The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
GLOBE.—With reference to the conversation last
night in the Lords on the subject of New Zealand, we
would submit that the name of Hibernia Minor, or
Little Ireland, should be conferred upon that colony,
while it remains in the hands of the high and mighty
powers now subsidised by the present Government.
The Wakefield ascendancy there demands a small
war-steamer, and a small standing army, to maintain it
against the aborigines, just as the analogous parties in
I Ireland proper. The Earl of Ripon, after stating that
a part of their demand had, for the present, been com-
plied with, proceeded to say, " There certainly were
1 means within the reach of the colonists which they might
I adopt for their own safety. The Governor was authorised
to levy a militia, and to establish a constabulary force, as
I in Ireland, for their safety; and, when there were 10,000
I inhabitants, he could not see why such a course might not
I readily be adopted." We shall not despairof a New Zealand
edition of the Boyne Water, with appropriate variations,
and a standing toast of " The Glorious and Immortal
memory of Edward Gibbon Wakefield ! " It is worth
observing that this mercantile association of sturdy
beggars, which, after calumniating every Government,
till it bullied them out of alms, is now putting forward
the somewhat more serious petition for armies—is
the body which prepared its operations by attacking
the missionaries for their land speculations. We
do not recollect that the missionaries pushed their
land jobs till they wanted armed force to back them.
We suspect that the blackening system worked against
them had much the same meaning and motive as that
which Spanish and Portuguese rapacity carried out in
the New World against the Jesuits. By their fruits ye
shall know them. The Jesuits and William Penn con •
trived to do without fleets and armies. Again, this is
the body which wanted nothing of Government but
to be let alone ! Fight for us—pay our bills—and
let us alone with our domains and our dividends !
As the subject is thus again obtruded before the
public, we recur briefly to some curious treatment of it
by the Herald of yesterday. The Herald, after borrow-
ing some of our old objections to " the Wakefield sys-
tem," and after handling quite as severely as we have
done its application in New Zealand, concludes by
saying that Mr. Wakefield's principles are in
the main sound, and that the Globe misappre-
hends them. We suppose its motive is to pat Mr.
Wakefield on the back for supporting Govern-
ment in Canada. It does not tell us on what
point we misapprehend " Mr. Wakefield's principles."
Indeed, that is what these colonial Mormonites never do.
They never condescend to argument in defence of their
" Book of Mormon." If you criticise it you are simply
a blasphemer ; and the faithful have nothing to say to
you. The Word is written on plates of imperish-
able gold, but to infidel eyes invisible. We do not
think it worth disputing in the abstract—whether
or no we apprehend the Wakefield system. It
is disputing whether you have hold of Proteus—if
you had, he will have slipped through your fingers
the next minute. What we have quarrelled with as
" the Wakefield system," is the system of blowing
colonial bubbles, on pretence of having discovered a
principle by which new countries are at once assimilated
to old ones, and by which capitalists are assured of pro-
fitable returns for investments in colonial wastes at
prices calculated by what their value is to be, after
labour has successfully been applied to them. It is the
system of fixing an anticipated and artificial value on
colonial wastes, a value which is to be fixed high enough
to serve the double purpose of transporting labourers out,
and of securing that they shall not seek to cultivate on
their own account—it is this that we have understood as
the Wakefield system. It is on the strength of the sup-
posed self-supporting vigour, and profitable returns, of
the process of transporting masses of labour to distant
wastes—that the means have been raised for recent colo-
nial adventures—and the fingers burned of all those who
hare had any finger in them. If the " system" is tacitly
dropping out of all its original pretensions to a com-
plete, circular, self-supporting character ;—if its famous
central doctrine of sufficient prices for waste lands is
dwindling down from its fine frenzy of exorbitance, and
sinking gradually to the level of the rational practice of
the United States—why doubtless it may become
" Fine by degrees, and beautifully less,"
—till nobody can have any objection to it, any more
than to the corpulence of " the fat single gentleman six
months ago." All its artificial proportions of labour and
capital may shrink into common sense. In the mean
time, we repeat that thd Herald, while assuming to direct
a vague censure against our strictures on that " system,"
has borrowed the main point we hare always urged,
and applied it precisely as we might have done, as one
cause of the present fix in New Zealand.
STANDARD.—The Ecclesiastical Courts Bill was
last night read a third time and passed in the House of
Lords. There was the usual amount of carping on the
part of the Opposition Peers, with something more than
the usual injustice. The principal topic of complaint
was the permitted existence of the diocesan courts—
courts, however, which the same Noble Lords who com-
plain of them as an intolerable nuisance, permitted
during ten years of office to remain undisturbed, and to
remain in company with some hundreds of other alleged
" nuisances" now to be swept away. This however, is
not the only inconsistency, or the greatest of which the
Opposition Lords are guilty in this matter. If
we are not mistaken, they are all, without ex-
ception, zealous promoters of the Bill for establish-
ing local common-law courts, on the principle
that justice ought to be brought as near as possible to
every man's door. Is there not, then, a gross self-con-
tradiction in their complaint that the metropolis is not
to absorb all the courts of ecclesiastical law ? The
diocesan courts are, however, said to be sub-
stantive nuisances, the toleration of which in
any form sanctions the mischief of which
they are the cause. This, however, is going
something too fast : a Court may be a nuisance or a
benefit, according as it is constituted or conducted.
Even our most favourite tribunals will be confessed
by all to be but mixed goods, and though no doubt
what is excellent in them predominates, the very
fact that supplementary tribunals are called for,
and that these supplementary tribunals are not
to imitate them very exactly, shows that they
do not give entire satisfaction. We need scarcely
make it a question whether a Local Courts
Bill, which should establish tribunals as uncertain,
tedious, and expensive as the courts at Westminster,
would be accepted with much gratitude by the
country. Before assuming, then, that the diocesan
Courts must remain perpetual nuisances, may
it not be fair to inquire whether these
courts cannot be subjected to a reform, ana-
logous to that proposed in the local common law courts?
For ourselves, we have long since arrived at the con-
clusion that the law reform which commences with the
chopping and changing of courts, the multiplying or
diminishing the number of judges, is a reform begun at
the wrong end. The first evil to be contended
against is the process, which a number of ingenious
and expert and deeply-interested men, always
are and always will be labouring to make as
expensive as possible. Let the Legislature con-
stantly keep its eye upon this point, and it will be a mat-
ter of comparative indifference whether the courts are
" more and merrier," or " fewer with better cheer," The
work, however, properly belongs to the legislature, and
(we say it with all respect) not to the judges or other
heads of Courts. The pursuit of perfect justice grows
with these magistrates to a passion, which they will
always indulge at whatever expense of labour to
themselves, or of time or money to unhappy clients ;
and thus contrivance after contrivance to exclude pos-
sible wrong is heaped up in the portals, until the
temple of justice is closed against nearly every one.
W hat is the use of our principal courts to ninety-nine
out of a hundred of the community? Is it not certain
thatthat forthe onethey
might• ron g
right,the
if their p
right shelterthreoycesswas simpler apthleorusaanndd
less costly? The Legislature has less reason to indulge
the unhappy psssion for an unattainable perfection of
justice, and therefore it might perhaps be prevailed upon
to enforce a cheap and simple process, that no doubt
would occasionally cause injustice, but which would
generally work well, and would work for all; and until
the Legislature does this all law reforms will be illu-
sive. As regards the ecclesiastical courts, we cannot
see why they must still adhere to the old cumbrous pro-
cess of the Roman law, now laid aside in every country
of Europe, even in those countries where the maxims of
the Roman law constitute the basis of the national code?
Let the diocesan courts, however, be reformed in respect
of process, and every argument in favour of the local
common law courts applies to recommend their preser-
vation.

COURSE OF EXCH.
Amsterdam CF. 12 61
Ditto, at sight l2 41
Rotterdam 2U. 12 7
Antwerp 26 0
flamburgh M.B. 14 0
Altona l4 0
Paris, 3 days' sight 25 70
Ditto, 3 months 25 95
Marseilles
Bourdeaux 25 0
Frankfort on Maine 122
Petersburgh, 3Us 364
Berlin 7
Vienna, effec. 13 M 958
1 rieste, ditto
Madrid 364
Cadiz
lalbao .............. 36
Barcelona 36
Seville .

kNGE.—(THIS DAY.)
Gibraltar
Leghorn 3O 65
Genoa 25 95
Milan
Venice 47
Naples 39
Palermo, per oz ll7
Lisbon 53
Oporto 53
Rio Janeiro 23
Bahia 23
Buenos Ayres
NewYork,2ldys sight
Philadelphia
PRICES OF BULLION, PER OZ.
Foreign Gold, bars £3 17 9
Portugal Gold Coin 3 17 5
New Doubloons..... 0 0 0
New Dollars 0 4 9i
Silver in Bars 0 4 11A

THE LONDON GAZETTE.
(THIS EVENING.)

LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S-OFFICE, MARCH 29, 1844.
The Lord Chamberlain of her Majesty's Household has ap-
pointed George Dodd, of Grosvenor-place, in the county of
Middlesex, Esq., M.P., to be one of the Gentlemen of her
Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Chamber in Ordinary.
DOWNING-STREET, Arum 1.
The Queen has been pleased to appoint Edward Legh
Master, Esq., to be Registrar of the Supreme Court and
Clerk of Arraigns at Gibraltar.