THE COLONIST. NELSON, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1860.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 331, 21 December 1860, Page 2

THE COLONIST. NELSON, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1860.

To those of our readers who have wearied themselves with wading through printed speeches which were never spoken on the ■hustings, and tedious leaders written to prove that black is white and the reverse, and long drivelling letters from : irritated i ex-representatives, we give the few following extracts—all taken from the Examiner. Had we gone to the original source, we could have multiplied such extracts till we became as tedious as the reported doings on the hustings the other day. We have purposely made these extracts from the journal that swears by Stafford, in order that no objections may be raised as to the genuineness of the documents. We quote the second of the ' important' (as the Examiner calls them) resolutions against the Imperial Government appointing a Commission for the management of Native Affairs independent of the Colonial Legislature. The whole of the resolutions are worthy the attention of our readers who must by this time have become nauseated with the coarse vituperation of and premeditated mistatements concerning Mr. Fox and his colleagues. That this house desires to repudiate, ia the strongest manner, the allegations which have been made, that the colonists entertain any but the most friendly feelings towards the native race; that they are in any way indifferent to their welfare and conservation; or that they entertain any such sentiments on the subject of the acquisition of the native lands as have been attributed to them. Mr. Fox expressed his gratitude to the Home Government for the manner in which ' the colonists had been allowed to work out their own destinies; and then, as reported in the Examiner of November 17th, said : He (Mr. Fox) laid the blame of the course pursued at the door of his Excellency, who had recommended to the Home Government to legislate on the subject. When his Excellency forwarded to her Majesty's Government atrocious articles from a low print headed ' Blood for Blood!' he knew well, or ought to have known, that it in no way represented the sentiments of the colonists, and ought not to have been cited by him at all, much less ought it to have been cited without the strongest repudiation of the inference that it expressed the feelings of any but the one wretched man who had written it. Nor was his Excellency less to blame for the aspersions which he had cast upon the colonists in the despatch upon the table, in which ho asserted that the colonists coveted the native landsi and were determined to get them, &c. Is this the language of a man who is said to have calumniated the unfortunate settlers in Taranaki? Mr. Fox, in conclusion, thus reiterates his sentiments :— ;He repeated that he earnestly desired to avoid any conflict with the Home Government, particuj larly at this crisis. But it was imperatively necessary that the house should assert its privileges, j and no less necessary to vindicate the character of the colonists front the aspersions so unjustly cast upon them. In the Examiner of October 13th, Mr. Fox is reported to have spoken, in the debate on the Native Offenders Bill, as follows:— j If you wish to see other settlements overwhelmed with the same calamity as Taranaki— gutted, spoiled, abandoned, blotted from the map of New Zealand • prostrate, and a prey to the natives, their inhabitants driven into the sea, many a happy homestead smouldering in ashes, many a green field red with the blood of its owner; if you wish to shut up this island against immigration, to .throyr down the colonising work of twenty years and the christianising work of forty, and to involve us in an unhappy war of extermination—: j pass the bill. But if you wish to make this country the resort of millions of the Anglo-Saxon race, to rear up in it one of the noble offshoots of our parent state; if we desire to see the garden blossom as a rose and the lion lie down with the lamb—throw out this fatal and perfidious measure, and let it not stain your statute book. Is this the language of a man who, as is; said by his detractors, wish to debase the: European settler of this colony and to blast their character by attributing to them bloodthirsty and felonious motives? We know that one of our late and would-be future representatives, in a fit of drawling funnines, termed the above • bunkum.' We give it a we find it in the Nelson Examiner. Would a man who desired that the Europeans should be degrjaded have moved for the following return., which will be found in the Examiner of September 19th, and which was wooded by Mr. Stafford :

Mr. Fox moved for a return of all arms, ammunition, &c, exported or sent away from New Zealand since January 1, 1869, specifying description, and when or where exported to. The honorable member said the statement had been made both in and out of the house that a large. quantity of arms, &c, had been sent home to England since the issue of the proclamation of. martial law, and shortly before the commencement of the war in Taranaki. His object was to ascertain whether such was the fact —whether that large export of arms had been made at such a critical period, and when the outsettlers were without means of defence. On the discussion on the bill for Compensation to Nelson Settlers, it will be in the recollection ot many of bur readers that Dr. Monro went out of his way to read some work in which the original working settlers were spoken of in the most vilifying language. In the Examiner's very meagre report of that discussion Mr. Fox says that it was Hhe worst book that could be quoted,' and that * Mr. Tuckett was a very doubtful witness.'