TOPICS OP THE DAY.
PEEL'S "DIFFICULTY" WITH NEW ZEALAND. ONE fact in connexion with the alarming intelligence from New Zealand ought to be well noted. The war of races has commen- ced, with no inconsiderable effusion of blood on both sides; a British settlement has been deserted, after a gallant but unavail- ing defence, and plundered by some thousands of savages ; the seat ofgovernment is next threatened with an attack, and men are sending off their wives and children and property to Sydney for protection.. This waste of human life, breaking up of British colonies, and humiliation of the British flag, have happened, not in the settlements of the New Zealand Company—which, doubtless, would have been more satisfactory to the Colonial Office people— but in that part of the islands where the meek Missionaries have for more than a quarter of a century been lords-paramount. This should open the eyes even of Sir Robert Inglis himself to the visionary and utterly impracticable character of the system advocated by the Church Missionary Society for the Aborigines of New Zealand. The war at the Bay of Islands is the natural and necessary fruit of that system. The Missionaries persuaded them- selves that reason and religion alone were sufficient checks upon the violence and covetousness of savages,—although daily ex- perience teaches that, without occasional coercion, they are in- adequate even among civilized and highly-educated nations : and, in their jealousy lest other Europeans should interfere with their influence over the Natives, the Missionaries have habitually acted upon a policy calculated to strengthen the most ungovernable propensities of their proteges. The Missionaries have assiduously laboured to instil distrust of the colonists into the minds of the Natives ; have flattered the inflated notions of their own power and consequence entertained by the chiefs; and have stimulated their rapacity by exaggerated representations of the value of the lands. The Missionaries have obstructed the establishment of a strong government in New Zealand, and contributed to confirm the chiefs in propensities and practices which only a strong govern- ment can control.
This might have been prevented had the sovereignty of the British Crown over New 71.: and on the right of discovery and occupation been frankly asserted from the first. The first esta- blishment of civil government among a rude people must of ne- cessity be effected by a simple exercise of superior power. Com- pacts between subjects and rulers, adjusting the balance of liberty and authority, are ideas which can only be comprehended and acted upon by men whose habits have been formed and minds developed amid the civilization created in the course of suc- cessive generations by the protecting influence of a settled go- vernment. The savage will only receive the law from a stronger than himself. The most certain and expeditious method of bring- ing the turbulent spirits in New Zealand within the pale of jus- tice and equity, would have been to establish at once among them a paramount authority for enforcing obedience to a law ; and as the most common source of quarrels and outrage among a rude and simple people is the desire of acquisition, the first step of this pa- ramount authority would have been to take possession of all un- occupied lands, or other natural objects of property, as trustee for the common good. The deference paid to the new Government by the Natives from an apprehension of its power, would in time have become a habit ; and the example of the civilized settlers, together with the allurements, of the tranquillity and wealth which accompanied their arrival, would have accelerated the pro- gress of civihzation. Even after the Ministers of the Crown, influenced by the visionary counsels of closet-speculators, had recognized an imaginary independent state in New Zealand, and thus rendered the Crown powerless to establish order in those islands by this the most natural and simple method, another plan, only second to it in efficiency, was developed in the bill which Mr. Francis flaring introduced into Parliament in 1838. Mr. Baring proposed in acquire by cession the sovereign property of a district in New Zealand ; to establish there a stable government on the basis of the Crown's right to all unoccupied lands ; and gradually to bring the remainder of the islands within the pale of British laws and institutions, by treaties with the several chiefs and tribes, whom the prosperity of the settlement should induce to seek shelter under them. This plan also was rejected ; and the blame of its rejection lies at the door of the Whig Ministers. They have since seen their mistake ; and Lord John Russell, after he superseded Lord Normanby at the Colonial Office, exerted himself to retrieve the error. But the little he accomplished has been undone by Lord Stanley; whose rule, more or less mis- chievous to all the Colonies, has been destructive to New Zea- land. A weaker and more mischievous Minister than Lord Stanley the annals of Great Britain cannot furnish. In point of intellect er statesmanship he has not advanced one step since his first entry into the House of Commons: now, as then, his ambition is satisfied with the reputation of a fluent and facile controversialist, who can make clever or telling points. A naturally indolent dis- position, confirmed by indulgence, renders him incapable of that concentration of thought, without which he can neither acquire the knowledge indispensable in his position, nor act when action is called for. He can only quibble and wrangle, to gloss over ignorance or neglect of duty. A sensitive and ungovernable temper, incessantly galled by the consciousness of his equivocal position, has degenerated into chronic spitefulness. The habit of evading charges by disingenuous versions of facts has reconciled him to trickery and evasive conduct. He is strong only in self- will. No consideration of justice or expediency can make him relinquish an erroneous course once entered upon, or the gratifi- cation of a pique. We suspect that a notable instance of this unhappy pertinacity will be elicited by the debate on Monday; for in spite of the promises held out by Sir Robert Peel and Sir James Graham, Lord Stanley is just where he was. When Mr. Buller stated the case of the settlers and the colonizing Company, a great impres- sion was made upon the House of Commons ; we are willing to believe that a great impression also was made upon the Ministers themselves, and that it was not merely a disposition to cower before a storm that made them put forth fair words so plentifully. You would have supposed from the speeches of the two leading members of the Cabinet, that they really meant to turn aver a new leaf, and, benii.fide, to see what was best to be done. Had it been so, there would have been a very general re- liance upon Sir James Graham's good intentions, and still more upon Sir Robert Peel's sound practical judgment in matters of business. Unfortunately, the Premier and his right-hand man had consented to beget a delusion ; and Lord Stanley seized the very first opportunity of exposing it. People hoped that there really was to be a sincere attempt to come to some arrangement with that influential and public-spirited Company which Sir Robert Peel said might be made so useful : but the presentation of a petition in the House of Lords, conveniently provided by his allies the managers of the Church Missionary Society, furnished Lord Stanley with the occasion to get up and undo all that his wiser colleagues had done for him—to reiterate the terms which not only forbade all hope of a better understanding, but which would render the colonization of New Zealand physically impos- sible, could Lord Stanley actually carry out his extravagant inter- pretation of the Waitangi "treaty." People hoped that Sir Ro- bert Peel had begun to look after the good name of this depart.. ment, and that they had done with garbled communications and secret instructions : Lord Stanley, we believe, is still dabbling in that unseemly work ; for, with a show of making the representa- tives of the Company privy to instructions sent out to the new Governor, Captain Grey, he has shown them one version but sent out another not shown, and not discovered until the uncom- municated instructions had left the country. Either Lord Stan- ley must be dishonest, or he is so incapable of perceiving the just relations of words and deeds that he cannot keep up even the appearance of honesty—as necessary in a British Minister as in Ceesar's wife.
In either case, he is a dangerous and discreditable man to have for a colleague. With all his once showy abilities as a debater— and his ineffectual fires have been sadly paled this session—with all his ambition to be an active statesman influencing his time— he has not been successful. His audacity of temperament has made him rush into great enterprises, and he has not always meant iIl : he has tried to signalize himself in all quarters—Ireland, the West Indies, Canada; but his shallow, uninformed judgment, the slave of a turbulent and overbearing will, has made him embroil matters more than he advanced them : his reforms were en- forced in a hostile spirit—his ameliorations are remembered with rancour. His eloquence has faded ; his administrative activity, such as it was, is palsied ; and he has sunk to little better than a marplot, who can do nothing, but only obstruct. His administra- tion of New Zealand is signalized by incapacity in the Govern- ment, an insolvent exchequer, paralyzed colonization, ruin, uni- versal discontent, anarchy, rebellion, and bloodshed. All that might have been prevented ; it might, even now, all be mended— almost at a word : but Lord Stanley is Minister for the Colonies, and will not let it be done. He is Sir Robert Peel's difficulty with New Zealand. So damaging has the official blundering been, that he is almost becoming the difficulty of the Peel Go- vernment; and it concerns the Conservative party, wishing to re- Min office, to calculate whether it is worth while, for a fiery speech and a bitter word once or twice in the session, to uphold in so important and difficult a post as the administration of the Colonies, one who has long been unserviceable and is growing to be an opprobrium. Lord. Stanley's Irish management gave the first shock to Earl Grey's Ministry : we hold an opinion now shared by many, that he is destined to break up Sir Robert Peel's.
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