COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 13 June 1864)

§ MR. CARDWELL
said, that documents upon the subject of the state of New Zealand and the progress of the war had recently been laid on the table, and that morning papers had been circulated containing a correspondence which showed at full length the reasons which had induced him to make the proposal he was about to submit to the Souse. Considering, therefore, the lateness of the hour, he would 1691 Confine his remarks within the shortest limits. It would be remembered that last Session a Resolution like the one he was about to propose was brought forward by his right hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, on which a Bill was to be founded for the purpose of guaranteeing a New Zealand loan. The circumstances which led to the withdrawal of that Bill were stated in the correspondence on the table, and that correspondence also contained the promise of his noble Friend the Duke of Newcastle to renew the proposal this Session. The other papers in the hands of hon. Members exhibited the progress which, by the skill of General Cameron and by the gallantry of our troops, had been made in the war down to the latest advices. He would, therefore, assume that hon. Members were already as well acquainted as he was with the history of events in New Zealand, the success of our arms in the various conflicts which had occurred, and the progress made in the final settlement and pacification of the Northern Island. At the same time, he might be permitted to communicate to the House the information which had reached him that morning. In the newspapers of that day he had seen accounts which he was happy to say did not correspond with those which had reached him officially. By the present mail, accounts had been received of two conflicts between our troops and the Maories. Of these conflicts, one took place in the immediate neighbourhood of New Plymouth, and the other and more important at the principal seat of war on the upper part of the River Waikato, in the presence of General Cameron himself. The first was admitted by all to be a success, and a success, too, achieved with the smallest possible loss, not one man having been killed, and only four wounded. General Cameron and the Governor spoke of the operation in the highest terms. With respect to the other action, he had seen it spoken of in newspapers as a disaster occasioned by the failure of a subordinate, and only retrieved by a vigorous effort on the part of General Cameron himself. Hon. Members would no doubt be glad to hear from him the accounts which the Governor of New Zealand and General Cameron gave of the conflict. He had received that morning a despatch from General Cameron, in which he said— I received General Carey's despatch this morning. He states that 101 Maories have been 1692 killed, besides eighteen to twenty reported by Native prisoners to have been buried in the pah, thirty-three have been taken prisoners—twenty-six of them wounded. Rewi (the principal rebel) has not been found. This is the severest lesson the Maories have ever learnt, and will, I hope, have a good effect. Then, speaking of his subordinate, Colonel Carey, he went on to say— Colonel Carey deserves great credit for the clever manner in which he succeeded in surrounding them. Though unwilling to occupy the time of the House, he had thought it right to read that statement after the statements which he had seen elsewhere. He was now speaking of that which had taken place on the Upper Waikato, with respect to which Sir George Grey said— This action, so disastrous to the Natives, will, I sincerely trust, prove one great means of bringing this lamentable war to a conclusion. From the last telegram have sent, you will find that one of its results has already been that the Natives have abandoned the position at Manugatautari, which the Lieutenant General was preparing to attack. That fortress, which would probably have been taken only with great loss, was yielded up without a contest, and was in possession of our troops. The latest official information he had was couched in the satisfactory terms which he had just stated. With regard to the action spoken of in the Melbourne papers, respecting which the right hon. Gentleman had asked a question, all he could say was, that no intelligence of it had reached him, and he was not, therefore, prepared to say it was not true. After the mail left Auckland it touched at Nelson; and, therefore, if it had happened, it was probable it might have reached the newspapers that way, and could not have been forwarded with the Government despatches from Auckland. It did not, however, appear, from the list of killed and wounded, to have been of any considerable importance. But however that might be, there could be no doubt from the despatches he had received, that at the principal seat of war on the Upper Waikato, the arms of General Cameron had been successful, and that that district was in our possession, and its pacific administration, he hoped, in progress.
He came to the subject to which he had risen more immediately to address himself. The House was aware that after the close of the Taranaki war an engage- 1693 ment had been entered into by his noble Friend en behalf of the Government, to submit to the Home a proposal to carry into effect a loan of halt a million to the Government of New Zealand for the purpose of securing the repayment of a debt to the Treasury of £200,000, and of obtaining.£300,000 for purposes connected with the war. A Resolution was last Session introduced to give effect to that proposal; but, for reasons stated in the correspondence, it was not carried out, and the fulfilment of the engagement had devolved upon him. Meantime, as might also be seen by the correspondence, the New Zealand Assembly determined to raise a loan amounting to £3,000,000, for which sum they requested—and the request was strongly enforced by the representations of the Governor—the guarantee of the British Government. The Finance Minister of the colony also came home with the view of pressing the point on the attention of the Government, and of giving the necessary explanations with respect to it, and he must in justice to that gentleman say, that he had displayed great ability and candour in the discharge of his mission. He himself, however, felt that, to guarantee an amount approaching £3,000,000, was an impossibility, and he knew that he could submit no such proposal to Parliament with any chance of its being accepted. He at once, therefore, set the proposal aside, and there remained the question whether, in fulfilment of the pledge previously given, we should limit the guarantee to half a million, or go beyond that amount. The House was well aware how great was the expense to which the Government of New Zealand had been put by the contest which he trusted was now drawing to a close. With that expense the guarantee for half a million had nothing to do. In the course of the war a sum closely approaching £300,000 had been advanced by the Imperial Government to the Government of the colony, and if therefore the guarantee had been confined to the sum of half a million, it was obvious that nearly the whole would have been absorbed by the debt to the Treasury, and that nothing would have remained applicable to the expenses of the New Zealand Government. He had, therefore, stated to the Colonial Treasurer that a fair question for consideration was whether the security at the disposal of the colony would cover, besides the original offer, a guarantee for the sum of £300,000 in addition, to be paid to the 1694 Imperial Treasury, and a further sum of £200,000, as portion of the expenses incurred by the Government of New Zealand, or, in other words, whether the security he could offer would cover the sum of £1,000,000. Now, the correspondence, he thought, showed that there was security sufficient to guarantee that amount with perfect safety. It appeared that for the financial year ending the 30th of June, 1863, there was a clear surplus of receipts over expenditure in New Zealand of nearly £260,000. For the present year there was an estimated surplus of more than £200,000, and it seemed that the revenue was coming in much more rapidly than the framers of that estimate contemplated. To cover the guarantee of £1,000,000 there was a clear surplus of £200,000, while the income of the colony was increasing year by year, and was independent of the land revenue, which amounted to a large sum of money, almost equal to the ordinary revenue of the colony. That being so, the Government had offered to redeem their pledge by proposing to give a guarantee for £1,000,000, to be raised at a rate not exceeding 4 per cent with a sinking fund of 2 per cent, which would involve an annual charge of £60,000. That proposal did not, he thought, extend to an unreasonable amount, or to one which was likely to cause any risk to this country. It remained for him to state the reasons which should induce this country to enter into a guarantee at all. They were based upon the fact that great expense bad been entailed on the colony by the war, which had rendered it necessary that the whole male population of the province of Auckland, from the ages of sixteen to fifty-five, should be under arms at once, upon the prospect of an early pacification of the colony, and the consideration that when that pacification took place heavy expenses would have to be incurred, not only in winding up the outlay consequent upon the war, but in carrying out measures of improvement, such as the making of roads, the procuring a survey of the country, and other schemes which would afford the best security against the risks of war for the future. The correspondence, he might add, showed that it had been stated to the colonists, that if the Government consented to make to Parliament the proposal which he had mentioned, it would be on the conditions that out of the loan so raised the whole sum due to the Treasury, amounting as nearly as he could cal- 1695 culate to close on £500,000, should in the first instance be discharged, and' that at the end of the present year the arrangement with regard to military expenditure should be terminated, and that the colony should, in future, substantially, and not merely nominally, contribute to the Imperial exchequer for any aid, it might receive in a moment of emergency. The payment was to be the same as that from the Australian colonies, £40 for each man of the artillery and £55 for every artilleryman; but the distinction which arose from the presence of a Native population was to be recognized to the extent of one regiment, on condition that a sum of £50,000, here to fore paid as part of a complicated arrangement into which he need not enter, for Native purposes, should be appropriated to the benefit of the Natives. If the House ultimately sanctioned that arrangement, these advantages would be secured: the whole debt to the Imperial treasury would at once be discharged; an arrangement with regard, to the troops furnished by the mother country to the colony fair and reasonable in itself would be substituted for that nominal, and inequitable arrangement which had hitherto prevailed; and, lastly, the Colonial Minister engaged on the part of himself and his colleagues, that they would cordially co-operate with the Governor in that policy towards the Natives which had been prescribed to him, by the Government at home, and which had met with the approval of that House. The measure, in short, was brought forward in fulfilment of a former pledge, and in the belief that it would contribute to the pacification and settlement of the Northern Island, that it would not entail any risk or expenditure upon the Imperial Treasury, and that it would be the foundation of a more equitable arrangement with regard to the future apportionment of charges between this country and New Zealand. He hoped, therefore, that there would be no opposition to the Resolution. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Resolution

§ MR. AYTOUN
said, he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would allow such a time to elapse before the second reading of the Bill as would give to hon. Members an opportunity of reading the correspondence upon this subject, and that the discussion on the next stage of the measure would be brought forward at an early hour.

§ MR. CARDWELL
said, that If the Resolution was agreed to that night and 1696 reported the following day, he would fix the second reading of the Bill for the following Monday, but he was not sure that he should be able to bring it on on that evening.

§ SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBY
said, he thought the Government were about to undertake a great responsibility in proposing the loan, and the proper time for discussing the proposal Was in Committee on the Resolution. He had not had time to read the papers through carefully, but from what he had seen he Would warn the House to look carefully into the financial state of New Zealand. He believed that the liabilities of New Zealand were very great. Why should they want a loan of £3,000,000? He wished to know the amount of their outstanding liabilities, for he did not think the New Zealand system of finance was upon a sound basis. He should like to know how the old debts were to be discharged, for respecting some of them squabbles were going on between the Home and the Colonial Governments. He understood that the colony was to pay £44 for each infantry soldier, and £55 for each artilleryman, and he should have thought that the allowance for the infantry and artillery would have absorbed the whole of the surplus income of the colony, leaving no margin to justify a guarantee. The taxpayers of this country ought not to be burdened with these sops to New Zealand.

§ MR. WHALLEY
said, that he had seen in New Zealand newspapers a statement that Sir George Grey; the Governor of New Zealand, had Said that the outbreak had originated and been sustained by the influence of the Roman Catholic priests. He mentioned that in order that the right hon. Gentleman might inform the House whether he had received from Sir George Grey any communication to that effect.

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, he was not generally favourable to the guarantee of Colonial loans by the Imperial Government, but he thought it must be confessed that the present case 'of New Zealand was exceptional, and that there were great objects at stake which might induce the House to enter into the proposed guarantee. He wished to know whether the Government were about to give a guarantee for a loan of £3,000,000, or for a loan of £1,000,0.00, and what the two sums were required for? He thought they should consider the great difficulties of the colony, and that the Government had been 1697 so far committed in the creation of them, as in the old vicious system of Downing Street government we initiated the policy which led to them; and also that the colony was entitled to great consideration for the mariner in which they had met those difficulties, and the example they had set to the other colonies of a rising spirit of self-defence. But the strongest reason for considering the proposition was, that the right hon. Gentleman informed them that the condition attaching to this guarantee was that the colony would have to pay for all military sent out to them on future occasions, with the exception of a single regiment. It was impossible that, this country could go on finding troops for; colonies all over the world, and the sooner they found a precedent in the colonies for their paying for the use of English troops the better it would be for both them and for this country. Under these circumstances, without expressing any deliberate opinion on the whole scheme, he was willing to state his strong inclination to support the Government.

§ MR. HASSARD
said, as it was a question entirely turning upon available surplus, it would be desirable, before the second reading, to have some detailed information as to the finances of New Zealand. If 4,000 men were to be paid for at the rate of £40 each, exclusive of artillery, the total of £160,000 thus made would be a sery serious item.

§ MR. CARDWELL
said, the surplus in question was paid in after all general expenditure bad been satisfied, and as the loan was to be a first charge on the revenues of New Zealand, the whole sum was available as security. It was not expected that it would be necessary to maintain anything like 4,000 troops in New Zealand.

§ MR. WHALLEY
said, he must remind the right hon. Gentleman that he had not answered his question.

§ MR. CARDWELL
said, he really did not think that at that time of night (twenty minutes to one o'clock) he ought to enter on that branch of the question.