The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-16 00:00:00

('I" Wiling gitit

LONDON. MONDAY, DECEMBER 16. 1844

The report which we mentioned last week, that
the Bishops were to hold a conclave on the Puseyite
doctrines, gains ground. The Archbishop of CAN-
TERBURY, it is said, has announced his intention of
summoning his brethren of the Episcopal Bench, in
order to'-deliberate awl determine on the rubrical ob-
servances to be enforced throughout the dioceses of the
South, and the venerable and aged Archbishop of
YORK has given his concurrence. This event is not
improbable or surprising ; but what surprises all true
Protestants is the fact, that the men who regard
themselves as the main props and stays of the Protes-
tant religion, the revilers of Catholics, and the un-
ceasing persecutors of conscientious Dissenters, re-
gard this as a healing measure of Primary importance,
and announce that the decision of these Prelates will
allay the storm which has been raised by
the restless Puseyite Bishop of EXETER, and
the pious Puseyite Bishop of LONDON. If they are
sincere, we pity their ignorance, and cannot give
them credit for a particle of judgment or foresight in
regard to the settlement of this alarming schism in
the Protestant Church. The Bishops have lost all
confidence with the laity. They have turned a deaf
ear to the entreaties, and rem( nstrances, and protests
of the true adherents of the reformed religion, or re-
jected their applications with contumely and scorn.
The two Archbishops are " dumb dogs, that cannot
bark ;" appeals have been made to them without num-
ber; the insulting, the Popish, and the tyrannical steps
taken by disciples of the new sect, have been forced on
their attention in the most earnest, humble, and
Christian spirit—yet these appeals have been made
in vain. The Church, for e call the Protestant
laity the Church, have given up all hopes from that
quarter. Oxford and the Bench of Bishops are on the
high road to Rome ; the PCSEYS and the WARDS
have descrihel as a great calawity the separation
of the English Church from the Papal See ; there
is no redemption for her but by immediately retracing
her stepa---that is, joining in all the rites and ceremo-
- io- and doctrines hitherto so repugnant to Reformers.
. etese heretical doctrines have been winked at by
the Archbishop of CANTERBURY, and openly coun-
tenanced or palliated by many flishops .Tehceshe areh
the men whom the prof«s,,e(l friends of' th
look up to as the only safe guides in the presenturc
alarming difficulties. Neer was there such a blit
'slusion. 'The Bench of I3ishops now has no
ver. The people have taken the question into
own hands, for the best of all reasons ;
edict issued from Lambeth Palace will have

he , slightest effect—not even if it denounced the
obnoxious measures of Dr. PIIILLPOTTS and Dr.
, • BLOMFIELD, and the whole race of Puseyites, and
decreed that no innovation whatever should be made
in Church ceremonies. A well-grounded suspicion
has seized the public mind that these changes, harm-
less when taken by themselves, are only the fore-
' runners of some wicked scheme for subverting Pro-
testantism, and accustoming the people to a religion
which they cordially detest. No. The Bishops can
do nothing that will allay suspicions. They have been
sufficiently tested ; they have been " weighed in the
balance, and found wanting." In the meantime, let the
people of England be on their guard ; let them keep
watch on the towers of Zion and defend the sacred
citadel against the only enemies they have to fear—
the enemies in the camp. The magnanimous conduct
of the churches in the diocese of Exeter has excited a
str.)ng feeling of sympathy throughout the country.
Dissenters as well as Churchmen have watched their
movements with intense interest, and in the hour of
danger they will unite to preserve the greatest bless-
ings ever conferred on this Protestant country—the
blessings of the reformed religion.

The Report of the Select Committee on New Zea-
land touches directly on some important elementary
principles—a better knowledge or a stricter observ-
ance of which, on the part of the authorities at home,
might have averted many of the evils which have
since overtaken this unfortunate colony. To this fact
we adverted, generally, in a former article. It may
be well, however, to note the passages to which we
refer more particularly, inasmuch as they may ope-
rate to prevent similar errors in future, whenever the
question of occupying territory still peopled, how-
ever thinly, by aborigines, shall be again submitted
to the Government for its decision.
It is quite clear that the question of occupancy is
at the root of all the difficulties which have sprung
up between the settled colonists and the natives, and
in the relations between the New Zealand Company,
the settled colonists, and the Government of Great
Britain. If there was no possessory right in the
British Crown, at the time any of its subjects made
settlements in New Zealand, there could be no de-
rivative right invested in any mediate authority, in
virtue of which these subjects could make good their
title to occupy lands in those islands against the pre-
tension of any of the aborigines. They who occu-
pied in defect of such authority, could not, in reason,
invoke that authority to enforce and protect their
possession. If they held lands and located upon them,
in confidence of the good faith of the native chiefs
with whom they had negotiated for the acquisition
of those lands, they held them under liability to bo
ousted by the bad faith, or deprived by the caprice,
or driven out by the violence, of the same savages, or
some of their compatriots. There was nothing in
their bargain with the aboriginal owners to entitle
them or their property to the protection of their SOVE-
REIGN; which is said to be the condition reciprocated
by the Crown for the allegiance of its own subjects.
'these latter had, in fact, put their allegiance in
abeyance, for their own purposes, and could not
complain if the British Crown kept, as to them, its
protective functions in abeyance also. And here let
u pause to avail ourselves of the well-reasoned de-
finition given by Sir GEORGE GIPPS, the Governor of
New South Wales, in an address to his Legislative
Council, on submitting to them a Bill framed by his
Excellency, under instructions from home, consti-
tuting New Zealand a British colony, dependent on
11;s government. " The Bill," said he,." is founded
on two or three general principles, which, until I
heard them here controverted, I thought were fully
admitted, and, indeed, received as political axioms.
The first is, that the uncivilised inhabitants of every
country have but a qualified dominion over it, or a
right of occupying only ; and that until they establish
amongst themselves a settled form of Government, and
subjugate the ground to their own uses by the cultivation
of it, they cannot grant to individuals, out of their
own tribe, any portion of it—for the simple reason
that they have not themselves an individual property
in it." This language may sound like the imposition
of a very arbitrary disability on a nomad tribe to
part with its own lands, on its own terms, to foreign
purchasers ; .but we take it to comprise law, as sound
as the maxim to which the portion in italics supplies
so striking an analogy, that labour is the capital of
land. " The second principle," Sir GEORGE con-
tinued, " is, that if a settlement be made in
any such country by a civilised Power, the right
of pre-emption in the soil, or, in other words,
the right of extinguishing the native title, is
exclusively in the Government of that Power,
and cannot be enjoyed by individuals without the
consent of their Government. The third principle is
that neither individuals nor orders of men, belonging
to any nation, can form colonies except with the con-
sent, and under the direction and control of their own
Government, and that from any settlement which they
may form without the consent of their Government,
THEY MAY DE OUSTED. This is simply to say, so far
as Englishmen are concerned, that colonies cannot be
founded without the consent of the Crown." Now, in
this false position, beyond all doubt, the earlier British
settlers in New Zealand, located about the Bay of
Islands and elsewhere, be fore the existence of the New
Zealand Company, bad placed themselves. But we
shall show, in a future paper, that this error of
theirs was radically cured, if not by the autho-
rised acts, yet on the assumed rights of the New
Zealand Company ; and that, however vicious the
title of that Company, ab initio, and however unwar-
rantable its proceedings in undertaking to deal with
private capitalists for the sale and occupation of lands,
having in the meantime no more substantial or recog-
niied title, the deficiencies of their original powers
must be held to have been, afterwards, if not cured,
yet condoned, and so to speak, recognised by the
unpardonable carelessness of acts of the British Go-
vernment. What those acts were, and in what ex-
tent and degree the very serious responsibility for the
destruction of life and property, the sacrifice of capi

_ .
tz:l, time, and health, the moral and social ruin con

sequent on the proceedings of the New Zealand Com-
piny is to be apportioned between the New Zealand
Company and the home Government, we shall endea-
vour, on an early day, to show.

Friday last was distinguished by the proceedings
of two remarkable public meetings, at which certain
home truths were announced and discussed, that
cannot be too often or too prominently enforced upon
public attention. The one of these meetings was
tint of the " Agricultural Protection Society for
Great Britain and Ireland," at which his Grace the
Duke of RICHMOND presided; the other, of farmers,
&c., assembled (on the occasion of coming up to
London to attend the Christmas Cattle Show) fur
the purpose of promoting the repeal of the malt-tax.
These parties assembled at fte Freemasons' Tavern;
anl A. SPOTTISWOODE, Esq., who happened to be
present as a spectator, was unanimously voted into the
chair. With regard to the former of these meetings,
our own objections to the principle of such agricul-
tural protection as the farming interest have hitherto
sought, especially in their demands for the repeal of
the Canada Flour Bill, the new tariff, &c., have been so
often enforced, that we shall not here enter upon the
arguments we might otherwise be disposed to ad-
duce in refutation of it. But we must fairly own
that some of the speakers, at both meetings, pointed
out with great force, and in language to which
we heartily respond, the enormous injustice
of the pressure of indirect taxation on the pro-
ducing classes, whose wages throughout the last few
years have been so fearfully reduced, and the enor-
Inous evil of a state of things which goes on multi-
plying the power and the sum of production, but
fearfully cramping the scope of the distribution of its
products. It was, however a tthe Freemasons' Tavern
tmeting that this last fact was most emphatically
demonstrated, and its indivisible connexion with our
existing monetary system fearfully established. The
experience of every day confirms our own melancholy
impressions on this subject ; and it is matter of some
congratulation that the pressure of low prices and the
other influences produced by vicious and fluctuating
legislation, in the shape of corn-laws and commercial
prohibitions and restrictions, has not so pre-occupied
or prejudiced the minds of the intelligent farmers, who
are endeavouring to obtain the repeal of the MALT-TAX,
as to blind them to the operation of one out of two of
the great causes of industrial distress in this coun-
try. They most truly declared that that is a
scheme of crying injustice which on the fright-
fully diminished wages of labouring industry continues
to levy, annually, the vastly larger proportion of that
indirect taxation which it was the maning of the