New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, January 8, 1851.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 567, 8 January 1851, Page 2

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, January 8, 1851.

What is truth ? was the question proposed by the corrupt and guilty Governor of Judea

to him who was the fountain of all truth. What is liberty ? may well be asked when we find such crude and contradictory notions put forth in the name of liberty by those who profess to be its champions. The liberty to which an English colonist aspires is doubtless that measure of freedom which obtains in his fatherland, where all classes and interests are represented and influence in a greater or less degree the Government, each class by a mutual system of counter checks, preventing the preponderance of any other to the injury of the rest. Do we — as British colonists, as British born—aspire then to British Liberty and British Institutions, modified and adapted to our peculiar circumstances, to our position as a dependency of the Parent State, or to American Liberty, or French Liberty, or any thing else that is un-English ? We surely do not hope to be more free than free-born Englishmen—plus Arab qu’ en Arable ! And yet if we are seriously to receive some of the propositions which have lately been broached—if indeed they be put forth in good faith—such an idea seems to be entertained by some persons. We think it will be admitted that the qualification proposed by Sir George Grey in his Provincial Councils Ordinance is as low as could possibly be fixed consistently with having any qualification at all; it is certainly very much lower than has been granted to the Australian colonies by the recent Act of Parliament—an Act, be it remembered, in which the Colonial Reformers of the House of Commons wished to include New Zealand as a special boon, —it is sufficiently low to allow any industrious colonist, if he will, without difficulty to obtain the necessary qualification. But those who oppose the measure ask for universal suffrage, that is, they wish so far as they can to establish mob law, and to remove that incentive to industry and that desire to have a stake in the country of their adoption which the possession of political privileges may be supposed to supply to the colonist—they ask for what does not exist in England,— what does not obtain in Republican America, —what has only been recently established in Republican France, and has been abolished as soon as granted, the French Assembly in their very first session having greatly restricted the right of universal suffrage. And yet these apostles of liberty, who desire so great a measure of it themselves, would altogether debar the aboriginal inhabitants of the country from the exercise of the same privileges, although they are equally with themselves British subjects, and contribute with them in thepayment of the same taxes to the revenue of the country and the support of the Government, on the plea that “the half civilized aborigines should be prevented from outbalancing theintellectual Europeans” ! Without entering at length into the discussion'of .this question, we maj observe that the principal duty of electors is not to legislate, but to choose from among the candidates who solicit their suffrages, those whom they consider best qualified to legislate for them, and that the natives are as likely to exercise this privilege as judi-> dously and as free from external influence; that .they would be as likely to vote for •those who, from their position and general qualifications, were best fitted to be representatives, as many of the European settlers, and that it is tolerably certain the representatives would all be chosen from the European population : we think it may be taken for granted that the British Government will never grant to a dependency a greater measure of liberty than is enjoyed in the parent state, still less will it permit the interests of the natives —the greater number—-to be overlooked or set aside by giving the whole power to the present handful of Europeans scattered through the country, especially when the natives, if they feel themselves aggrieved and their interests sacrificed, are sufficieiitly prompt to exercise that “ kind of wild justice, which” according to Bacon, “ the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.” It, therefore, seems more than probable that not only will these extravagant demands not be listened to, but that tney may have the effect of circumscribing the measure of freedom to be granted, from the consideration that they are but ill quali-

fied to enjoy liberty who desire a monopoly of it, and would have only the liberty of doing as they please, who wish to retain in their own hands all political power, not leaving the natives the smallest vestige of it either as electors, or even that protection they would receive from the Government by the introduction of Nominees in the Legislative Council.