AUCKLAND.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 329, 14 December 1860, Page 3

AUCKLAND.

(From the New Zealander.) The question of the removal of the seat of Government from Auckland is dead—deposited as Mr. Richard Swiveller might say," in the silent tomb." It is Hardly worth while to tear open the cerements and galvanize the relics of this dear departed for the mere purpose of frightening the electors of this Province from the work of saving the Colony from the unrestrained operation of the " New Polypus Act" and from the centralising extravagances of the present Ministry. The attempt to revive discussion upon this point towards the close of the late session failed, owing to the general indisposition to touch it. There is and there can be no difference of opinion amongst Aucklanders of any class or party about the Seat of Government, and we are sure that no men in ;in the House of Representatives—" three F's " or I any number of F's—who made such removal part ot their policy, could receive the support of Northern members, or, if they attained to office, could long hold it. It will be well then to profit by the example of the late Legislature, and suffer this question to repose. We are in chase of other game just now, the scent breast-high, and this herring must not throw us out. Our quarrel with the present Government is upon their anti-provincial tendencies; upon their determination recklessly to allow the dismemberment of the existing Provinces, as evidenced by the struggle to keep on the Statute Book their New Provinces Act; upon their determination to cripple the resources of the Provincss by depriving | them of their fair proportion of the Customs Revenue: and upon their neglect, whilst so doing, to- make provision in any shape or form for the increasing wants of Provincial establishments, growing necessarily in extent and importance with the requirements of a rapidly increasing population. These are our grounds of complaint against Ministers, and upon these grounds it will be found, we think, that the opinions of every Auckland man returned to the new Parliament will be as one. There is no feature in the electioneering struggle now going on more pleasing than this, that old local political differences and old factious distinctions are set aside, with the view of securing the return of an Auckland party respectable from its intelligence and position, strong in its unanimity, resolute to preserve the integrity of the Provinces, which are now, and must long continue to be, the working bees of the Colonial hive. {From the Southern Cross.) \ In reference to the seat of Government question ' our contemporary, the New*Zeahnder will, we have no doubt, grieve to find that in the South it has not departed to that bourne, of which Dick Swiveller so pathetically speaks. We need only refer him to late Wellington files passim. A Gazette published on Wednesday evening, contains the despatches from the Colonial Office to his Excellency the Governor which have arrived by the last mail. They are most satisfactory. The address agreed to at the much decried " war meeting" has not been considered by her Majesty unworthy of a most gracious acknowledgement, and the attempt to brand the settlers and Govern- j ment of New Zealand with the stigma of murder and robbery, has pitiably failed. The representations of the Bishop of Wellington and the Rev. Mr. Hadfield have not succeeded in bringing home j to the British Government a conviction of the ne- ' cessity of "passive obedience "to Maori dictation. On the contrary the despatches not only express approval of the Governor's policy, but actually promise to send out more troops than we think ! his Excellency would ever have ventured to ask for himself. One of the speakers at the Auckland war meeting Mr. Boylan, said that the most practical address to the Home Government would be one requesting them to send out a couple of regimeuts more. The idea of their being so liberal seemed then almost absurd, but it now appears that they consider doing so the only practical answer to any address on the subject. They know that war is war, that carrying it on entails providing troops, and we trust that they have by this time well pondered the great maxim of the Great Duke that a little war is the most expensive of all.