The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

POST.—The present occasion is one which cer
tainly appears admirably fitted for the consideration
of the precise nature of the obligations subsisting
between ourselves and those colonial dependencies
which at the same time constitute our strength and
our weakness. We cannot therefore complain of
the discussion to which the motion for the second
reading of the New Zealand Loan Bill gave rise
last evening. However successful we may have
been of late in maintaining, under the most difficult
circumstances, peaceful relations with the great
Powers of the world, we have unfortunately become
engaged in two or three little wars in distant parts
of the globe which have certainly redounded neither
to out credit nor advantage. It is scarcely a month
since the public learned that we were engaged in
hostilities with a savage tribe on the West Coast of
Africa, and that although not a single shot had been
fired nearly half the entire force we brought into
the field had been swept away or invalided by
disease. It is needless now to recapitulate the sad
history of the Ashantee war, so fresh in the memory
of our readers, or to refer to details which shocked
the country, and compelled the Government to
abandon forthwith an enterprise which should never
have been undertaken. But it was not alone on the
coast of Africa that British troops were being em-
ployed during the past few months in vindicating
the honour of our flag, nor was it there only that
valuable lives were being sacrificed in a war se ith
savages. For close on a twelvemonth the native
tribes of New Zealand have been in revolt, and
during the same period the Colonial Government,
with the assistance of her Majesty's forces, have
been engaged in endeavouring to reduce them to
subjection. The accounts transmitted from time to
time to this country of the progress of the war
might, on the whole, be considered favourable ; and
the intelligence forwarded by one of the recent
mails led the more sanguine to conclude that the
revolt was on the point of being suppressed. The
latest tidings, however, which reached this country
must have dissipated such an impression. In one
of those military operations which the general in
command found it expedient to execute the troops
employed sustained a serious reverse. The object
to be gained was to dislodge a few hundred savages
from a pale or earthwork, of which they had posses■
sion ; and in accomplishing this th© attacking force
lost no less than 32 killed, of whom 9 were officers,
and 72 wounded, including four commissioned
officers. The 43d Regiment lost its lieutenant-
colonel, four captains, and two lieutenants, whilst
a captain and a commander in the Royal Navy were
also amongst the slain. Before the sad intelligence
reached this country the Government had brought
in a bill guaranteeing a loan to be raised by the
Colonial Government to meet the expenditure occa-
sioned by the war, and last evening its second
reading was moved in the House of Commons. In
presence of the facts recently brought to our know-
ledge it was, however, impossible that the proposed
measure should receive the sanction of the Legisla-
ture as a mere matter of course. When the proposal
of the Imperial Government to guarantee the New
Zealand Loan was mooted in the House of Lords a
few weeks since, -we directed attention to the rela-
tionship which, in our opinion, ought to subsist
between this country and its colonies. It is for the
interest of the empire that its colonies should in-
crease, and so long as the colonists observe their
allegiance to the Home Government they are entitled
to claim its protection. But this general principle,
however true in itself, is subject to certain important
modifications. In the first place, a distinction must
be drawn between that protection British colonists
are entitled to claim from the aggressive acts of
foreign Powers, which have no pretensions to exer-
cise jurisdiction in the new settlement, and that
protection which they may demand in the prosecu-
tion of their work of colonisation against the original
owners of the soil. This is a distinction of a very
important kind, though constantly lost sight of or
ignored. For instance, if France ought to dislodge
our colonists from their settlements in New Zealand,
no one can doubt for a moment that it would
be the duty of the Imperial Government, with all
the force at its command, to resist such aggression.
But whether it is also the duty of the Home Go-
vernment to aid settlers in intestine wars which
arise from attempts upon their part to enlarge their
dominions, and the continuance or cessation of
which is exclusively under the control of their own
Legislature, is open to considerable doubt, Now,
without inquiring into the origin of the Maori war,
or into the grounds assigned by the natives for the
present revolt, it is abundantly evident that it de-
pends almost exclusively upon the Colonial Legis-
lature to determine the conditions upon which the
war shall cease, short of the extermination or com-
plete subjugation of the aborigines. Under these
circumstances, the question is certainly a legitimate
one how far the taxpayers of these islands should
be called upon to provide for an expenditure over
which they exercised no control.
HERALD..—The end of the session is at hand.
Parliament will be prorogued early this year. As
well it may. It has been asked by the Ministry to
do nothing, and with the exception of its labours in
the way of private legislation it has done nothing.
Two or three amending bills, to remedy the grosser
and more intolerable blunders of previous Whig
legislation, constitute the only chapters of the year's
statutes which have the slightest public interest or
importance. The Ministry, to do them justice, did
not promise much ; but, small as was their promise,
they have not performed it. We do not regard
paucity of legislation in itself as an evil; on the
contrary, we believe that the fewer the acts Parliaa
meat passes, the more likely it is to have deserved
well of the country. But, unfortuately, Parliament
has been, in previous sessions, unwise enough
to legislate too much ; it has adopted a number of
crude, incoherent, and mischievous measures of
legal and social reform brought forward by
the present Government; and, by the confession

of the members
that u-overnment, those
, acts
ment. Two or
require very consider:l;le az.ct,and
am rectified, but
three very gross blunders have e‘
no serious attempt has been made .4o amend laws
which have almost taught the comink.'rcial public
to curse the very name of law reform. Mr. Bass
will probably be the hero of the sessio,”: and
whatever opinion people may hold upon the gal'at
question of street music, only a very few fanatia:
per o contro la musica will hold the passing of
his bill sufficient to redeem the session from the re..
proach of barrenness. It is true that the Ministry,,
although they have brought forward very few bins,
themselves, and of these few have withdrawn the
most, have given their warm support to a good
many bills introduced by private members. The
usual attempts to despoil the Church and un-Chris-
tianise the Universities, to reduce the franchise, and
transfer sovereign power to the mob, have been.
made by Radical members, and have received the
votes of the immense majority, and the enthusiastic
advocacy of some, of her Majesty's Ministers. Un-
fortunately for the Ministry the lustre of success
has not redeemed the discredit of the wretched.
effort to recover a little Radical favour ; their ap-
pearance on the floor as advocates of a measure
has been the signal, as Mr. Gladstone will long re•
member, for its immediate and ignominious rejec-
tion. The Ministry passed their Budget because.
they proposed no new tax; they carried their esti-
mates because they asked less than in previous
years; but they were defeated whenever they pre.
posed any decisive legislation, and made to suffer
humiliation and mortification which no body of
men with a thought for anything nobler than the
flesh-pots of Downing-street would have endured.
Happy England, which rejoices in a Ministry alk
the members of which, in their intense devotion to,
her interests, in their overpowering conviction that
to commit the rudder of the State to any other
hands would be an irreparable misfortune, are pres
pared to sacrifice their reputation for truth, honour,
and principle, and consent to hold power at the
hands of a majority which, whilst keeping them in
office, tells them, with the most offensive plainness,
that they are as unprincipled as they are incapable!
In no other country in the world could statesmen
of a patriotism so extreme, and, to decent people,
so disgusting, be discovered. Looking at the
position from the stand-point of her Majesty's
Ministers we can well understand that they
are satisfied with the session. They wilt
be at the end Ministers of the Crown, and
that is much more than they hoped at the
beginning. That they have been universally blamed,
that the House of Lords has formerly censured.
them, and the House of Commons has, whilst de.
dining to record a formal condemnation, declared
by the mouths of the representative speakers of
the majority its dissatisfaction and disgust, mat-
ters nothing to men whose only object is to keep in
office. What; do Lord Palmerston, to whom office
has now become a necessity of life, and Mr Layard,
to whom it is equally so, care about the condemnaw
tion of Messrs. Cobden, Bright, Roebuck, Hors.
man, Forster, and Goldsmid, so long as those gen-
tlemen give their votes to keep them in office.
Wise in their generation, her Majesty's Ministers
will take abuse with complacence whilst they can
get votes, and they are chuckling now over the sue.
cess of the dodge by which they prevented all dis-
cussion of their policy until their condemnation
would have been too late to save Denmark, and
Liberal members could find an excuse for voting
for them in the impossibility of retrieving the
blunders they had committed. It will be a cheery
jovial meeting at Greenwich on Saturday next.
None of tbose who will be present dared to hope a
few months, or even a few weeks, ago there
would be such a reunion, As their hearts warm
with the assurance that they have another six
months of office and patronage secured them—as
the more fortunate of the band grow elated with
the promise of a pension, their voices will join in.
grateful acknowledgment of the cleverness with.
which their chief has jockeyed Parliament, and.
they will vie in cutting sneers at the Liberal critics
in the House of Commons, who making a great
parade of scolding them, voted to keep them in
office, and at the independent Liberal newspapers,
which threatening war up to the very evening that
the Premier declared peace at any price would be
his policy, immediately discovered that peace was
the only course for sagacious statesmen, and that
war was a policy only fitted for the Tories, who
had entered into an alliance with the Pope to pro-
tect Denmark against Austria, and—horror of hors
rors—light the torch of insurrection in Venetia and
Hungary. The Ministerial party may well laugh as
they sip their wine at Trafalgar. They have accom..
plished all they care for. Although they have
degraded England they have kept their places.
The people hiss them, but they may count, if no
accident occurs upon six or even nine months more
of office and its accompaniments.