OUR COLONIAL POLICY.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 201, 12 January 1866, Page 3

OUR COLONIAL POLICY.

(From the Press.) There probably never was a period preceding the assembling of Parliament when bo little speculation and discussion prevailed as to the questions likely to engage its attention as at present. The preservation of the integrity of its dominions has been the first care of the Government in every state of which history has handed down the transactions. Our latest accounts of a struggle for national existence refer to one that occurred in a country in which, of all others, the ties that bound its provinces together were the weakest. One of the most difficult questions which a jurist ever had to decide is the question whether the right of the separate, and, in all matters of internal government, independent states of the American Union, to dissolve the ties which bound them together, or the right of the majority of the states to compel the minority to abide by the Union, was the stronger. The ultima ratio which settled the question of power by no means decided the the question of right. But it illustrated in the most remarkable manner of which we have any example the tenacity ■of dominion once possessed. The dominion of the United States is but of yesterday. The colonial empire of Great Britain is of much older date. The connexion of the colonies with the mother country does not rest upon a voluntary union of pro- . vinces which, being voluntarily entered into, might be said to be subject to a volnntary disruption. Each colony of British settlements, in the eye of the law, an integral part of the empire, and every individual colonist is entitled, as his birthright, to the same privileges of protection for life, liberty, and property which are enjoyed by his fellow-subjects at home. ■And yet it is rapidly becoming the custom among politicans and publicists to regard the colonies rather as an excrescence _on the body politic than as pillars of empire, and their disruption is openly advocated as a national advantage. The subject of our colonies is one that has become extremely distasteful to politicians. The demand made on their account upon the public purse is alleged to be unjustifiable, considering how much better off colonists in general are than their fellow-Bubjects at home. It seems, itowever, to be forgotten that the expense ©ntailed upon the country by protecting its foreign trade is much, greater in proportion to the value of their commerce. But what is the cause of that expense, find are the colonies to be legitimately fbarged. with it ? We are persuaded, for i&tfmWi thjkttkg m&sfp/TO & New

Zealand is wholly attributable to the Colonial Office, which allowed the colonial functionaries to run riot, the Governor to abdicate his proper functions, which were usurped by persons who had no legal authority to exercise them, and the Legislature to forget that its powers were of a subordinate character, and did not entitle it to deal with questions of war and peace, and with other matters subject to the cognisance of a sovereign power alone. The state of anarchy in JS~ew Zealand still continues. The disputes among the local authorities — the Governor with his Ministers, and both with the General — have had the effect of impressing the natives with contempt for authority so shamefully abdicated, frittered away, and abused. After an attempt to overreach the Government by the substitution X)f an unmeaning phrase for the oath of allegiance, Thomson, the king-maker, and his king, with Rewi, the most determined and powerful of the hostile chiefs, have retired from the scene ; they " bide their time " until the troops shall be removed in order to return and repossess themselves of the valley of the Waikato. This removal they have been taught to expect from intelligence from home, showing that the nation was tired of the contest, and from the declared intention of the Ministry in the colony to do without the military, whose commander is retiring disgusted with the selfishness of colonial politicons, and the vacillation of councils in which authority had ceased to manifest itself. A party of southern politicans having possessed themselves of the offices of the Government, and having changed the capital from Auckland, where it was established twenty-five years ago by the Queen's proclamation, to "Wellington, where their homes and properties are safe from the intrusion of Maories, have gallantly resolved, beingthemselvesbeyond the reach of war, to dispense with the troops. They undertake to protect the colonists, who have been suffering for the last four years from the ravages of the Maories, by levying a colonial force of 1,500 men, which they consider will, under their own generalship, be more efficient than 10,000 regulars under the command of Sir Duncan Cameron. It is no wonder that Sir Duncan Cameron should be glad to escape from such a burlesque of colonial administration. The only wonder is that a man guided by a sense of duty should have borne so long with a cabal of upstart politicians, vain of their position, though incapable of discerning in the offices and functions of Government any other object than what they call the " development of political talent." Nor is it to be wondered at that the people of the province of Auckland should have objected to be made the subject of the experiments of such dabblers in colonial politics, and have petitioned the Queen to be relieved from their domination. Out of a population of 42,000, upwards of 9,000 male adults have signed a petition praying to have a separate Government for their own province. It is understood that, though Sir George Grey expressed himself in favor of such a measure, the Secretary of State has declared the intention of the Government to maintain the " policy " of the Ministers — that is, not to " dwarf the political talent of the colony " — by doing away with the lumbering constitution which has engendered such anarchy. It is to be hoped, however, that Sir Duncan Cameron will not retire into private life without demanding an investigation into the causes which forced him to leave unaccomplished the objects of his mission ; and that Parliament will see the reasonableness of paying some attention to the prayer of so large a body of the Queen's subjects, representing nearly all the male adults of a community who are galled, and many of whom have been ruined, by the abuse of the functions of Government consequent upon an endeavour to satisfy the cravings of colonial politicans for power and distinction.