The Glasgow Chronicle. — 1850-07-24 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

INQUEST ON THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.  This once important corporation expired last week in profound obscurity. During the last four years it has only spent borrowed money on "establishments" at home and abroad, and issued boastful "reports" of doings that were not done and promises that were never realised. In the four years it has undergone four stages of decay—suspicion, distrust, dislike, and oblivion. The end was exhaustion of character and of the means of subsistence. But we must search deeper in order to account for the total loss of so much reputation and power. For let us remember that this Company saved New Zealand to the British empire, laid the foundations of a great Anglo-Saxon State, and obtained much public favour by the spirit which enabled it to resist, throughout its work, the settled hostility of the Colonial Office. Wherefore, then, the melancholy fall! The founders of New Zealand colonisation began their task in 1837. Nearly their whole course down to 1846 consisted of a struggle with the Colonial Office under successive Ministers. -On the wholetheir efforts were successful; not, indeed, unattended by defeats and disasters (for the office had then far more power than now,) but still accomplishing the main object, and with the collateral effect of so exposing the nature of Colonial office rule at the antipodes, as to provide for the termination, now not distant, of that baneful authority in the Southern hemisphere. In this long conflict, the Company allied itself by turns with the two parties in British politics; and it was thus helped by Whig or Tory as either happened to be in opposition. Whenever it consented to a hollow truce with Mr. Mothercountry, it lost credit and vigour; hand-tied and tongue-tied by some "agreement" with Downing Street, it suffered in silence and bore all the-blame of failure; only when everything was known by means of its public complaints did the Company enjoy the sympathy of public opinion. At last, in 1847, the spirit of the first Directors having departed, nnd the whole management fallen into new and feeble hands, the Company sold itself and the colony to Downing Street for a little present money and a great sham of giving effect to its own and Lord Grey's policy for New Zealand. Inamuch as under this pretended reconstruction all the old grievances of colony and company have remained in fell forcei it was simply impossible that either should prosper; and now, the last shilling of the borrowed money being spent, the miserable company is formally extinguished in shame, as if by its own hands_ The company died last week of having heedlessly taken in 1847 the slow poison which was then presented to it by the cunning office and its own foolish directors. Neither was Lord Grey guilty of wilful murder. Treachery does not belong to his character; and there is every reason to believe that he wished and expected the deadly potion to operate as an efiteir vitae. Henceforth, when things go wrong, the public will know whose fault it is. A great sham being out of the way, the truth will be at least more difficult to conceal. Responsibility and power will be in the same hands. The Company merely encumbered the earth; let us now see what Lord Grey himself, with a clear field to work in, will be able do as a coloniser. By none more than by this journal would his success be hailed with satisfactioa.—Sperfator.