74 HISTORY AND ANOMALIES OF THE may compel them to submit to. Such are some of the financial results of the system called responsible government, and, it may be added, that such or similar results are not altogether peculiar to New Zealand, but common to other colonies into which the system has been introduced.* When any change is proposed in the Constitution of any one of the United States of America, there is a special "Convention" for the purpose, at which deputies are elected to consider the specific changes proposed; and in the Constitutions of some of the States there is a special provision for a periodical Convention to consider whether any, and, if any, what changes may be expedient. There is something very absurd in the British Government professing to have acted upon the alleged wishes of the colonists in giving them a Constitution when not one colonist in a hundred ever heard anything of the matter until the two or three persons who pretended to represent them had accomplished their designs. On the other hand, nothing is more remarkable than the way in which the home Government has set aside the only legitimate expressions of the wishes of the colonists of the Northern province which have been sent to England. The city of Auckland was, by an express instruction of the Queen, communicated through Lord Stanley when Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, proclaimed, in the most public and authentic manner, to be the capital of New Zealand. Had the Provincial Council of that province been actuated by ambitious motives, they would have abstained from any proceeding which tended to deprive the Province of Auckland of its superiority as the seat of the general Government for all the provinces. They sought not to continue such a superiority; they sought to have the management of their own local affairs without the interference of strangers. They set forth in their petitions, sent to the Queen and both Houses of Parliament in 1853, 1855, 1858, and 1862, the anomalous and unprecedented character of the Constitution, which confederated six colonies, each as distinct from the rest as any colony that was ever planted from all *In 1863 the debts and rate of Customs duties of the several Australian colonies per head of the population were as follows: Rate per Head of Debt. Rate per Head of Customs Duties. £1 15 3 New South Wales Victoria CONSTITUTION OF THE NEW ZEALAND COLONIES. 75 other colonies under one general Government and Legislature; which general Government and Legislature had power to abrogate the acts of the local Legislatures and authorities of the individual provinces, thus subjecting the interests of the inhabitants to be dealt with by a majority of persons who had no interests in common with theirs, but who had interests antagonistic to theirs. * They showed that each province was capable of maintaining a sufficient Government for the management of its own affairs; that while the colonies were dependencies of the Crown the (so-called) general Government could exercise no functions of a general or national character, nor any other functions which each province was not more capable of exercising for itself; that it was not simply a useless and uncalled-for institution, but that its existence was incompatible with the true objects of government; its only effect being to create a governing class, which could only exist by complicating public business and rendering the true objects of government impossible.* When the Constitution Act of New Zealand was passed in 1852 the Parliament was in "a state of dissolution." Sir John Pakington, at that time Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, threw himself on the forbearance of the House, representing the necessity of passing the bill, or of renewing the Act, by which the previous Constitution Act giving representative institutions had been suspended; but stating that if it should be debated in committee on every clause which any member might object to, there could be no hope of its passing before the dissolution. There was a general agreement amongst the members who spoke, to allow the bill to pass, however much they might object to some of its peculiar provisions. What was chiefly insisted upon was its approval by those who were said to represent the wishes of the colonists. But of those provisions the colonists of Auckland, whose number was equal to the average of two of the other provinces, being one-third of the whole, knew nothing until it was too late to remonstrate. The baneful influence of Mr. Gibbon Wakefield and his associates of the New Zealand Company was still in the ascendant in the Colonial Office. On going into committee on the bill, Sir John Pakington presented several petitions. "The last of these petitions," he said, "was from Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, the prayer of which was particularly directed to the question whether there should be provincial Legislatures, or whether * See, for example, the Petition of 1858 in the Appendix. 76 HISTORY AND ANOMALIES OF THE there should be a Central Legislature, and Legislatures for particular localities. With his usual ability, Mr. Wakefield discussed the subject, and earnestly prayed that the bill, as it stood, might pass into a law." He subsequently stated that: "The case had been so strongly put by Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, that he hoped the House would permit him to refer to an extract." With respect to Mr. Gladstone, "who, if he rightly followed the right honourable gentleman in a former debate on this subject, expressed great objection to the course he (Sir J. Pakington) had taken of establishing a Supreme Legislature in the colony. He could not but think that, for the future welfare of those colonies, there should be one Supreme Legislature, whose power shall be superior to those minor bodies, who ought to deal only with the interests of their own localities, subject to the paramount authority of the Central Legislature." 66 Having had opportunities of consulting parties directly connected with Nelson, Wellington, Otago, and Canterbury-namely, four out of six localities." He agreed with the noble lord who preceded him (Earl Grey), "that anything like an elective Executive was unknown to the British Constitution;" but was afterwards induced to make the office of Superintendent elective. In Mr. Gladstone's speech is the following passage: "Take, said the honourable member for Southwark (Sir W. Molesworth), the Central Legislature, and make it the fountain of power; on the other hand, I say let the district Legislature be for New Zealand, and, under its circumstances, the fountain of power. But I do not think this bill proceeds consistently either on the one principle or on the other; and concurrent jurisdictions, I must confess, are to me subjects of apprehension and alarm. A concurrent jurisdiction in the business of legislation means uncertainty, conflict, and confusion. The overriding of arrangements already made, under authority deemed competent, by extraneous power, must ever lead to annoyance and angry feeling. What reason can there be if these district Legislatures are fit to deal with the subjects that come before them; what reason can there be that their decisions should be subject to revision ?" Sir William Molesworth said "that the General Assembly would ultimately eat up the Provincial Legislatures and reduce them to municipalities.' The Duke of Newcastle, that "either the Central Government would swallow up the six minor Legis NEW ZEALAND CONSTITUTION. 66 77 latures, or that the six minor Legislatures would eventually render useless and cause the abolition of the Central Legislature." It does not appear to have occurred to any one that a dependency could have none other than local affairs to administer, without usurping, under the term of a general Government," the functions which belong exclusively to the Sovereign Government of the Empire; or that the central and provincial authorities would in the long run unite harmoniously in a general system of corruption, mutually condoning the illegal action of each other.* But the House being " in a state of dissolution," the Act was permitted to pass with all its acknowledged imperfections. Mr. Gladstone seems to have been in favour of yielding still more power to the colonists, eulogising the first Constitutions of the Puritan settlements of New England, one of which he referred to as providing a Governor for one year, after which the colonists were to elect their own Governors. But he overlooked the duty of protecting individual colonists from the tyranny of local authorities. Grahame† gives some instructive illustrations of the state of things which was brought about by the Constitution he eulogised. In 1631 "the Assembly of Massachusetts enacted that none but Independents should hold office in the colony, or act as jurymen; and it banished shortly afterwards Roger Williams for his religious opinions. It inhibited smoking under a penalty, but permitted the practice as soon as some of the Independent Ministers had given way to that indulgence. Jesuits and other Romish priests were subjected to banishment, and, in case of their return, to death. This cruel ordinance was afterwards extended to the Quakers, and all persons were forbidden, under the severest penalties, to import any of that cursed sect' or of their writings into the colony. All persons were forbidden to run or even to walk, except reverently to and from the church,' on Sundays, or to profane that day by sweeping their houses, cooking their victuals, or shaving their beards. Mothers were forbidden to kiss their * In the province of Auckland the three first Superintendents, who were elected under the provisions of the Constitution Act successively, resigned the office before the expiry of the period for which they were elected. The term of office is four years: the first Superintendent, the military officer in command of the troops, elected partly because less obnoxious to envy than a colonist, partly from the belief that, having no local interests to serve, he would act impartially, resigned, because of the incompatibility of the office with that of Lieutenant-Governor, which had devolved upon him. The next two, from disgust at the sacrifice of principle which would have been necessary to obtain the support of a majority of the Provincial Council. † History of the United States of North America. 78 EXPLANATION OF THE ANOMALIES children on that day. Pecuniary mulcts were imposed on every person observing any such day as Christmas.' A convicted criminal known to have had accomplices, and refusing to disclose them, might be subjected to torture. Dancing was proscribed; and kissing a woman in the street, even in the way of honest salute, was punished by flogging." In 1759 a British ship of war was stationed off the coast of Massachusetts for the protection of its trade during the war with France. The captain had left his wife at Boston. Returning thither on a Sunday after a long cruise, his wife rushed down to the beach to meet him, and they embraced each other upon meeting in the open street. For this breach of the laws and supposed desecration of the Sabbath, the captain was summoned before the magistrates, gravely rebuked, and sentenced to be flogged, which punishment was inflicted upon him accordingly; a compliment which, as the story goes, the captain returned by inflicting the same number of lashes to which he had been subjected upon each of the magistrates at the conclusion of a farewell entertainment given on board his ship on leaving the station. Such, even amongst the Pilgrim Fathers, were some of the consequences of not maintaining the law of England, and administering the government according to constitutional precedent. (Grahame, Book II., cc. 2 and 3, and Appendix.) In a speech, on moving for a Committee of the Provincial Council of Auckland to prepare their third petition to the Queen and Parliament (that of 1858), a member of that Council is reported to have thus expressed himself in relation to the Constitution Act:-"Now, sir, it is time that we should endeavour to trace something of the history of this strange and anomalous machinery of government in order to account for so extraordinary a departure from all precedent in colonial administration. I hold it, sir, to be impossible that any man, or any set of men, sitting down to frame a Constitution for an infant colony, and having only, in his or their mind's eye, the peace, safety, and prosperity of the infant community, could ever have contrived such a Constitution as this. But I can imagine an association of adventurers, willing to undertake the toils of government, and anxious that the infant community should enjoy the advantage of their united wisdom and talent, framing such a Constitution as would give full scope to their endeavours to manage the affairs of a colony with profit and advantage to themselves. We all know that Auckland was settled by a fortuitous concourse of individuals, each pursuing |