*.—No. sa,

14

PAPERS RELATIVE TO THE IMPERIAL CLAIM

18G3

or to be authorized, by the House of Representatives." In forwarding these resolutions to the Duke of Newcastle on the 26th of August, 1862, Your Excellency expresses your consent to act in the spirit of them until you receive further instructions, though you do not think they " establish satisfactory relations between the Governor of this Colony and his Responsible Advisers;" but, you express your conviction " that when the difficulties now prevailing have been brought to a close, the General Assembly will, if your Graee desires it, assume the entire responsibility of Native affairs." J'l. While the House was in session a very important Despatch was received from the Duke of Newcastle, dated the 26th May, 1862, in which, referring to this provisional arrangement entered into by Your Excellency and your Advisers with respect to the conduct of Native affairs, His Grace observes, " I am ready to sanction the important step you have taken in placing the management of the Natives under the control of the Assembly. I do so partly in reliance on your own capacity to receive, and your desire to do what is best for those in whose welfare I know you are so much interested. But I do it also because I can not disguise from myself that the endeavor to keep the management of the Natives under the control of the Home Government has failed. It can only be mischievous to retain a shadow of responsibility when the beneficial exercise of power has become impossible." 75. Immediately this despatch came under consideration of the Legislature, both Houses prepared addresses to the Queen, in which they forcibly depicted the impossibility of honorably or successfully fulfilling the task sought to be imposed on them. The House of Representatives submitted that the provisional arrangement was made without the assent of the Assembly, that it is proposed to make the transfer of responsibility at a tinio when a large section of the race have endeavored to establish a separate nationality, and to set up a King, and have raised bands of armed men to maintain his authority ; when the insurgent natives hold possession, avowedly by right of conquest, of one of its principal agricultural districts, which had been occupied under grants from the Crown, and cultivated for years by peaceful and industrious settlers; nevertheless, it declared its readiness to take as large a share of the burden as its means will allow, as it hitherto has done, and concluded its protest in the following emphatic language:—" In respectfully declining, therefore, to accept the proposal of your Majesty's Government, we do so, not as shrinking from labors or burdens which we ought rightly to undertake, but because, along with a desire on the part of your Majesty's Government to confer an apparent boon on the Colony, we seem to discover in the despatches to which we have referred, the intention to withdraw from engagements to which the British nation is honorably bound, and to transfer to the Colony liabilities and burdens which belong properly to the Empire." 76. The reply to this address is contained in an elaborate Despatch of the Duke of Newcastle, of the 26th February, 1863, in which, after arraying the arguments adduceable in defence of the position assumed by Her Majesty's Government, and in rebutting those brought forward by the Colonial Government, His Grace observes that " Her Majesty was pleased to receive the addresses very graciously, but has not commanded me to recall the decision communicated to you in my Despatch of the 26th of May, with respect to the administration of Native affairs." 77. When the Assembly aiet in 1863 it took this reply under consideration, and utterly hopeless that any success would attend their efforts to avoid a burden the Colony could not bear; considering, also, the disastrous results which might probably arise at such a crisis from an estiangement between Great Britain and her dependency, especially when so much depended on unity of action; and regarding the fixed determination of Her Majesty's Government to revoke the arrangement of 1856, the House of Representatives resolved that, "relying on the cordial co-operation of the Imperial Government for the future, this House cheerfully accepts the responsibility thus placed upon the Colonists, and at the same time records its firm determination to use its best endeavors to secure a sound and lasting peace, to do justice impartially to both races of Her Majesty's subjects, and to promote the civilization and welfare of all classes of the inhabitants of these Islands." 78. I would desire in this place to point out that the Duke of Newcastle's Despatch of the .' th June, 1861, merely sketched out a proposal for transferring the administration of Native affairs to the Colony, and that in your Excellency's Despatch of the 30th November, 1861, you intimated merely a provisional transfer until His Grace should communicate the views of the Home Government basing your recommendation on the freedom from responsibilities for "wars which may arise," for, as you observe, "it would seem difficult to call upon the Colonial Legislature to find the means of defraying the cost of a war for the origin, continuance, and conduct of which it was only in an indirect manner responsible." Such was the war then existing, which still exists though nearly extinct and about which Your Excellency received the particular injunction that it "would be better to prolong it with all its evils than to end it without producing in the Native mind such a conviction of our strength as may render peace not temporary and precarious, but well grounded and lasting." As the transfer was provisional on Your Excellency's part, so was its acceptance conditional on the part of your advisers. Her Majesty's Ministers endorsed the action you had taken, but the Colonial Legislature declined to endorse that which the Colonial Ministers had taken. It could not therefore be asserted that there was any transfer based upon mutual agreement, and consequently the Secretary for the Colonies remarked that " the relinquishment (of the charge of Native affairs) does not require the assent of the Colonists to make it effectual." 79. Concurrently with these political questions there were others arising of a more practical character. The rebel Natives at Taranaki had scornfully rejected the terms offered by Governor Browne, and the tribes on the Lower Waikato, were in a state of excitement at the evident signs of preparedness to mee looming events which had for some time been manifested in furtherance of Governor Browne's intimation of his intention to punish the Waikatos should they not come in under the Proclamation. It was evident that a resort to arms would be eventually necessary in order to restore Her Majesty's supremacy, and tc reinstate British settlers, who had been driven from their homes, and which were then in the possession of the rebels, but, intermediately it was considered expedient that another attempt should be made towards reconciliation, and that while abstaining from coercive operations the exposed European districts should gradually be placed in a more defensible condition. These preparations, as far as Auckland was concerned, having been completed by General Cameron at the end of February, Your Excellency at once embarked for Taranaki with a view of re-occupying the British settlemente of Omata and