agony, their grasp on the colony is not relaxed, another, a last effort (fortunately without success) is made to obtain more money from the Government, to acquire fresh privileges and monopolies at the expense of the colonists whose interests they profess to be anxious to promote. But Lord Grey, profiting by past experience, refuses any longer to sacrifice the prosperity of the colony to the schemes of interested jobbers, who, to use the simile of one, now their most strenuous supporter and the alter ego of their Principal Agent, have used the settlers, when any advantage is to be gained, as the beggar woman uses the squalid and sickly child in her arms, — have pinched and squeezed them, until their cries have attracted general attention and excited universal sympathy, and then have quietly pocketed the pence, leaving on their victims the marks of pinches it will require years to efface. What aie the consequences of Lord Grey's arrangement with the New Zealand Company? The sum of £236,000 has been given to the Company, and this will ultimately be chargeable on the Colony as a debt. The Government have agreed to give the Company £268,000 for their claims to unsold lauds in the Southern Settlements, and to guarantee them interest at the rate of 3£ per cent on this amount, to be charged on the crown lands of New Zealand. So that a debt of upwards of £500,000, and an annual payment of £9, 380 in the shape of interest, has been saddled on the colony to gratify a rapacious Company, to satisfy their extravagance, and to maintain a host of locusts, in the shape of Resident Agents and others, without the settlers having the slightest control, or having been in any way consulted in the matter. How many years will it take to efface the marks of these pinches? — how many years must elapse before the colony will be rid of these obligations imposed by the inconsiderate liberality of the Government to the Company, and which have not been productive of the slightest advantage to New Zealand? And yet, while the Company have secured all these advantages — have quietly pocketed the penee — they complain forsooth of having been hardly used — while their unfortunate land purchasers are at this very moment, as far as the Company is concerned, mere squatters without a legal title to a single acre of the land they paid for eleven years ago, and for which they must be indebted to the favourable consideration of the Government; — while the Nelson settlers are unable to obtain even an account, much less a settlement, of their Trust Funds from these worse than Pensylvanian repudiators. A similar course has been systematically pursued by their Principal Agent. His object has been to distract the settlement by political dissensions, to assume the part of a man of the movement, and devote his "spare half hours " to talking of rights withheld and grievances unredressed ; to try and persuade the settlers that they have been hardly used, not by the Company, but by the Government. And the Settlers' Association has been merely a tool in his hands to bolster up the falling cause of his employers, and make it appear by their resolutions that the settlers were really desirous of the continuance of the Company,

and believed that their operations would be productive of benefit to the colony; and their resolutions to this effect are eagerly put forward by them as evidence in their favour. By a series of unscrupulous and unfounded attacks against the Governor- in-Uhief and Government officers he has endeavoured to withdraw the attention of the settlers from the proceedings of the Company, but while he accuses them of having no stake or interest in the colony, does he imagine that lie will gain credit for the sincerity of his professions, when he prepares (if report be true) to quit the colony the moment his sinecure of £1000 a-year ceases ? "True patriot he, for be it understood, He "leaves the country, for his country's good." And when we find Mr. Fox and Dr. Featherston renewing their trade of agitation, is it to be supposed that persons of intelligence can place the slightest confidence in the judgment or honesty of men who, in the last number of their recognized organ, the Independent, talk of the " liberal foundation of self- government" establishedby Sir George Grey's proposed Provincial Councils Bill, — of its being " a great step in the right direction," of its giving the settlers "no insisrnificant amount of control over their own affairs," and plume themselves on this measure as a concession to their agitation ; and yet within eight- and-forty hours afterwards can suddenly "wheel about," forget their extravagant raptures, and discover that the Bill confers none of these advantages ? Are these opposite opinions the result of sheer stupidity, — of their inability to see beyond their nose ? — and if so, does it not prove them to be blind leaders of the blind? does it not argue their utter unfitness for the position they have assumed? And if they still claim credit for judgment and common sense, what are we to think of their honesty ?

It is reported that his Excellency the Gov-ernor-in-Chief leaves Wellington tomorrow in H.M.S. Fly on a visit to the Auckland Islands, calling at Port Cooper and Otago, either on his way down or on his return according to circumstances. His Excellency will probably be absent three weeks. His Excellency the Lieutenant- Governor and Mrs. Eyre returned from their trip along the coast on Saturday evening.

We understand that the Governor-in- Chief has decided that a new gaol and hospital shall be immediately commenced, to replace the formei buildings destroyed by the earthquakes. The site of the new gaol will be on the hill immediately beyond the cemetery, where the hard-labour men have been latelyemployed in clearing the ground ; the hospital, we suppose, will be erected on its former site.

The Ellen arrived yesterday from Sydney, which she left on the 28th uk. We have received the loan of a Sydney Morning Heraid of the 26th October, but the latest news from England is to the 9th July, which we had previously received by the Camilla. The Constantinople arrived at Sydney on the 23rd ult. ; the Scotia was under repair, and would be laid on for Wellington a3 soon as her repairs were completed. The William Alfred had not arrived.

Programme of the performance of the Band of the 65th Regt., at Thorndon Flat, on Wednesday, November 13 :—: — 1. Overture— Guillame Tell Rossini 2. Duetto — Se vederla a non Lioe — Be- ) T} on { zt m lizario J 3. The Jenny Lind Quadrilles Glover 4. Duetto— Tv non sai, La nave c 1 Donizett i presto — Marino Faliero J 5. Ist Prague Waltz Labitzky 6. March — Le Prophet Meyerbeer7. Devonshire Polka Madame Oury

The following extract from the Pacific New& is a description of the agitators and quasi patriots of San Francisco, for these are to be found, it seems, even in a model Republic^ Our readers cannot fail to observe its truthful resemblance to certain faultfinders in this settlement to whom indeed the description is peculiary applicable :—: — " In every community there are a class of persons who seem to he constitutionallyycM#finders, peisous who are invariably complaining — never satisfied — whose very life, and the comfort of whose existence appear to depend upon a due exercise of this very amiable propensity. Like Billy Lackaday, they " loves to be unhappy." And this good city has its full share of this class of persons. They are people not intended to assist in building, but rather in pulling down ; never originating any public measure, but capital fellows for detecting flaws — for raising objections to the projects of those who probably have in view one single object — the public good. Go into any

public house, or reading room — there they are to be met. At a public meeting — especially an "indignation meeting" — there the very elite of this class flourish — there fault-finding is a virtue ; — the subject is the misdeeds of our rulers — which chimes in with the public clamour — and here they exhibit the very "ground-and-lofty-tumbling" of grumblers."