inheritance bequeathed to them by their fathers, which it is their duty to preserve and maintain—an inheritance, of which it may well be said nemo impune lacessit—it is the existence of this right that has engendered that spirit of manliness and honest independence, which, when aroused by a sense of received insult or injury, makes the name of Briton sound, which tyranny shall quake to hear—which has in former days been the means of hurling tyrants off their thrones, and which will, we hope, under the guidance of true and manly feelings, and by the proper use of legal and constitutional means, still triumph over all the arts and designs of those, who would so recklessly and cruelly blast the prospects of our adopted country. Founding as the Colonists do their opposition to the oppressive measures of Sir George Gipps, on the existence of their right, we cannot better prove the legality and justness of their resistance, than by quoting the following extract from an eminent writer on the Liberty of British subjects:—

"Private property, according to the division of English Law, consists in the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right of private property, that is, the right of every man to enjoy the fruits of his fortune, and all the various rights of one's industry. Secondly, of the right of personal liberty. Thirdly, the legislative faculty, taking the word in its most extensive sense."

Each of those rights say, again the English law, they are born as the person of every Englishman they are born as an inheritance, and they cannot be deprived of them by virtue of any order or any power, but by the Laws of the Land; and, indeed, this right of inheritance is expressed in English in one word—Birthright—the same as that which expresses the King's title to the crown; it has, in times of oppression, been often used to limit the right—doubtless of a sacred quality in that of his own."

One of the principal of the rights of property is, that the King can take from his subjects no part of what they possess—he must wait until they themselves grant it in him; and this right, which, as we have seen in force, is, by its consequences, the bulwark that protects all the others has, moreover, the immediate effect of preventing one of the chief causes of oppression.

We are far from attaching all the blame to our own Lieutenant Governor, Captain Hobson, for the numerous evils which have been inflicted on this Country since his arrival amongst us, though, even, he is not altogether free from fault in being, though unwillingly, the instrument of executing the ill-advised plans of another. We believe Captain Hobson to have erred in head and not in heart; and while we give him credit for honest and good intentions and for a wish not to injure the interests of Settlers in this Country, even under the necessity of making an effort, whatever risk, to execute the commands of his Sovereign, or his Sovereign’s Secretary, we cannot help feeling, that were we in his situation ourselves, we should have come to the field of our fame or infamy free and unshackled—we should have spurned the idea of being in any manner, whatever, under the guidance of another, more especially such a person as Sir George Gipps, or any Governor of a penal Colony. Captain Hobson has been engaged in an arduous undertaking that, he has succeeded beyond his own or his employer’s expectations, we will not deny we are persuaded that few in this situation would have exerted themselves so much; and that were Sir George Gipps in his place, he would have, ere this time, abandoned New Zealand, after having acquired a reputation equalled only by that which he had previously obtained in Canada. We believe that Captain Hobson has deservedly earned for himself the good wishes of all the Settlers in New Zealand, and that had he been free from, and entirely unconnected with, the convict colony, we should not now have to record in your pages, the just and well-founded complaints of our fellow-settlers. Captain Hobson may shield his reputation against the odium of having brought misery and ruin on a whole country, from the circumstance of his having declined the responsibility of having to settle the contending claims of Landholders; but he may not so easily

quiet his own conscience in being in this manner the means of throwing them and their fortunes into the hands of their ruthless enemies—into the hands of men, who envy their enterprize and prosperity, and who, from a narrow minded and illiberal policy which cannot see beyond the present moment, fancy, that in effecting the ruin of this Country, they are advancing their own; in this respect the question of Lord Byron to the modern Greeks applies well to Captain Hobson, namely, "Cyffret the nobler and the manlier one?" Why undertake to extend the dominions of Britain, and neglect the prosperity of British subjects? Why seek to attach New Zealand to the Crown of England, and leave its inhabitants a prey to the greedy vultures of a penal settlement? This and this only is the cause of complaint with respect to Captain Hobson, and in forwarding a Petition to her Majesty and an appeal to the Home Government, it ought to be distinctly understood, that the Settlers have no quarrel with Captain Hobson, excepting as stated above; they are all, to a man, most anxious for his emancipation from the trammels of the penal settlement. He has been cordially received from the first, and would continue to carry along with him to the end, the good feeling of all classes, but for his unfortunate connexion with and dependance on Sydney.

In adopting the Petition and Protest which are now in the course of Signature, by, we believe, all the residents in this Country, British as well as the subjects of Foreign Countries, they are availing themselves of the only means of impeding, if not altogether preventing, the execution of Sir George Gipps’s Act of wholesale spoliation, and will manifest to the world that they are not such a contemptible or passive race, or so easily quieted, as some of your Sydney Contemporaries imagined, when they went so far as to assert, that the powerful eloquence and masterly reasoning of Sir George Gipps was so overwhelming, as to paralyze, as by an electric shock, all our efforts. In meeting this assertion of the Editors of the Penal Colony, we would merely state, that had the free Inhabitants of New South Wales shewn half the spirit which is exhibited in the Petition and Protest which you lately published in your Paper, they should not now be, as they are, ruled over by the iron rod of despotism. New Zealand has set an example not only before them, but before all the British Colonies, which they, in particular, ought to imitate. They have declared to the world that they know, and value their rights as men and as subjects of civilized Governments, and that they will not lamely submit to the unjust decrees of a petty Colonial Legislature. If their properties must suffer confiscation if they and their families must be ruined and all their properties sacrificed, let it be by the decree of their Mother-Country, through her Representatives, but until such a sentence be passed, it behoves every man in New Zealand to persevere in the strenuous but legal opposition to the measures of Sir George Gipps; let Protest follow Protest where injustice is threatened or done, let not only our petitions for redress reach the ear of Majesty, but let the voice of our complaint be heard over the length and breadth of the land.

Let us not despond or despair—Colonial Acts and Colonial misgovernment may perplex and harass us for a time, we may suffer inconvenience and even loss, but our cause is good and it shall ultimately prevail. Our Country is not altogether a cruel step mother, or our Sovereign the Tyrant which Colonial Governments would make her seem to be. Sophistry may pass for wisdom, bombast for eloquence, and flippant special pleading for sound argumentative reasoning with such men as those of Botany Bay, who are taught from infancy, to bow before and kiss the rod of their chastisement, but the People of England will differently. Long quotations from late American writers will not justify in their sight the wholesale spoliation of the property of their fellow countrymen—the dust of musty volumes thrown confusedly together in the shape of an oration, will not blind their eyes, or prevent them from perceiving, that our situation is very different indeed from that of the United States of America. It may be a truth, as Sir George Gipps asserts, that in America Law exists to prevent private individuals from purchasing or acquiring land from the Aboriginal proprietors of the soil—the State exclusively reserving to itself this right,—but it must also be remembered, that this Law is made by the Representatives of all the People of the Country for their own benefit; but even such a Law could only take effect from the time of the formation of the Government in a new Country, and could not, by any means, be made like Sir George Gipps’s Act, to apply retrospectively.

Were we an independent country like America, it might be adviseable to imitate their example, but dependant as we are at present on New South Wales, our case is widely different; our possessions have been acquired in a foreign country, at a time, too, when its independence was unequivocally recognised by the Sovereign country whose Representative would now treat us as if we were like the original or Phillip Settlers, negotiating with the Natives for Lands, to which they knew their country had formerly preferred a claim. Sir George Gipps seems altogether to forget the position of the English Government in New Zealand, at least in the Northern Island, where, from the very circumstance of England’s treaty for the cession of the Sovereignty, they have altogether waived the title of original discovery, and, consequently, both in honor and justness forfeited all title to pursue the line of policy which he has adopted; it is amusing if not ridiculous to found an Act whose object is to disannul all Titles to Land acquired by private individuals in New Zealand, on the plea that the original owners are savages, &c., &c., and, consequently, not competent to grant or sell lands to civilized men, while, at the same time, their right of exercising the higher functions—that of governing—is acknowledged—yea more—their right of disposing of the same, and that, too, to the very country which, after pretending to have obtained from them by solemn treaty the cession of their sovereignty, would still treat them as barbarous and savage tribes—if individuals are wrong in purchasing from savages their minor rights—then, undoubtedly, the Government must be doubly so in purchasing the higher. If we come claiming a people whom England is not ashamed to acknowledge and to treat as an independent Nation, we expect that England in assuming and receiving the Sovereignty of that country, will fulfil to us the promises and pledges which the people who she now represents, had previously given.

We have no desire to oppose the establishment of British Authority in New Zealand, nor do we avow any connexion with the 'Twenty Million Acre West' worth, or any one who may have purchased tracts of country in defiance of the Queen's Proclamation; but having embarked our capital and risked our lives in New Zealand, we are determined to preserve our honestly acquired possessions to the last.

I am afraid I have extended these remarks almost too long for your paper, and will, therefore, close for the present, which shall probably in future opportunity. I am, Sir, our obedt. servt.,

JUSTICE.

Koioratika: Printed by G. A. Eaycr & Co