The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-24 00:00:00

_
and habit gives confidence : they believe intended only to preclude paper blockades, enforced
fighting, a '- - natives, and " the natives are "by a man-of-war appearing now and then in the
they can beat the •- - opinion." It is to this offing.' Of course this is not true; the words of
coming round to a sunup- -le for an early end the article are clear, definite, and susceptible of no
kind of warfare that to must tou_ eing into the such interpretation. Uftheppily we must go further,
of the war. Flying columfidi penetru,_ .
^rating and say that Lord Russell knows that it is not true.
districts occupied by the enemy, it
op..
For ini 1856 he took the words of the article in their
boldly and stiddenly, will strike greater fear the_ E
u sense, and, in so doing, justly and forcibly
the march of a whole brigade to attack a stockade uh: r.
or a " pab," which the Maories have built to be be- dnoutm:ed it as a foolish, imprudent, and unsatis-
seiged, and can generally retire from whenever they factory arra.:eemnt—terms prude inapplicable to
please. Why should not Englishmen be as active in the interpret`ostib:i which he now puts upon the
the bush as any native P At home they are aeons- clause. On his own e'vidence, therefore, he stands
towed to walk and run and climb, and what convicted of a flagrant brte2ch of faith in the matter
is there but the restraints of conventional of the blockade; of an attempt to cover. that breach
discipline to prevent them doing so when an of faith by prevarication ; and of
-
enemy has to be pursued ? The small bodies of tematic perversion of neutrality i
-r, he interest of
a wilful and sys-
men whom the General is sending out in various the Northern States.
directions will probably harass the enemy more,
and give him a more disheartening notion of the
übiquity and power of the British force, than if ten
thousand men were drawn up in order of battle
before Auckland. There may be something re-
volting to European notions in the ambuscades
which are a feature in this kind of warfare, but the
ferocity of the natives and the danger which arises
from allowing bodies of them to lurk in the neigh-
bourhood of the settlers must be the excuse for
any departure from the usual practice of armies.
As to the conduct of the settlers themselves, it is
worthy of all commendation, and the same may be
said of the people of New South Wales and Victoria,
who have given all the help in their power to their
threatened brethren. The New Zealand Govern-
ment has promised grants of land to military set-
tlers who will serve three years, and a volunteer
force of 2,000 men has been organised in Australia,
of whom nearly half have been contributed by the
colony of Victoria. This force is independent of a
considerable body of men raised in New Zealand,
where in one way or another the whole population
of the country about Auckland is in arms. It is
from the co-operation of these large forces with the
small body of regular troops that we hope for the
speedy suppression of the disturbances. The time
has come when the Australian colonies are popu-
lous enough to carry on their own local wars, and
we hope that tranquillity will be restored without
further demands on the Home Government. But
when that has been done, both the British and Co-
lonial authorities will have the scarcely less ar-
duous duties of peace to perform. A correspon-
dent, whose letter we publish to-day, points out
the faults of our administration, and it certainly
seems that there has been a strange mixture of
weakness and false security. The Government
has left the natives so much to themselves that
they have come to look upon their tribes as inde-
pendent; while the white man with his habitual
disregard of a lower race's self esteem, has done
much to put enmity between himself and the Maori.
It is the history of the North American Indian over
lagain. The two races, if left to themselves, would
probably carry on desultory warfare for a genera-
tion or two, till the Maori would disappear like the
red men east of the Mississippi. Bat the Govern-
ment owes protection to the natives at the same
time that it has a right to exact obedience. It is
said that many of them desire a stronger and more
active administration, which will really make the
Governor their chief. When reduced to submission,
t hey may easily be retained in it and made useful
subjects by a truly vigorous and paternal rule.
HERALD.—It is with feelings:of regret and shame
—feelings which will, we believe, be shared by every
Englishman to whom the honour of England is more
dear than the interest of a domestic faction or a
foreign belligerent—that we call the attention of
our readers to that part of the Message of the Pre.
sident of the Confederate States which deals with
the foreign relations of his Government. That
Message places on recoed before the world, for the
information of our latest posterity, the conduct of
the British Government during this American con-
test; and in its simple narrative of facts are con-
veyed reproaches which must sting the heart of
every honest Englishman—reproaches too bitter to
be endured, and too just to be resented. It is not
now that we have to learn what a miserable thing
it is to be represented by. Lord Russell. When his
lordship intrigued in Greece and Italy, England
bore the blame ; when he betrayedaind menaced
Denmark, " British faith" was the theme of con-
temptuous sarcasm throughout the Continent;
when he insulted Brazil, England was taunted with
wanton insolence ; when he hectored Russia, and
inveigled Poland into delusive hopes and fatal ob-
stinacy, England received the harsh words which
her Minister had deserved. And now the disgrace
falls not on him, but on the country by whose ills
fortune it is rendered possible that her honour
should be in the keeping of John Earl Russell. He
has talked in Parliament about neutrality ; he has
pretended to observe an honest and impartial indif-
ference in a quarrel which is none of ours ; and
Parliament has been weak and ignorant enough to
believe him. What language has he held in his
correspondence with his friends, and England's
bitter enemies, at Washington ? What has been
the bent and purpose of his arrangements for en-
forcing his boasted "non-intervention ?" How has
he treated the Government and representatives of a
nation anxious to cultivate the friendship and good-
will of England ? Let him speak for himself. In
May, 1861, he pleaded with Mr. Seward that her
Majesty's Government had only allowed to the
South a sort of intermediate position, and that
the sympathies of England were with the North.
Then he interdicted our ports to prizes taken by
either nation—a measure for which Mr. Seward
expressed his gratitude, as giving a death-blow
to Southern privateering. In June, 1861, Mr.
Adams had the impudence—we can call it nothing
else—to complain of the reception of the Southern
commissioners, and to threaten that the United
States would regard it as an act of a hostile charac-
ter, and take action accordingly. A man of spirit
would have administered a severe rebuke to this
impertinence ; an honest English Minister evould
have reminded the Federal Ambassador that, ex-
cept as regards the formality of recognition, the
Confederate and the United States were on an
equal footing before the world, and that it was his
duty to receive the envoys of either party, not
indeed with the same formalities, but with equal
courtesy. What did Lord Russell? He actually
apologised to Mr. Adams, and assured him that he
had no expectation of seeing the Southern commis-
sioners again ! We waste no words on this act of
gratuitous self-degradation and meanness, but pass
on to another instance. In October, 1861, Mr.
Adams again complained, this time that, in accor-
dance with every rule of international law, the Con-
federates were purchasing munitions of war in the
Bahamas. Of course they had a right to do this;
and at the same time the Federal agents were
avowedly making large purchases of arms in Eng-
land. Did Lord Russell state to Mr. Adams that
the Confederates had a perfect right to buy what
and where they pleased ? Not he. He obtained a
denial of the fact from the authorities of Nassau,
and forwarded it to Mr. Adams, to satisfy him that
" the unwarrantable act" alleged had not taken
place. In pursuance of the same policy he has re-
peatedly caused seizures to be made of vessels which
he thought might be sold to the Confederates, end
might be armed and equipped by them elsewhere
than in British ports; straining and perverting the
Foreign Enlistment Act to this end, while to his
knowledge thousands of Irishmen are carried over
in British ships to recruit the Federal army. These
charges are every one of them not merely sustained,
but proved beyond denial, by the language of Lord
Russell's own despatches; and they involve an
amount of treachery towards the Confederate
States, servility towards the North, and disloyalty
to England, sufficient to condemn to perpetual
infamy even a man of character previously stainless.
But Lord Russell pleads guilty to them all without
hesitation—pleads guilty, do we say ? He boasts
of his guilt. He points out to Mr. Seward that the
course of her Majesty's Government "has been ex-
ceedingly advantageous to the cause of the more
powerfui of the two contending parties." After
this, Lord Russell's panegyrists bad better thro w
down their briefs. For, if they say that our neu-
trality has been honest and impartial they give the
lie to their client's own assertion that it has been
" extremely advantageous to the stronger party;"
and if they admit that he spoke the truth therein,
they convict him of a dishonest and unneutral
policy. 'We have spoken out, more than once, the
shameful truth on the subject of the pretended
blockade of the Confederate coest. We need do no
more, on this occasion, then call attention to the
masterly statement of the case by President Davis.
When that blockade was proclaimed it extended
over 3,000 miles of coast, and the navy that was to
enforce it numbered 24 ships of war. Therefh;rhee,
under the worst and most violent precedents Z
ny
worst times of old, the blockade
international law, and Lord Ru
ishfifct to the
more than one occasion, pointed ourtetdhit
with them
guai
,tie
blockade
to the
Federal Government, and tookn selvir invsaelf, on
fur having acknowledged it;
interests of Greet
honour and in contempt of
Britain. Subsequently, no Lich ,route
force
w,.ch
render it
acquired a degree of " ..
that rev.iilud before 1856.
valid under the law p hdleoudbc:,i°
; e, anew standard But, in the meantm_ ~Government,
had been
introduced. Her lk_tea.- sty s
con-
jointly with that ' te. li ranee, hadasked
and ob-
tained the adherence of the n
—onic ed •
etate States to
the three last articles of the Paris
Convention on
maritime law. Two of these articles were purely
for the advantage of neutrals
strictly observed by ; and have been
The third was of mutual the Confederate cruisers.
mutual interest to the weaker
maritime belligerent '
do-
tiered that it ab' ant. to neutral powers; it de-
.cckade to be binding must be main •
tained by a force sufficient rattily to prevent access
to the coast of
the enemy." 'When called upon to
carry out this article Lord Russell pleads that it was