Auckland.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume XIII, Issue 1367, 8 September 1858, Page 4

Auckland.

THE WARS AND WHIMS OF WELLINGTON. [From the New Zealander, Aug. 11.] Either a decided re-action has taken place, or the people of Wellington are the most unstable of politicians. Their changes of sentiment, as evidenced by the results of their recent Provincial and General Elections, have been so extraordinary that it would seetn as if they had been smitten withthe whim of playing at the favorite game of " Jump Jim Crow; or, We don’t know our minds.” They elect what they call a Reform Council purposely to obstruct Dr. Featherston in his costly policy: this Council does its work, and Dr. Featherston resigns, but presents himself for re-election, whereupon—captivated by his ‘'pluck,"—the people of Wellington re-elect him, to try once more to work with, or else to crush, a still hostile Council. Just as the General Assembly meets, the Superintendent of Wellington and his chief ministers and allies resign their seats or refuse to. go up to Auckland, although well aware that the settlers of Ahuriri have petitioned for Separation;—a demand which implies the alienation of perhaps the most valuable section of the Province of Wellington, and—although the Wellington Government has pocketed £32.ooofrom the land sales of that district in eighteen months,, but spent fiext.to nothing upon it in return—a demand which also probably implies the release of the new Province of Hawke’s Bay, to the same amount, of its proportion of liability on account of the large Provincial Loans that have been effected, yet the placable and pliable electors of Wellington embrace the very first opportunity of provincial ingratitude to the men to whom the Ahuririans are so largely indebted (or their enfranchisement, by returning Dr. Featherston and one of his staunch supporters, Capt. Rhodes, as their representatives and defenders in the General Assembly, just as that Assembly is about, to separate, and just as the Hawke’s Bey district is being sliced off beyond the power of re annexation. The Hutt election was to take place on the 31st ult.; the Featherston candidates were Messrs. Fitzherbert and Renall—the Reform candidates Messrs. Hart and Cheyne; and as the Independent has of late proved a reliable ” Vates ’’ with respect to the result of the doings ” in the political races of Wellington, it is probable tint we shall hear of the re-election of our old friend the hon. member for Verbosity, Mr. Fitzherbert, with Mr. Renall for his colleague. There is something so truly capricious and whimsical in these frequent shiftings or revulsions in political sentiment and action, that it would puzzle the victors .to tell in what their "glorious victory ” consists, or where the vanquished, though worsted, have suffered loss in defeat at the poll. The arrival of the White Swan, with positive news of the Separation of Ahuriri, will probably cause both parties to say witha melancholy shake of the head, “ Brother, brother, we’re both in the wrong; for while we ’twa doggies' have been quarrelling, the prize marrow bone has been filched from us by that wide-awake collie from Ahuriri."

Whether our "fightingfriends" at Wellington will profit by the lesson they have received in this session of the Assembly, of the dangerous consequences attendant upon such incessant local warfare, appears somewhat dubious. The Spectator, as will be seen, still cries “ No surrender 1” and points to the more steady and methodized attention to Registration—the Independent proclaims with no hesitating tone, the necessity and certainty of the confirmation of the present victory "as soon as the dissolution of the Council shall occur,” when the “ Constitutional party" are to " take care to put the right men in the right places, and restore Messrs. Carpenter, M’Laggan, Toomath, Bowler, and Co., to that private life which they are so well calculated to adorn.” We now leave our neighbours at Wellington to -settle their fresh grounds of battle, seeing that—to change the metaphor—both have suffered the General Assembly, like the Lawyer in the fable, to take the oyster, by creating the Hawke's Bay district into a separate Province, and hand to them the shells, in the shape of very greatly-denuded Provincial powers.— Whether these shells are worth fighting about with the fierceness that has characterized the late contests, it is for them, not for strangers, to decide. It may be that the desire for Separation will spread from the East to the West Coast sooner than has been anticipated, and that what has been termed by the Wakefield party the ” pocket-borough of the three F.'s” will go in for government on its own account. In fact so many new complications of Provincial politics are likely to arise, that Dr. Featherston is to be congratulated that the expenditure of the large Immigration Loans was checked in a comparatively early stage by the breaking through of the Black-Ball Line contract.