The publication of the Parliamentary Report on the affairs of
New Zealand forms a considerable check to the generally uncon-
tested sway of the Colonial Office, and ought to exercise a material influence in reviving the depressed interests of the colony and its friends at home. Lord STANLEY, the Colonial Minister, and the trading Company which has been the real efficient instrument for co- lonizing the islands, were at issue : Lord STANLEY used his official power at once tyrannically and foolishly, in a way to arrest all pro- gress, and not only to damage interests here but to threaten the dis- tant colony with more disastrous forms of distress. The sum of the conclusion deliberately arrived at by a Committee of the House of Commons, two-thirds of it composed of his own party friends, is, that all throughout his pertinacious dispute Lord STANLEY has been in the wrong. What will be done ? will Lord STANLEY try to brave it out, and defy the Committee and Parliament ? will he turn penitent, and do what he ought—both what he ought to have done long ago as a statesman, and what he ought to do now as a gentleman ? or will he cut the knot by resigning ? Formerly, Ministers used to resign for less humiliating reverses.
