What may be Done with New Zealand.

There are four Courses now open to you to take in New Zealand. Sir, and the four may almost be defined in four lines. They are these:—

1.—On the grounds urged at pages from 26 to 32, or on any other, recognize New Zealand as being what she is——namely, a "National Estate"—a "National Property" which interest, which honour, which duty, require you to help to develope and to defend. Establish a true Double Government, Recall Governor Grey, for the reasons assigned at page 53 (or give him trial of another year;) and vigorously prosecute the "War, hand in hand with the Colonists, until you have won some such solid Peace as that mentioned at Page 45.

Or,

2.—Divide New Zealand into two Colonies—the North Island with its capital at Auckland, the South Island with its capital at Christchurch. Repeal the Constitution of the former, and make it a Crown Colony. Thrash the Rebels into complete submission. Give the Colonists half the confiscated Land for helping you, and take the other half for a Crown Demesne—devoting rents and proceeds to a fund for humanizing and civilizing the Maori, partly in the manner suggested in the note at page 58. Continue to give North New Zealand a prominent position in that "Crown Guide Book" for Emigrants described in the note at page 28; and by these means, in this way, possess yourselves of Crown Colony in the Pacific, fit dower for a Windsor Princess.

Leave the South Island as she is, and let her people take care-that, in another decade or so, the North is not ahead of her in Revenue, in Population, in Exports.

Or,

3.—Divide New Zealand into two Communities, North Island and South, and then leave them and go your ways. Let the soft Shepherds of the South pile up the golden fleece, and, under the fig tree, dance to pipe and tabor The Northern Men, have had a hardier training, and can both work and fight. Their number are few; but they would ask sympathetic blood in Australia ^* for help—righteously requiting help with righteously confiscated Land. Australia would come at their prayer; and then, possibly, Exeter Hall might sweat for her Pets. In five years, or in ten, the North Island Men would federate with their Australian Brethren—may be, even with the emaseulate Shepherds of the South—when, possibly, were the Cloud Compeller, himself, to descend on them, say about the year 85, he might elect to stay in the Elysium he had found—and, in some half-caste Juno, forget the Peacock and the Olympian "Square".

Or,

4.—Bowing to Exeter Hall and Manchester, patch up some idle Suspension of Arms—and then, on the word of

^* It may be that the North Island Settlers would not go so far as to agree with me, here; but, speaking for myself as an old North Island Settler, I declare that if, under the adoption of Third Course help could not be obtained from Australia, and rather than have a sham Peace patched up by the South Islanders, I would join in petitioning the Mother-Country to allow the North Island Community to place itself under the protection of France. See Addenda, page 99.

page 69 foolish Philo-Maories, and of South-Island Settlers like the Sewell ^* and Fitzgerald, shut your eyes and declare you have won a Peace. Quick, carry away your gallant Red-coatst^†—find a "Paukena" ^‡ Governor for New Zealand—but do no more. Content yourselves with the gains of her Trade—keep whole skin and full purse—and should that redoubtable animal, the British Lion, ever hap to hear from

^* It is mortifying to see such a Premier as Mr. Weld may some day make, associated with an Attorney-General like Mr. Sewell. A Pamphlet lately addressed by this gentleman to Lord Lyttleton, written with all the art of a Special Pleader, and extensively circulated among members of the Legislature here, has done more injury to the interests alike of Natives and of North Island Settlers than all the diatribes of Exeter Hall. Judging him by his Philo-Maori Brief, Mr. Sewell must be a man of that peculiar parchment mind who, in a raging conflagration, would refuse the Beadle key of Engine House because he had ran for it (if Beadle ever did run) without his insignia of cocked hat.

^† Is there not something rather ludicrous in the perpetual pother which a great Nation, boasting to be the strongest on earth, and counting no fewer than 30,000,000 of Citizens, the richest in the world, makes about the particular locality of a few thousand Troops? The entire military expenditure of such Nation, on the whole of her immense Possessions in America, South Africa, and Australasia is, annually, but little more than a million and a half; while, as I have sought to show at page 33, she is drawing an income of no less than four millions a year from these Colonies in "Trade Profits" alone. Again, might it not be urged, that New Zealand is both a Sanatorium and a School of War, and that even in times of Peace a few Begiments stationed in New Zealand, where the men might earn five or six shillings a-day, two or three days in the week, at civil employments, are as well stationed as if they were mewed up in Barracks in Britain, rotting away swilling beer. The Mother Country does not keep on foot more Begiments because of the existence of such a place as New Zealand, and her Army must be somewhere—why not, then, a small portion of it in New Zealand?—a Station nearer than England, to India, to Australia, to China, and Japan.

^‡ See page 35.

page 70 malicious foreigners, or even from whelps of his own, that he once sneaked out of a quarrel, provoked by his own Servitors in Downing Street, let him pooh-pooh the libellous truth, or roar it down.

I have ranked these four Courses, in what I conceive to be their order of merit

The first, I take it, is the great, imperial, manly, states-man-like, "Baconian" Course—that which would be alike the most permanently beneficial to Mother-Country, to Colonists, to Natives. I trust you will elect to take it. If not, take the Second—if not the Second, take the Third. Dont take the Fourth, Spots on white Scutcheons may be covered, and yet be seen, and this Course would bespot your Scutcheon past all scouring or concealment.

It would be cruel, too, to the North Island Settlers—it would leave the Southerners to hamper them. If the South wants to save her coppers and to wash her hands of the War, let her do it Lukewarm Allies in a camp are best eliminated from it.

No one estimates the advantages New Zealand would secure from Unity more than my humble self. But if you elect to take Course No. 4—if, virtually, you elect to leave us—leave us Duality, rather than leave us with the clogging company of those who would dictate to us the conduct of a Savage War which destroys no homestead, which disturbs no dinner, even, of theirs.

Permit me, in conclusion, Sir, to say that in addressing this Letter to you on the vexed subject of the "New Zealand War" I have been as much actuated by a regard for page 71 what I conceive to be the honour and interest of the Mother-Country, and by an earnest wish to benefit the Maori, as by any desire, great as that may be, to benefit the Colonist; while I would observe that should you think I have anywhere used too free a pen you must please attribute it to my "Bush" fashion of calling Black, Black—and possibly, in some slight degree, to my long inhalation of our exhilarating New Zealand air.