THE COLONIST. NELSON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1861.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 435, 24 December 1861, Page 2

THE COLONIST. NELSON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1861.

The astrologer's boy could learnedly prophesy the weather of the day at sunset. Our contemporary seems to be equally sage respecting the wisdom of Sir George Grey's policy after it has been perverted by Colonel Gore Browne and his infatuated and interested adviser. What there should have been can now be more easily guessed than formerly for native government and benefit. Still it wants a little more of a Solomon even yet than illumines the vision of a Nelson seer to pronounce safely on the best mode of ruling Maori affairs. Very likely Sir George Grey could point scores of nice hues of expediency which might have been successfully pursued according to his designs and principles of action, but which were crossed and marred by the Stafford and Richmond ministry—a Government void of clear ideas, matured regulations, large and accurate views, and that suasive, sober, and discriminating tact and delicacy in directing and controlling the aborigines that apparently characterise the present Executive. '' Yew Governors have genius enough, as. had' the'first Napoleon, to know how fitly* to employ force, or the more sure and win-' ning policy of ripe and ready sagacity, in order to a noble consummation. A true hero is he who excels in the latter, as did the illustrious Alfred, who knew when to use and when to restrain the sword. After all their valor both of these men owed more to their prompt wisdom than unconciliating violence; more to address on an emergency than to a heady determination to dash forward with driving compulsion rather than to balance and turn affairs by nice and gentle management. In governing a rebellious people, a surprise and good consequent thrashing are expeditious methods, for accomplishing a prostration of offenders; but even then little is effected without reconciling hearts. It i 8 for this the true, the profoundly wise victor forms and achieves his plans. Indeed, men only truly win the name of 'Great 1 in so far as they prosper therein. Now the Stafford -ministry failed obviously because they could neither compel submission nor captivate hostile understandings. Iheir force was uncalculated, unadvised,' and b utally blind ; and so it fell, disgraced and disgracing. It rushed to destroy, and, like madness of that kind in every age, destroyed itself and nearly every interest raslily staked by its desperation. Weak* prejudiced, and avowed abettors of such feverish and aberrant minds, spurred by party or passion, may extol the ruinous couse of the late Governor's unadvised advisers; but they may be taught saner lessons when they a>e called upon, to pay damages, Now and then the pocket becomes an impressive teacher. Then probably they will find out, instead of • the first great mistake" being Sir George Greys', it has been, it we may be allowed such uncarpeted vulgarity, the hot madness of wild'bulls goaded to gore the Maoris; and the goads generally have been mostly in life hands of those who are themselves pretty clear of danger; like some instigating gallant worthies who would risk more blood for a notion than their own veins ever possessed, and scribble as little concerned for that as for the consequences of their inky unmeanings. After a war, scarcely equalled in the annals of colonial enterprise, for inconsiderateness and incapacity in the ministry, and consequently in the soldiery, when- a peace, full of every defensive preparation and permanent security, resulting from improved and sensible measures, is, for aught we know, nearly settled, there are, it seems, those who would surrender everything now dawning into hope to the dark and stormy elements of former disaster. No; the less we say about it the better; but we should be instructed in common sense by our failures, to try at least truer methods of intelligence and justice, with calm firmness to save a race who have already cost endless thousands of wealth to improve them, and long long years ot benign heroism to shape them into a more noble and happy people. It is wiser, kinder, greater, and better every way to restrain our own absurd p etences to forceful domination, and bring out into our own national enthusiasm a little more forbearance and skilful management. If we cannot do all that brutai humanity might do by might, let us at least have a manful warfare of peaceful right. But if that fail—an evil to he deprecated by every one not false to God and humanity—then we can only resume the horrid and bloody career to which the ghosts of former calamities can perhaps beckon the sword of exteimination, but which every wise and true man must avoid as far as honor arid< virtue permit.

The superfine editor of (be Examiner treats very exquisitely on the unpardonable sin ol personalities. Some of his petticoated admiiers too, it is presumed, for whom he exercises the prerogatives of his vocation, do a small matter over their tea in the same traffic colloquially. Certainly, personalities affecting any one's face, figure, constitutional defects, domestic infelicities, business transactions, or any similar concerns in the privacies of life, are most odious and reprehensible. Few crimes are more cowardly and detestable than some of this class, par* ticularly when they are attempted in connection with strictly private matters, to occasion contempt or disadvantage in a spiteful manner. Of course the Examiner and its adherents are innocent babes as to such things. Whether they are or are not, we leave them to that judgment and condemnation which the guilty can never escape. AM we would say now is, a man's publicly and reasonably proved vices, when he stands forth in impenitence to claim popular suffrages, is quite another affair. A legitimate verdict, a conclusion never honestly arrived at by zealous pajtißan?, belongs to publicity in'the'place

of their occurrence. Nor is the correct publication of the same, candidly stated or critically accurate as it ought to be/any libel whatever; on the contrary, its warning exposure is due tosociety v and demands the best esteem of rightly-tempered understandings. ■ ■ '« , ... Some ado has been affected on this topic, but as yet Nelson has had "little in this way to shock the over-sensitive. A few eccentric political notorieties may have acted weakly, doubtfully, or even selfishly, with a small show of decency; but scarcely more than some odd transg.essor has knowingly broken faith—a more serious occurrence. If any notorious trespass ot this last description has disturbed, like a minor subterranean shock, the moal strata of any portion of Marlborough; yet no severe personalities, however provoked, have seriously transpired. There seems to be something worse than even a ' Nelson-executive-coma'—a fearful stupor and loss of nerve in the body politic; that corporation so transformed into a monster by Leviathan Hobbes, the singular authority of the Examiner. Nay, a leviathan, little understood by the philosopher of Malmesbury, the Press ,}*as been so gentle as scarcely to express sigh over any fallen dignity or dignitary. For all that, one individual of delicate skin resents a mere joke so as to make some keen observers conjecture—that it must be truly felt as a 6erious unmistakable personality. Of course this is preposterous, but, as Swift sings of a puss mewing in a well, «a favorite has no friends.' True friends at least would either have prevented the nice-footed creature from going a-fishintj, or would have promptly sent some ' watergod ' to her aid, or have taught her how to get out. No man, with an over-sensitive skin, an excitable texture ready always to receive all sorts of affronting photographs, shbuld, so fearfully prepared, venture for high office. If any one cannot bear a little banter, if there be such a spoilt child of local partiality, heaven help the dear mother's son of sneh favoritism, both in the trials of his temper and his sense ! As for tl c Superintendencv, if a man cannot bear touching up now an i then, for the good of his health in that office, he had far better eschfw it for e>'er; lor should he be so unhappy as to * get in,' he will often have io feel, like some unfortunate or thin-skinned cleverness, sahed with fire. Notwithstanding innutnerous shakes of his editorial cianmm, *.he Examiners oftenrecurring allusions to our personalities, all obi vious as he seems to be of his own, are ludieous in the extreme, inasmuch as he notices faintest tints of character, most clearly public ones, as personal representations, or, it may be, abuses. We compliment him on his penetration. It may be supposed by him, that even any slig'u references to his superficial attempts at rea soiling, and his gross blunders, partake of the offensiveness of vituperation. Of* cour?e any reflecting mind can see otherwise ; stiil we are sorry for the feeble discernment of either our contemporary or any parties misled by his v&yaries. If the Colonist is now and then rather hard on its opponents, it is so, and only means to be so, with regard to their reasoning, or want of that exercise. It seems the Examiner cannot see any difference between the private worth of one of its pets and his public faults: one belonging to a correct morality—or, if you please, to the heart; the other to the waywardness of an ill-directed intellect: one to the man altogether at home in self-collected virtue; the other to his political wanderings and perplexities into which he may have been unknowingly drawn by craftier men. According to fhese views we can easily account, and consistently with reason too, for any wrong, which, to the unthinking, may blush like dishonesty, not quite lost to shame, while at the same time it is an unintended error, simply alarmed on accoun , perhaps, of finding itself unexpectedly in bad company, —as Mr. Saunders, for instance, placed by an ill-judging editor in the society of Sir John Dean Paul, or as a virtuous Mr. Barnicoat might innocently color up, were we. unwisely or wickedly to convict him, and send him to Sir John, because of some purely mental failing even about an apple. Out upon such want of judgment.