New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday. February 4, 1852.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 679, 4 February 1852, Page 3

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday. February 4, 1852.

SSVhf.n Mr. Fox, about twelve months since, Quitted his “adopted country” in the Ben'ftinck for England, few of the settlers any longer troubled themselves about him, and fty this time he would have been altogether forgotten bv them had he not again obfcruded himself on their notice by the publiJcation of a book on New Zealand, professing Ito give the results of his experience, but ■being for the most part little more than a Reproduction of the mis-statements and (falsehoods he had anonymously put forth as (the editor of the Independent. His processed object (as he informs his readers in ■liis preface) is a desire to enlighten, on the (subject of New Zealand, the ignorance of (the many who know nothing about it, and ■to remove the misapprehensions of the few (who know a little ; his real motive appears jto be to gratify his personal hostility to the (Governor by putting forth a tissue of unJfounded statements that will not bear the examination. Now, though some may be made for the highly coloured statements of a party writer in the ■heat of a newspaper controversy, who writes Son the spur of the moment, no such indulgence can be granted to Mr. Fox, when Bwith such ostentation he advances his claims ■to theconfidenceof his readers, and deliberately publishes a book for the avowed purpose of j giving information about the colonv, but K which is full of wilful mis-statements. gMr. Fox is careful to tell us he left England nine years ago, a barrister and a graduate ; of Oxford; having like Mr. Briefless travelled g many a weary and profitless circuit in the B-Mother Country, he came to New Zealand J to better his condition; it is well known J that having failed to obtain employment in his jig pi Oiuesion he was on the point of leaving ® New Zealand for another colony, when he Kobtained a good berth from the Company in b whose employment he continued until their IB dissolution. He also talks of his having g been appointed, immediately before leaving the colony, honorary political Agent in England for the settlement of Wellington, and in this capacity ventured to present a petition to the House of Lords. But though j he affects to claim this distinction on the it strength of a resolution passed at a meeting K held shortly before his departure, at which ■ about 250 persons were present, when ■ his friends of the Association obtained pos- ■ sess *°n of the platform before the doors s °P e ” e d> and when a number of B s lln gle splitters and sawyers were brought ■ to hold up their hands in his favour; his ■ pi etensions were absolutely repudiated in a

protest signed within six and thirty hours by upwards of two hundred and thirty Wellington settlers, on the ground of his being precluded, as having been for a time the Principal Agent of the Company, from advocating their interests, while the Hutt settlers in an equally numerously signed protest refused to have any thing whatever to do with him ; at Nelson, where, as he himself informs us, he resided as Company’s Agent for five years, the settlers marked their appreciation of' his claims to their confidence by passing him over in silence, despite the active effoits of some few of his friends who found all their attempts to procure a demonstration in his favour utterly unavailing. So much for Mr. Fox’s pretensions, we shall shortly take an opportunity of examining and exposing some of the numerous mis-statementsand perversions of facts with which his book abounds ; we may meanwhile direct the attention of our readers to the refutation contained in Capt. Deck’s letter of Mr. Fox’s episode about the Government Brig, which we exposed at the time when it originally appeared in the Independent,