New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Saturday, October 11, 1851.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 646, 11 October 1851, Page 3

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Saturday, October 11, 1851.

The very able and judicious remarks in the Times on the folly and impolicy of the British Government in mixing itself up with the concerns of a trading Company, as exemplified in the history of the transactions of the New Zealand Company, will, we have no doubt, be read with very general satisfaction in this colony. The deliberate manner in which the interests of New Zealand have been sacrificed to the grasping cupidity of the Company, the coolness with which arrangements have been made by which at one stroke the land fund has been annihilated, and the settlers deprived of the means either of promoting emigration to the colony or of developing its resources or promoting its prosperity by means of internal improvements, the way in which they are plunged hopelessly into debt against their will and even without their knowledge or that of the local Government, and the land fund absorbed for a generation or two by a body of men who possess a strong Parliamentary interest, and are therefore able to dictate their own terms, are all there plainly set forth and must carry conviction to every reader. We feel the greater satisfaction in referring to these observations, because we have always taken this view of the subject, and ever since the Act was passed which three years ago sanctioned the arrangement made by Lord Grey with the Company, and which we have always regarded as most unwise and ruinously extravagant, we have steadily protested against it. On this point all parties are now agreed, and the consentient judgment of all persons in the colony or in the Mother country who have devoted any attention to this subject, and whose opinions carry any weight or are entitled to any respect, has been strongly pronounced against the impolicy and injustice of the concessions which the Company, by means of its Parliamentary interest, have been able to obtain at the expense of the colony and to the destruction of its best interests. But his, though bad enough, is a grievance of some years standing though its practical operation is only now beginning to be felt; it appears the Company, anxious to wring out of New Zealand all that they possibly can get, unwilling to forego the slightest chance of extracting money from the coony, if money is to be obtained, are advancing a step further and, according to the Lyttelton Times, are negotiating with the British Government for the transfer of their debt of £268,000 from the Land Fund to the general colonial revenue, of which the Land Fund is only a part. Such is the intense interest with which the Company regard the colony, that after having contrived to appropriate the Land Fund to their own purposes, they are determined if they can to confiscate the surplus revenues of the colony ; after they are defunct, and as we vainly hoped got rid of, there are still more last words from them crv’’ l "' fr ' vf> ° , <vet when we imagined their mischievous interference in the concerns of New Zealand had altogether ceased, we are doomed to fresh disappointments ; when we thought we knew the worst, “ still worse remains behind when we concluded the catalogue of fraud and extortion was complete, there is yet something more to be added to it; — “ Still in their ashes live their wonted fires.” It is satisfactory however to know, that these evils have not been overlooked by the Local Government; that during the late session of the Legislative Council the consideration of the Governor and its members

was anxiously directed to this subject, and that they earnestly remonstrated against the evils resulting from the delegation of such extensive powers to irresponsible associations without the consent or knowledge of the Local Government, and from the prevention of the adoption of a uniform system in the disposal of the waste lands of the Crown, This wss the opinion uniformly expressed by Sir George Grey and the majority of the Council in the discussions on the New Zealand Company’s Land Claimants bill, in the discussions relating to the Canterbury Association, and on the addresses to the Crown: this was the language of the Attorney General of New Zealand in his masterly exposure of the evils inflicted on the Colony by the New Zealand Company. So far as timely remonstrance or warning may avail, the best interests of the Colony were not lost sight of by the Council, we only hope their remonstrances may yet arrive in time to ward off the evils with which the Colony is threatened. We must confess we are somewhat surprised at the tone of the Lyttelton Times, seeing the career of the New Zealand Company is but the prototype of that of the Canterbury Association. In fact the Association is only another phase of the Company, one of the many shapes in which this Protean monster is reproduced, the directors of the one company appearing in the direction of the other ; —to go no further, Mr. Godley, the Agent of the Association, having commenced his novitiate as Director of the New Zealand Company. In 1 either case the result will be the same; after a career of arrogant blustering and pretension the Association, like the Company, will be extinguished in disgrace, amid the execrations of its credulous dupes, with all its pledges violated, all its engagements unfulfilled, bequeathing to the Government its debts to be discharged, and an indefinite amount of compensation to be granted to its purchasers.

No one can be surprised at the language of the Independent, or of any inconsistency or contradiction however gross or palpable which that paper may be guilty of. It is notorious that while Mr. Fox, the Agent of the Company, was in the colony, he employed the Independent in bolstering up the Company and in abusing the members of the local Government. Now that the Company is defunct, now that Mr. Fox has left the colony, we have again an illustration of the fable of the ass and the dead lion ; the Independent lifts its heel against what formerly it professed to hold in so much respect, and plentifully bespatters the Company with its mud.

We must, however, remind our readers that one of the testimonials of character on which the Company confidently relied in its last appeal to Government, was the resolution passed by the so-called “ Constitutional Association” on the 17th September, 1849, expiessiveof its confidence in the Company, and its belief “ in the reasonable prospect” of the benefit to be derived by the colonists from its colonizing operations; and while referring our readers to an article on this subject in the Spectator, of August 23, we must be allowed to repeat its closing paragraph :— “ It will excite no surprise, on some future and convenient occasion, when the growing indignation of the colonists at being saddled with this enormous debt and interest becomes louder and louder, when their heavily taxed and patient endurance refuses any longer to bear the burden which crushes all their energies, to find the consistent writer in the Independent, on whose shoulders Mr. Fox’s threadbare mantle has fallen, and who volunteers “to inarch through Coventry” with the recruits his leader (absent without leave) has collected, joining in the general outcry, and claiming credit for the part which throughout these proceedings he has so consistently taken.” This was written but six weeks since, and we now find our prediction verified to the very letter.