THE NEW COLONIAL POLICY.
LORD GRANVILLE'S Colonial policy would be, whether a wise policy or not, at least a boldly-conceived and most important policy, if he would be more frank with Parliament and the public, and not keep us in England behind almost all the rest of the world as to his real meaning. Here is Sir
Philip Wodehouse, the official organ of Her Majesty's Govern- ment at the Cape, publicly assuring the Assembly there that "in North America we have unmistakable indications of the rapid establishment of a powerful independent State. In Australia it is probable that its several settlements, with their great wealth and homogeneous population, will see their way to a similar coalition. In New Zealand the severance is being accomplished under very painful circumstances." Sir Philip Wodehouse is, we believe, a relative of one member of the Cabinet, and is of course formally instructed by another, and it is not likely that he has,—in an official speech intended to suggest the same course to his own colony,—misinter- preted the real end and aim of the present Colonial policy of Her Majesty's advisers. But that is not the only quarter from which clear indications of a deliberate in- tention of cutting the Colonies adrift as soon as possible come. In Canada Sir A. Galt has received the Order of St. Michael and St. George not merely in spite of a frank confession that he looked to the separation of the Canadian Dominion from the Crown, but as he himself appears to think, under assurances from Her Majesty's Government that his view and theirs are identical. Mr. Monsell did not admit this in answering the question put to him on Monday and Thursday nights, but Sir A. Gait's language compels us to believe that that impression has been distinctly conveyed to him. Having fully stated his views for the information of Lord Granville as an objection to his acceptance of the offered honour, Mr.
Galt received from Lord Granville, through the Governor- General of Canada, a reply which he himself asked for permis- sion to publish, and for the publication of which a Member of the British Parliament has also asked, but which Lord Granville declines to publish, on the ground that it is " confidential,"— in other words, that it contains what Lord Granville wishes to keep secret, but not what Sir A. Galt wishes to keep secret. Well, in spite of this secrecy, Sir A. Galt has publicly stated that "he is satisfied that the policy of independence has been arrived at by the Imperial Government," and that so far as his loyalty to the Crown is concerned, he stands "upon the same ground as the Ministers of the Crown in England."
Now, take these two indications together,—Sir Philip Wode- house's express declarations and Sir A. Gait's express declara-
tions,—and then, again, look at the unparalleled severity of the dealings of the Ministry with New Zealand,—dealings which seem more likely than ever to end in the disasters we have always dreaded, and any politician of ordinary sagacity will draw the inference that a deliberate Colonial policy of no insignificant moment has been, at all events, provisionally adopted by the present Cabinet, which they are not willing to confide to Parliament and to have discussed in Parliament, as yet. Sir Philip Wodghouse and Sir A. Galt have no doubt at all about the matter, and they have just been in direct com- munication with the Government upon this very question, and have both of them in their way taken action upon it.
And yet all the Liberal papers with one consent
seem to be absolutely incapable of believing that a new policy of the utmost magnitude has been determined upon, and applaud Lord Granville's polite evasions of the home-questions put to him, just as if the suspicions suggested were mere mares'-nests, of no account whatever. Indeed, nothing is more curious than the eager and blind support given to Lord Granville's policy by the Times. Read that remarkable article of Wednesday on New Zealand, side by side with the New Zealand correspondent's letter, and the still later telegram from the same place. "Lord Granville's famous despatch," writes the Times in its leader, "has been received, discussed, condemned, reconsidered, and finally almost forgotten in the prosperity actual and prospective of the colony." What says the telegram in another page, under the date Sydney, February 28 1—" Intelligence from New Zealand reports great depression among the colonist& Hostilities had recommenced, and there had been several slip- 'ashes." And what says the Times' own correspondent's letter, under date five weeks earlier, January 21st? Why, that the feel- ing there about Lord Granville's despatch is one of "profound and undisguised indignation." "The despatch is stigmatized as harsh in the extreme, ungenerous, and filled with asser- tions and implications showing wilful misrepresentation or great ignorance of the antecedent history of the colony..... As the immediate consequence of Earl Granville's expressions and his declaration of the Imperial policy towards New Zealand, the expediency of declaring the independence of the colony, of refusing to maintain the Viceregal establishment, and even of annexation with the United States, has been freely discussed, and it is only because the case of the colony appears to have attracted considerable attention and called forth the sympathy of a large and influential section of the English people, that no decided steps have been taken in one of these directions. It is also expected that the colonial question will be fully considered during the next session of Parliament, and the more moderate section of the community is willing to await the event of that discussion before accepting any proposal for radical change." We have been simply laughed at by all the Liberal journals for predicting this result with some perti- nacity, and for predicting, too, what it gives us the utmost pain to see in a way to be verified, that a Maori insurrection and a colonial disaster are pretty certain to follow in the track of Lord Granville's relentless logic. If the telegram means,— as we fear it may,—that the Waikatos have risen, or are on the point of rising, and are intending to join Te Kooti in an attack on the colonists, one of the greatest disasters of a long history of disaster will probably succeed Lord Granville's manifesto in favour of Maori independence. Nor can we con- gratulate the colonists on their faith in "that large and in- fluential section of the English public" in whom they trust for a reversal of Lord Granville's policy. The Conservatives, —too often from a party motive,—a few semi-independent politicians like Lord Carnarvon, and this journal almost, if not quite, alone in the ranks of the Liberal party, excepting, indeed, our Roman Catholic contemporary, the Tablet,—have been as earnest, as the public in general have been apathetic, for the endangered colony. The New Zealand Minister, Mr. Fox, will find that his Commissioners on whom he relied so implicitly have been met with a blank refusal to entertain their proposi- tions, and that no "large and influential section of the public" has as yet evinced the slightest interest in the matter. What might happen, indeed, if New Zealand does decide on boldly re- questing the Queen to permit her to sever the Imperial tie, and if she does so while a scene of great disaster and suffering is going on in the colony, it would be quite premature to say. Englishmen do not easily realize what happens at the antipodes, but they may awaken to some sense of the true drift of our Colonial policy, if they see England losing her colonies, and the colonists of one of them losing their lives through a mere doctrinaire resolve of the Colonial Office to carry out a new and undiscusserl policy of its own. But hitherto, at least, nothing could have been more ludicrously misplaced than the expectations of the New Zealanders from their . friends in England and in the Imperial Parliament.
That the New Zealand Government itself,—a government, we must remember, expressly formed to fall on the neck of the Colonial Office, and give and receive the kiss of peace, if only the slightest appearance of a wish for ain embrace could be wheedled out of that stony figure,—is begin- ning to see that Lord Granville means cutting the cable, the last despatch of Mr. Fox's government, signed by Mr. Gisborne, conclusively shows. The Minister, writing at an earlier date than either the letter or the telegram we have
previously noticed, namely, on the 7th January, speaks in a tone of grave indignation of the horror indicated by our Government lest, if a single British soldier were left in New Zealand, his aid might actually be had recourse to should a disaster occur, and reminds Lord Granville that "New Zealand is not an alien country ; that it is peopled by two races, both of which, one by natural allegiance, and the other by treaty—are British subjects,"--that the latter obligation alone precludes "both in spirit and in letter an Imperial policy of absolute isolation and denial of moral support while loyal natives are being massacred because they do not secede from the Sovereign to whom they believe they owe allegiance ;" and he expresses the universal feeling of regret which will arise throughout the colony, "that the tone and purport of Lord Gran- ville's despatch (written at a time when he must have known the colony to be in the greatest distress) are scarcely susceptible of any other explanation than a desire to abandon this country, and to sever its connection with the Empire." And after a very powerful, and to our minds unanswerable, exposure of the unfairness and the inconsistencies of the Colonial Office, the Ministerial memorandum ends by formally claiming "that the colony should be practically recognized as an integral por- tion of the Empire, and not be thrust out beyond its pale as of infinitely less consideration than a British subject in foreign larids. They ask England for no pecuniary sacrifice ; they do not appeal to the compassion ; but they do appeal to those principles of eternal justice which are as much the duty of the strong as the heritage of the weak, and which even the most powerful nation should never withhold from the weakest suppliant." We now know that seven weeks after this despatch was written, the fears expressed in it of new disaster were apparently on the eve of being realized, that the very faint hopes expressed in it have not one of them been realized, and that the colony, at last aware that it had been aban- doned by England, was in the deepest depression as well as danger. What can it all lead to except the formal separation to which the New Zealand Ministers point as the true object of Lord Granville, and this, too, under circumstances which will leave the colony of New Zealand with a tradition almost as bitterly hostile to England as that of the American Colonies now called the United States ? We have been ridiculed for so repeatedly expressing this fear, but every fresh month con- firms it, —and what is more, confirms the impression that our fear, so far as regards separation, is the deliberate hope and aim of the present Colonial Office.
But to return to the point from which we started. No one can deny that if in Canada, if in the Cape, if in New Zealand, separation is believed by official persons on ade- quate grounds to be the deliberate policy of the Government, it was incumbent on the Ministry which had formed so novel and hardy a design to communicate its view to Par- liament, and take the opinion of the nation on the boldest and most startling innovation in modern statesmanship. To carry out this policy to the bitter end in the extreme case of New Zealand, without ever informing Parliament of the real motive, and leaving it to be supposed that the last regiment is withdrawn from New Zealand solely because New Zealand can do very well, if not better, without it, is not candid, is not worthy of a policy which, however foolish and fatal it may be and we think is, is at least both courageous and original. The nation is apathetic in part at least because it is only half awake to what is happening. Let the Ministry boldly propound its plans, and persuade the United Kingdom to shear itself as soon as may be of its great colonial posses- sions if it can. But it is neither constitutional nor just to commit us deeply to an irretrievable policy, before any sub- stantial fraction of the English people know what they are sanctioning and whither they are drifting.
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