The Express.
London, England, 1847-12-30 00:00:00

.

three millions sterling. A reduction of two-thirds of
the duty has been proposed, which would not, even at
first, produce, it is thought, a loss of more than half
the duty, to be amply made up in time by increased
consumption. In this, and in the proposed reduction i
of the rate of postage, the French government is
honourably following in the wake of England.
Whilst the royal speech pats forward these and
other measures of domestic improvement, it keeps
foreign questions in the background. It does not, as
anal, assume a Taunting tone respecting them. M.
GUIZOT does not boast the' year of extending French
infloence, which is tottering, in Spain, and has been
most happily and signally defeated in Switzerland.
The speech is unusually modest on these points, and,
instead of provoking discussion, as likely to redound
to ministerial glorification, on the contrary, depre-
cates and avoids it. England is alluded to, as having
determined, with France, on measures which meat
restore peace and commerce in the Rio de la Plata.
The paragraph of the speech most looked to was of
coarse that relative to Switzerland. But this merely
mentions the understanding into which France had en-
tered with England as well as other powers to offer
its mediation. It thus passes sub Wientio the deter-
mined wish of M. GUIZOT to interfere and to mediate
ri et amnia, after all object of mediation was over in
the submission of one of the contending parties.
This wish was manifested by the presentation of the
French note after England bad withdrawn from the
mediation, and the persistence of the French govern-
ment organ in demanding a congress, and the open-
ing of diplomatic hostilities with Switzerland.
M. GUIZOT, however, now abandons, before the
chamber, that fierce and implacable attitude to- I
wards the Swiss liberals which he maintained all
through the recess. It is said that he has
abandoned that language of defiance in the,
speech chiefly at the instance of the con-
servative majority. The conservative majority,
however, in Parisian phrase, means the body
of conservatives hostile to M. GUIZOT. SO that
the very words and tone of the speech announce the
minister's defeat on this question—a defeat no less
sensible for having taken place behind the parlia-
mentary scene. How the dispute will be acted on the
stage or at the tribune of the Chamber, remains yet to be
tried. Let M. GUIZOT, in his own speeches and in
the royal speech, be mild as partible, there are his
despatches on the subject, which cannot fail to be
published, and which, if published entire, are sure
to reveal the full rancour of the French Foreign-office
against Switzerland.
On this subject we shall of coarse have animated
debates, as well as upon the affairs of Italy, slurred
over in the speech. Nor will the absence of
a paragraph upon Spain prevent allusion to
the unquiet state of affairs in that country,
where the very agent sent by France to re-
erect the Moderado and Afranceeado standard has
abandoned it,and found it necessary to lay the founds-
tions of ministerial power, if such can be raised, upon
a national basis. The varying views of the courts of
St. James and the Tuileries, evinced by the latter in-
misting on the proscription of the Duke of Vicronv,
whilst that grandee and his family are the honoured
guests of Queen Vlcroars at Windsor, cannot bat
strike the attention of French orators.
. .

---
Whatever, however, may be the difference between
the views and policy of Great Britain and Franoe
with regard to certain questions and countries,
the royal speech of Tuesday cannot be considered,
as other than moat pacific. Indeed, we scarcely
ever recollect one so totally devoid of vaunt or
menace. It makes no mention of fleets and
armies; whilst dominant parties in England
are for stopping railways and training the
navvies either to throw up fortifications or drill
for soldiers, the French government apatite of coming
forward itself to aid the completion of the great lines;
of communication. It is indeed singular how the
humour of the two nations does alternate and run by
contraries. When the French were all for war and
for conquest, perfidious Albion, the object of their
hatred, was as tranquil and pacific as an enemy
could desire. Whilst now that the enemy has been
appeased, and turned attention to more pa-
cific matter., the Englishman, of a sudden,
gets in a panic, not at the present, but the past, and
declares that, instead of minding his trade or pro-
feasion, he must buy armour, and learn how to buckle
iton. . . . .

We are not without very great hopes that the
coming debates in Um Frim Chamber will, by their
spirit, oorroborate the view which we have taken on
this question, as well as upon foreign policy in generaL

The bull of "GEORGE AINAISTUS SELWYN, by
divine permission Bishop of New Zealand," is be-
ginning to excite discussion. A controversy has been
begun in the columns of the Times between a " Dor.
within Rector," who tells us he " is not a philomi-
Unlit "—a matter which, if he have any title to his nom
de, guerre, he may settle with his bishop—and Mr. R.
J. AKEFIELD, whose family have taken so promi-
nent apart in the affairs of New Zealand. Mr. WAKE-
FIELD'S share in the controversy has as yet been con-
fined to convicting (which he does moat successfully)
his antagonist of gross ignorance of the subject
he professes to write about. The soi-dieant " Dorset.
shire Rector " does little more than assume that the
missionaries and natives are aggrieved, and uplift a
hymn in praise of Dr. SELWYN and episcopal dema-
gogues in generaL The subject requires a more
thorough scrutiny than Mr. WAKEFIELD has yet be-
stowed, or than the " Doreetshire Rector " seems
capable of bestowing on it.
Dr. finwirN, in the somewhat papal reecript he
has been pleased to issue, quotes these words from a
despatch of Earl GREY : " The savage inhabitants of
New Zealand have no right of property in land which
they do not occupy, and which has remained numb-
dued to the purposes of man." Against this doctrine
our " bishop b 7 divine permission" feels himself, "as
head of the missionary body, called upon to protest ;"
and.he follows up his protest by sendtng a cartel to
the SECRETARY of the COLONIES, informing him that
he is resolved, " God being his helper," to use all legal
and constitutional means befitting his station " to in-
form the people of New Zealand of their rights and
privileges as British subjects, and to assist them in
asserting and maintaining them, whether by petition
to the British parliament, or other loyal and peaceable
means." -

Before proceeding to criticiee more closely this
valorous manifesto, it is necessary to observe that our
clerical Quixote is couching his lance against an ab-
stract opinion which Earl Gm has never proposed
to make the rule of his conduct in New Zealand. The
doctrine challenged by Bishop SeLwree is only men-
tioned incidentally as what might have afforded a
rule for the conduct of government bad the settlement
of New Zeeland been to begin de novo. It is, indeed,
the doctrine recognised by the weightiest speculative
authorities on this difficult question, and sanc-
tioned, moreover, by repeated judicial decisions
both in this country and America; but it wag
declared inapplicable to the peculiar circumstances of
New Zealand by Earl GREY in the very despatch
frees whirls the bishop makes tits garbled extract.
" While I laid down what I consider the better prin-
ciple," say! Earl Gast, commenting on the episcopal
explosion in a subsequent despatch to thii governor of
New Zealand, " I endeavoured carefully to guard
myself against being supposed to enforce it as appli-
cable to the present state of New Zealand ; and I be•
lieve that I succeeded in doing so. I expressly in-
formed you that in point of fact you were not in a
position to act upon that principle, and that, from
past transactions, a state of things
ion
arisen, in
which a strict application of it was mpossible. I
stated my belief that ' the right of the crown cannot
now be asserted to large tracts of waste land which
particular tribes have been taught to call their own.'
I directed you, in the strongest language, 'to main-
tain those rights of the native tribes to land which
you have already recognised.' "
The secular agitation, therefore, which the bishop,
in such solemn and awe-inspiring language, has an-
nounced himself about to commence, is directed not
against any actual contemplated, or even suspected,
measure of government, but against an abstract meta-
physical opinion—an heretical notion regarding the
origin of the right of property in land, which has got
into the heads of her Majesty's ministers. To con-
fute this unsound doctrine, he appeals, not to his own
little Sorbonne in " St. John's Coll , Bishop's Auck-
landnbut to those eminent doctores urn, Hotel
Heim, and Naze WALKER. He is about to aasembls
public meetings of the various New Zealand tritekand
relent their decision on this knotty point. He is
going to tell them that the security of their posses-
sions depends on its being rightly oohed. In short,
Bishop BELWIII'B "loyal and peaceable methods"
for jamming, the natives of New Zealand " of their
rights and privileges as British subjects," cannot fail