The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-13 00:00:00

getting rid of factions and conspiracies after 1688.1
He does not anticipate that so long a time will 'be
needed to quiet Italy, because the Italian movement
is so deeply stamped with the impress of na-
tionality. He hopes that simple and legal measures
will be sufficient, but he repeats—" The best means
of arranging everything is to settle the question of
Rome, the headquarters of opposition and dis-
turbance."

But according to his own view, which is that
of converting the Catholic world to the acceptance
of Church independence, as a compensation for the
surrender of temporalities, he must have a long
task before him. We wonder when Messrs.
BOWYER, CULLEN, and Co. will agree with the
first sentence of the. following extract from the
Count's speech :—" The principles proclaimed by
us, the separation of the church and the state—the
liberty of the church—have been favourably received
by all parties who are inspired by liberal senti-
ments, even by those who are at the same time in-
fluenced by Conservative ideas. That is a great
step actually made, But that is not enough ; it is
not merely liberal opinion, but the enlightened part
of the Catholic world that must be brought
round to our views. If some distrust, some
reluctance is exhibited on that side, we ought
not to be alarmed at it. Liberty cannot be
accepted without hesitation, without fear by
the Catholic world; for, in truth, it is the
first time that a great Catholic nation has
addressed itself to the church, with the offer of full
and entire liberty in exchange for its temporal
power. Never before has the Church found itself
in this situation."

He then kindly goes on to excuse the fears of the
ecclesiastics, to show that even in Protestant coun-
tries religious liberty is not complete, and to
palliate what in his heart he well knows to be but
selfish priestly ambition; still he adheres to his
point, that separation from and independence of the
State is the true position for the Church, that Italy
is a most Catholic nation, and will cherish that
independence, and that it will strengthen the
position of the Catholic party. "We shall soon,"
he said in conclusion, " win over the best part
of the religious -world to recognise the loyalty
that inspires us. It will be recognised that
what we propose is the only means of ensuring
the legitimate influence of the church in
Italy and in the rest of the world. In a short time,
I hope, voices will rise from the midst of catholic
society and will tell the Pope : ' Accept the terms
which liberated Italy offers you, for they restore
freedom to the church and add to the lustre of the
Holy See; accept these terms, and the Italian na-
tion, while completing the work of its liberation,
will remain the most faithful of all to the genuine

spirit of religion.' "
We have only to add, let the Italians but please
themselves, and they will please England. The
POPE may be as great a spiritual potentate as men's
belief in the magic powers of a fellow-man can make
him ; that is no business of ours. We &Eire to see
Italy possessed of her lawful capital, and our -only
business is to see to it that she does not purchase it
by making the Mediterranean a French lake.

Another of those " Little Wars" which were the
particular abhorrence of the Duke of WELLINGTON,
England has now upon her hands. That wretchedly
fluctuating and prolonged conflict, namely, between
a small body of the forces of the British Empire and
swarms of the naked aboriginal New Zealanders.
During a considerable period past the mails from the
opposite side of the globe have brought home to us
tiditigs of the most uncertain variation from the
seat of war among our antipodes. Now (strange to
tell) the English soldiers have been for a while
worsted by the Maoris, although the serried ranks
of the former have been confronted only by a bar-
barous horde of savages armed for the
most part with rude stakes and tortuous
boomerangs. Now the success (! ) has been with
the Europeans, and the tribes of New Zealand
arrayed against us have been driven back with
some slaughter and much confusion. In either
• ease the result we can hardly induce ourselves to
Y4ard as otherwise than discreditable. When
rep4A though but for a moment, our repulsion
has. haeh nothing less than ignominious. When
conciU4rors, our conquest has been of a kind that it
wol4 be hardly less than shame to exult
iDisciplined troops, however inferior in
, •
respect of numbers, when opposed to a race of
ignorant-savages, can scarcely take credit to them-
sekes fer beating back with rifle and bayonet a mob
.afiAlaoris hurling stones and brandishing boome-
,
Frangs. The contest we all recognise upon the
instant as so entirely unequal, that we feel the ne-
cessity that it ought in reason to have been evaded,
by any means almost, through the agency of mere
diplomacy. Those who might, upon the first blush,
find themselves disposed to laugh to scorn the
nation of anything like a diplomatic test being ap-
plied in this way to the aboriginal New Zealanders
can know but little of the history of the rise and
development of our power in those antarctic regions,
in the southern islands of the Pacific and the
Atlantic, in New Zealand, in Van Diemen's Land,
in Australasia. Fighting, actual bloodshed between
the English and the aborigines in those regions,
from the period of their first discovery until now,
has been, not the rule; but the exception. Some
of the few more sanguinary outbreaks on the part
of the savage population found there by the Euro-
peans, have certainly been signalised by dreadful
and world-famous deaths, such, for example, as
that revealed, to the horror of all Englishmen
afterwards, in the lamentable assassination of Cap-
tain Coot: at Otaheite—but these incidents, again,
we repeat, have been unquestionably not the rule,
but the exception. Our authority in Australasia,
for example, has been based upon the awe inspired
there among the natives by our (to them) astound-
ing civilisation. The early annals of our vast and
various antarctic colonies, are for the most part un-
tarnished by any evidence of ruthlessness on our
Part whatsoever. The leaves of the opening pages
of that history of England's power at the anti-
podes, while blurred occasionally it may, be here
and there with tokens of undue severity, cannot
possibly be described with truth, as most conquests
are alone to be described at the outset, namely, as
bloodstained. We can look back without a sense
of national remorse to the record of the build-
ing up of our dominions yonder in the chief part of
that wide and scattered portion of the habitable
globe, known as Oceania. It is our recollection
of this fact in the narrative of the foundation of that
portion at least of our enormous- colotr!al empire,
which constrains us to come to the conclusion,
almost as one might say instinctively, that our
recent and still continued war in New Zealand,
our late and even now unended struggle with the
Maoris was at the first indisputably avoidable.

The official documents brought forth in the form

of a notable Blue book, relating exclusively to

this little war in New Z!3aland, confirms this in-

tuitive impression upon a mature consideration of

the circumstances in which that same miserable

little war originated. It is not possible to glance
retrospectively through the incidents which brought
the British forces and their savage antagonists
into collision, without perceiving quite plainly that
from first to last, there were no adequate efforts