The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-31 00:00:00

SECOND EDITION.

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LONDON, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1846.

A superficial glance through the American PRE-
SIDENT'S Message to Congress will impress the mind
of the reader with a feeling not far removed from
admiration for its ability. A. careful perusal will,
however, very speedily expose its shallowness and
divulge its sophistry. It is, from first to last, merely
specious declamation. The whole document is essen-
tially what a black help would call " a make-be-
lieve." Mr. Por..x has evidently resolved to
quash (if possible) the various accusations which
have been levelled against his policy. Ile
has been termed, almost in so many words, a
blusterer; and he persists that his conduct has inva-
riably been modelled upon the principles of conciliation.
With the remembrance of Mr. PAKENUAM'S treat-
ment fresh in our memory, he says that ! With the
recollection of his behaviour towards HERRERA and
PAREDES still as vivid as occurrences of yesterday,
he says it! He is taxed with being avaricious of ter-
ritory, and he maintains that the American Govern-
ment has invariably, during his administration,
evinced a magnanimous disinterestedness. Yes.
Coahuila is nothing; New Leon is nothing; Tamau-
lipas is nothing; New Mexico is nothing; Texas is
nothing ; California is nothing. Yes : the American
Government has evinced a magnanimous disinterested-
ness ! He is designated a national spendthrift, and
he insists that his system of financial economy has
amounted almost to parsimony. Almost—and he asks
for a fresh loan of 23,000,000 dollars in this same
message ! He is styled a promoter of war, and he
avows that his heart has invariably yearned for
peace ! No matter how unendurable may have
been the insolence of his avowed agents at
Vera Cruz ; no matter how churlish may have
been his military representative at Santa Fe ; no
matter how insulting may have been Mr. PoLies
own expressions in his preceding Messages—his heart
has invariably yearned for peace ! 0 generous con-
ciliation ! 0 wonderful disinterestedness ! 0 amazing
parsimony! 0 unequalled Pacificator!
President Polar. is armed with his precedents. He
argues the point as a man convinced that it is logi-
cally demonstrable. President JacKsosf is, in his
opinion, an indisputable authority. President
JACKSON, in the February of 1837, advo-
cated war with Mexico. Therefore—President
JACKSON being the oracle of justice and truth, and
President JACKSON having advocated war with
Mexico—war with Mexico was an imperative duty
upon the United States. Q. E. D. Mr. POLK would
no more hesitate to propound the most impossible
syllogism than would the gentleman in the story-
book, who undertook to prove that a Chesnut horse
and a horse-Chesnut were identical. Mr. POLK has no
eye for the reductio ad absurdum. The public look for
the most candid explanations at his hands, and he
gives them the most specious. Take, as an example
of thi% his arguments about the Nueces. The Go-
vernment of Washington, as is well known, insisted
that the Nueces were not the western boundary line
of Texas. The Government of Mexico, as is equally
well known, insisted that they were. And here comes
Mr. PoltaE, with atriumphant self-satisfaction, to prove
conclusively that the United States were in the right,
and the Federal Government of Mexico in the wrong.
" Our army," he says, in a tone of sublime victory,
had occupied a position at Corpus Christi, west of
Nueces, as early as August, 1845, without complaint
from any quarter." There's a decisive fact for you!
The American battalions had marched beyond the
disputed line of demarcation " without complaint from
any quarter!" Why, an argument more exqui-
sitely puerile than this was never penned.
The Nueces were passed " without complaint
from any quarter !" No wonder there was no com-
plaint. The Russian Cabinet uttered no complaint
when the great army of the Emperor NAPOLEON had
passed the boundaries of the Duchy of Warsaw, and
was advancing upon Moskowa ; they concentrated
their regular troops, and harassed the invaders
with clou.ls of Cossacks. When Juraus Ca:sa.o
landed upon the Sandwich flats, the an-
cient Britons never c )mplained ; they mounted
their war-chariots and brandished their spears.
When CLIVE penetrated into India, lIERNAN CORTEZ
into Mexico, JUNOT into Portugal, ROGUE into
La Vendee, their opponents never complained ;
they mustered all their availahle forces,- and
prepared themselves by every means to drive
their assailants beyond the frontiers. That was
the course adopted by the Mexicans. They
'tarried until the first fitting opportunity pre-
sented itself for wreaking their vengeance
upon those who had disregarded the barrier

of the Nueces. Besides which Mexico protested
altogether against the occupation of any portion what-
ever
of Texas.

The plea upon which Mr. President PoLK has
endeavoured to justify his- proceedings towards the
neighbouring republic is utterly inadmissible. lie
has, in this Message, built up a fabric
of arguments apparently of adamantine strength,
but really of the moat perishable brittle-
ness. It may resist the assaults of imbecility
and credulity, but it crumbles down at the mere
breath of Reason. It is gratifying to turn from the
loquacious folly of the bulk of the Message to the
sensible and plain-spoken remarks at its conclusion.
Upon the Mexican question, Mr. PoLs is as gro-
tesque and extravagant as any dancing dervish ; upon
the free-trade question, he is marvellously staid and
respectable. Referring to the recent triumphs over
monopoly in the two hemispheres, he observes :
" By the simultaneous abandonment of the protective
policy by Great Britain and the United States, new and
important markets have already been opened for our
avicultural and other products ; commerce and navi-
gation have received a new impulse ; labour and trade
have been released from the artificial trammels which
have so long fettered them ; and to a great extent re-
e:procity, in the exchange of commodities, has been in-
troduced at the name time by both countries, and greatly
for the benefit of both."

And, beyond this, he remarks, very truthfully, but
very ungrammatically, that " it is confidently be-
lieved that other Powers of Europe will ultimately
see the wisdom, if they be not compelled by the pau-
perism and sufferings of their crowded population, to
pursue a similar policy." It must not be overlooked,
however, that the Legislature of the United States has
not so thoroughly eradicated the abuses of what is
miscalled Protection as the Parliament at West-
minster has done. In England, we have already more
freedom of importation and exportation than that
enjoyed by the Americans ; and we have, moreover,
in England what they have not in America,
namely, a prospective guarantee for the realisation of
a ka_.r....b
hive lopped off the branches of the mercantile Upas,
whereas we have torn it up, roots and branches. In
two years and a few months its last frag-
ments will be destroyed, and its existence virtually
forgotten. If President POLK only facilitate the in-
troduction of the full principles of free trade into the
American code, he will in some measure expiate his
previous conduct.

The dispatch which Earl GREY has addressed to
the Governor of New Zealand is, unquestionably, a
document of great ability and importance. As a
colony New Zealand presents features of remarkable
interest to the contemplation of the Englishman. It
is rendered peculiarly strikir.g by a Consideration of its
points of close resemblance to those which are prominent
in the British isles. By its geographical and insular,
nealthy cli-
position, by its e.ol_ "

Care afforested tracts of land,
ew Zealand seems to have been marked out by na-
ture to fulfil the same glorious destiny in the other
hemisphere, which, in our own in particular—
not to sFeak of her national triumphs of civilisa-
tion in more distant parts of the universe—has
been so magnificently accomplished by the
imperial sway of Great Britain. Dependent
as we are for our national supremacy
upon the extent and strength of our colonies, the reck-
less indifference with which the home authorities
have at times regarded them, particularly during their
infantile state, is highly censurable, and scarcely to
be believed. The consequence has been that perplex-
ing evils of considerable magnitude have sprung up,
which could easily have been averted had the mother
country paid but ordinary attention to the solemn
duties naturally incident to, and coincident with, the
assumption of sovereignty over territories either newly
discovered or conquered by the sons of civilization.
Ce West cue le premier pas qui route ; and had the go-
vernance of New Zealand, shortly after its attachment
to the Crown of these realms, been placed in the hands
of men well skilled in national jurisprudence, and
properly versed in the principles of our constitution
we should have already been reaping the fruits of a
gradual, systematic, and felicitous development of the
physical resources and the social prosperity
of the numerous emigrants to this important
colony. Instead of this, we haye throughout
only witnessed miserable distractions, and perpetual
heartburnings between the governors and the go-
verned of a kindred race. The truth is, that the Ex-
ecutive and the Legislature of Great Britain re-
mained culpably inactive with respect to the welfare
of New Zealand, and displayed naught but a sluggish
indifference to the establishment of any sound and
permanent bodies politic, till the genius and enter-
prise of the British merchant and capitalist had in-
vested her with an importance that effectually de-
manded the zealous attention of the responsible ad-
visers of the Crown to the growing wants of an ill-
organized yet rapidly increasing community. When
the home authorities had, by these means, been
quickened into action, a petty, piecemeal, and inter-
meddling spirit was exhibited in the place of any
comprehensive, well-digested scheme of colonial ad.
ministration. Nothing of vigour pervaded our
councils in Downing-street. No bold outlines of
policy were traced for extrication from past difficul-
ties and errors, and for giving stability to the
political progress of the English settlers.
Contrariwise, our State nurses resorted to
timorous, weak, and ineffective measures;
ill calculated to dissolve anarchic factions and still
the swelling animosities between the aborigines and
the emigrants on the one hand, and the Government
and the emigrants on the other. In 1840 a charter
was granted devoid of symmetrical authority. It
hal the negative merit of distributing power between
the New Zealand Company and the Colonial Depart-
ment, so as efficaciously to prevent all harmonious
operation for the advantage of the settlers. Anta-
gonistic forces were ingeniously planned and created
with so little of just correspondence to the object in
view, that all efficient control for colonial exigencies
was placed beyond the reach of either.

This unseemly and pernicious state of things was
happily put an end to in the last session of learlia-
ment ; the charter of 1840 was repealed, and an Act
passed for the improved government of New Zealand.
By virtue of the latter her MAJESTY has just granted
a new charter, the precise nature whereof, and the
spirit in which it is meant to be carried
.into effect, is
accurately stated, and elaborately and most ably
elucidated, by the instructions contained in the dis-
patch of Earl GREY, to which we have, in the outset,
alluded. As we gave this, and its accompanying docu-
ments, in extenso, in our columns of the day before yes-
terday, suffice it, for a summary of them, that the
change about to be wrought is a fundamental one ; that
it adheres, as closely as circumstances will allow, to the
model of our English institutions; that, in one word,
it is framed upon the principle of allowing " the
settlers to participate much more largely in the
business of legislation and local self-government."
Independently of the intrinsic value of Lord
GREY'S instructions to the colony to which they bear
immediate reference, we derive intense satbfaction
from the reflection, that there are embodied in them
principles of colonial administration of such sound,
liberal, and comprehensive significance, that we feel
justified in congratulating the country that a new
colonial era is auspiciously dawning upon us.
To the fruitful topic of discussion—whether the ab-
original inhabitants of any country are entitled to
every portion of its soil beyond what they oc,:tupy, or
have been accustomed to use, vast and fertile
as the uncultivated remainder may be Earl
GREY has addressed his mind with consummate
ability, and (as it seems to us) with unequivocal suc-
cess. But as this is a subject in which it would be
futile to expect an unanimous concurrence of opinion,
as it is one which, if it had been rightly understood
in the first instance by our countrymen in New
Zealand, would have saved them from many unhappy
and profitless dissensions ; and as it is one of the
greatest consequence to some of our existing, and may
be to many of our future dependencies, we shall take
an early opportunity of giving it a fuller considera-
tion than could be afforded to it within our present
limits.

We inserted in our paper of yesterday, in report
copied from the Midland Counties Herald, of the
proceedings at the annual meeting of the sub-
scribers to the Birmingham Institution :for the
Relief of Deafness. Birmingham is, we believe,
the first provincial town in which an institution
of this nature has been established, and it is highly