Wanganui Chronicle. and TURAKINA X RANGITIKEI MESSENGER. SATURDAY, 24th APRIL, 1839.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XIII, Issue 1018, 24 April 1869, Page 2

Wanganui Chronicle. and TURAKINA X RANGITIKEI MESSENGER. SATURDAY, 24th APRIL, 1839.

English news in telegram to the 19th March furnishes little for comment. The fight over the Irish Church had fairly begun ; Mr Disraeli opposing the second reading of the Disestablishment Bill in strong terms. The Maori rebellion, we are told, had called forth an expression of royal sympathy for New Zealand, which does not appear to have meant much. “ I am very sorry for the straits you are in, but you must get out of them the best way you can.” This may be taken as the burden of the message, of which however we shal know more by and bye. Large reductions have been made both in the Army and Navy.

A curious story comes to us by way of Wellington, to the effect that Mr Vogel, who acted as a sort of henchman to Mr Fox, during last parliamentary session, has been at Auckland, not seeking an editorship, as some of our contemporaries reported, but on a political mission of a new if not very wise or acceptable character. This namely, to endeavour to induce the leading Opposition members in the North to agree to a scheme for the release of the Middle Island from further liability in Native matters, on payment of one million, to be spent in the defence of the North Island under the direction of Dr. Featlierston, MrM’Lean, and Mr Williamson. The report, we are told, rests on good authority, and is credited. What next ?

Responsibility of Ministers, subordination of the Executive to the Legislature, &c., are all rubbed into our constitution with the most painful accuracy. The theory is perfect ; the practice for some time past has looked very much like a failure. As the Stafford Government has of late months presented itself to the people, one could almost fancy it drifting into that strange incongruity, a democratic despotism. Something of this, no doubt, is owing to the divided state of feeling as between the North and Middle Islands, as also to the lack of practical union among the people in every district of the country, both north and south. We have no doubt that a large majority of the settlers are fully convinced that the war has been mismanaged by the present Government ; they are quite at one on that point., but they differ on some other minor questions ; they have diverse personal loves and hates to gratify; and these differences and personal diversities are sufficiently strong to keep them, even on the point on which there is substantial agreement, from presenting a bold front to the Government. It is their fault even more than their misfortune. It cannot be strongly

insisted upon tliafc if the people are badly governed they have themselves to blame ; it is because they will not rise above small questions or petty jealousies and unite to rid themselves of the Mmnbo Jumbo which oppresses them. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Meanwhile, the Government has a full appreciation of division helping them to hold place and power, and they profit by the fact. And the country drifts along—now it is fighting on the West Coast ; hey presto! and the scene changes to the East; the people, all the while, having rendered themselves powerless to effect a charge in courses which they believe are essentially injurious to the best interests of tlie commonwealth. Thus things go on very much as it happens, certainly not by good management, but Mr. Stafford and his colleagues appear to have forgotten that in a country constituted as this is, any active policy of which the people do not more or less approve is not only unstable, but terribly uphill. The people cannot just yet prevent the Government taking its own way,but they can,and even without meaning it do, make that way rough and tiresome enough. A war, for example, so wrongly conducted as to call forth no popular enthusiasm —to enlist little or no popular Help—is a war which had as well not be carried on at all. And this war ot ours more especially. It is a war for our homes and hearths, for our very lives. If any war could call forth our warmest sympathy aud our utmost aid, this surely must be such a war; yet things have been so managed or mismanaged that the people of this district, at least, have lost heart on the subject. Without a radical charge they see no hope of improvement. The ministry may retainoffice, but they have lost the power to prosecute the war.