The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-19 00:00:00

Pa Ot *nit

LONDON, TUES3,AY, NOVEMBER 19, 1844.

The Bishop of EXETER has just published an elabo-
rate judgment in the case of the Rev. WALTER
limINT, Curate of Holston, and one of the most ardent
disciples of the Tractarian school of theology. The
cane of this clerical zealot, which appears to have
excited considerable sensation in the West of Eng-
land, is simply as follows :—lfe. was charged by one
of the most respectable inhabitants of his parish—
but not until the utmost forbearance had been exer-
rise 1 towards him—with having revived certain strin-
gent, antiquated usages of the Church, which had
long since fallen into desuetude, even with the appro-
bation of the Church itself. These usages proved, as
right have been anticipated, peculiarly distasteful to
the Rev. Gentleman's parishoners, for, in the first
place, they were at variance with common sense ;
and, secondly, they were characterised by a stern spirit
of intolerance, which is any thing but in accordance
with the enlightened temper of the present age. We
will mention a few of the most obnoxious among
them :—The cc4mpelling all persons to remain in the
church on Sacrament Sundays until the conclusion
of the exhortation, on pain of excommunication.— 1
The refusal to bury the corpse of a young man who
had been baptised by a Dissenting minister in a co-
lony where no Church minister was to be found.—
The refusal
to marry persons unless they could
prove satisfactorily that they had
been baptised.—
The refusal to read the Lord's Prayer. or admi-
nister the Holy Communion to
ri.e.ntaTnh who had
been baptised by a Roman Cath6
ing to. the Churchwardens for their signatuer tender.
tice to be published, to the effect that noannios--
senter should be buried in the churchyard before
eight o'clock in the evening.—Of course Mr. BLUNT
urged in his justification that all t!...se usages were
sanctioned by the authority cf the Rubric ; but, as

n intelligent clergyman, he should have borne in
mind that there are certain forms and observances
which, however suited to the genius of one age, are
diametrically opposed to the genius of another; and
he should have fashioned his conduct accordingly.
His not doing so has had the effect of introducing a
spirit of discord into the parish, which has been pro-
ductive of most injurious consequences. The "Con-
gregation," says the complainant, Mr. HILL, "has been
gradually diminishing from the time the Rev. Gen-
tleman undertook the management of the parish ; it
had considerably decreased at the last visitation, and
latterly it has been reduced more than half; the
number of communicants is not so great, the rich
making a point of attending the service in some
neighbouring country church, and the poor either re-
maining at home, or going to Dissenting places of
worship." We do not wonder at this gradual
estrangement of the Helston flock from their pastor,
for the latter's proceedings—however sanctioned by
antiquated authority—have been not only intolerant,
but absurd to the last degree. What, for instance,
could be more bigoted than his refusal to bury the
corpse of a young man, merely because he had been
baptised by a Dissenting minister? Was it generous—
was it in accordance with Christian charity—thus to
stigmatise a poor handful of dust and ashes, and push the
Church's displeasure beyond the grave? Was no respect
—no forbearance due to the awful presence of Death
which might well subclue the odium theologicum in
the breast of the most inveterate bigot ? Again, what
could be more unjust than Mr. BLUNT'S refusal to
" marry persons unless they could prove satisfactorily
that they had been baptised." The office of baptism
is one usually administered in infancy ; and the re-
gister might since have been lost—mislaid—torn—
burned—a thousand untoward accidents might have
occurred to prevent its forthcoming, without the
slightest blame being imputable to the party called on
produce it ; and yet, forsooth, they are not to be
married until they can give satisfactory proof
of the performance of a ceremony administered in
early childhood, and every witness to which may
have been long since dead ! We_ean imagine nothing
calculated to do the Church more serious injury, than
vexatious and bigoted conduct like this on the part
of one of its ministers. And what does the Bishop
of EXETER say to these charges against Mr. BLUNT ?
Does he deal with them in a liberal, common-sense
spirit ? Far otherwise. his judgment, on the whole,
is decidedly favourable to the Rev. Gentleman; and
he expressly adds, towards the close of it, " in every
instance in which any of my clergy shall express a
determination to follow strictly the requirements of
the Church, he shall have my full support, though Ido
not deem it necessary to give a general order for re-
viving these usages and the observance of those
rubrics which have fallen into desuetude." In other
words, though the Bishop will not issue imperative
orders on the subject, yet he will support
to the utmost of his power every clergyman who, in
the fury of mistaken zeal, shall insist on reviving, to
the annoyance of his parishioners, all the obsolete,
useless, arbitrary, and vexatious usages of the Church,
which the good sense and improved spirit of that
Church have allowed to fall into desuetude ! When
our Episcopal dignitaries—whose example is of course
infectious among their clergy—thus act, who can be
be surprised at the rapid spread of Dissent throughout
the length and breadth of the country ?

By the " New Zealand" papers last received, our
attention has been powerfully drawn to two subjects
of very dissimilar character, but perhaps of almost
equal interest to that important colony. They re-
late, each of them, to the most remarkable exempli-
fications of our defective colonial policy that can be,
perhaps, adduced both against the last and the pre-
sent Government of her MAJESTY. We have often
lamented the utter want of decision, design, and
energy, which characterised the proceedings of Lord
JOHN RUSSELL, when Colonial Secretary, in dealing
with the question of New Zealand occupation. His
Lordship's halting and tardy recognition of those
possessory rights of sovereignty, which the acts of
Captain Coos( on behalf of the British Crown, after
circumnavigating the whole of the islands in 1770,
had as clearly established, as had ever been done in
the case of any other European discovery in the
waters of the Pacific, led to half measures, which
were followed by the usual results of such imperfect
actions of State authority. ,The course adopted by
her MAJESTY'S Ministers was satisfactory to no party.
A large portion of the public were displeased with
what they considered, on the first announcement of
the arrangements concluded, to be an improvident
and monopolitical bargain with a Joint-Stock Land
Company for its special advantage. The managing
direction of that Company have since loudly pro
tested against the hard terms exacted of them by her
MAJESTY'S Ministers. The few previously-settled
English residents or proprietors within the limits of
that distant country considered themselves aggrieved
by the purchases of the Company on the one hand,
and the powers assumed and delegated by the Home
Government on the other. It is no part of our busi-
ness to open up any of these questions. The title of
the Crown, in our opinion, was clearly good; and had
it been exercised without hesitation, much of the
evil which has overtaken New Zealand, since the
present Government came into power, would have
been averted. But the Colonial Government which
at present represents: it, seems to be paralysed by
its example. Governor FITZROY is grievously re-
monstrated against in the petition of certain inhabi-
tants of the settlement of Nelson, "for the conduct
pursued by his Excellency in declining to bring
before the constitutional tribunals of the law the
parties charged with the massacre of many of her
MAJESTY'S faithful subjects (at Wairau, in New
Zealand) on the 17th of June, 1843." The peti-
tioners indignantly represent, that whereas the Go-
vernor had subsequently taken a mass of evidence
upon oath, of various credible European witnesses,
implicating especially a Native Chief named "Rau-
PARATIA" as one of the instigators of, and chief
actors in, the said massacre of two-and-twenty rui
their fellow-settlers (including a Commander in her
MAJESTY'S Navy, a retired Captain in 'ner MAJESTY'S j
Army, the Police Magistra_. and Judge of title
County Court of Nelsen district, the Prote'.::cor of the
Aborigines, the Crown Prosecutor and the Chief
Magistrate), such Governor 2-d yet, on the 12th of
I..anding at Waikanai, on the
February last, after
North Island, v (s.:iuntarily addressed an assembly of
several hur:ired natives, then and there headed by
RAm"-stAssA. That having received from the latter
ar. account of the origin and manner of the Wairau
massacre, which in most essential particulars was at
variance with the sworn testimony of the European
witnesses referred to, the said Governor, after half an
hour's deliberation, without cross-examining the
Chief or calling further evidence, declared to the
natives and their leader, " that having heard and re-
flected upon their account, and compared it with
that of the white men, he htid-decided that it was the
misconduct of the English which had brought on the
fight, and hurried the natives into the crime of mur-
dering unarmed men who had surrendered, but
whose deaths, therefore, he would not avenge."
IVe are warm partisans of a merciful and for-
bearing deportment on the part of civilised men to-
wards their more barbarous and unenlightened fellow-
creatures ; and for this generosity, even to some
excess, we naturally look, in all the transactions
which bring savage nations in contact with our gal-
lant and humane countrymen. But where the locali-
ties on which these two conditions of human ex-
istence, the civilised and the unreclaimed, are con-
_ __
terminous, as in New Zealand, it is not a mere
principle of policy or expediency, but an essential
condition of protection and even existence for the
former, that the power, the force, the resources, the
combined strength of civilisation, should be palpably
evidenced and vindicated to the senses and appre-
hensions of barbarism. Wherever this object can be
achieved without the sacrifice of life, or even re-
straints upon personal liberty, it is the duty of the
civilised as Christians, as human brethren of a snore
intelligent order, to abstain from violence towards the
savage. But the primary instincts of self-preserva-
tion, as well as the duty of all its members to the
social community they belong to, require and justify
a resort to that species of physical vindication we
speak of, whenever the society is menaced with an I
infliction of brute force, under the impulse of brute
passion, intent on gratifying its appetite for blood.
We are by no means prepared to consider whether I
Curon
fvaevron,o rabFlte-rez:t o i
krie
ats
of justifiedthe
coornd notue
ti no
fh itshe set
tapparentlysettlers.
113ut we are fully prepared to say, assuming the al-
legations of the Nelson district petition to

be true, that he has been distinctly wrong
in the conduct he has adopted towards
RAUPARAIII and the other natives actually impli-
cated in the massacre of the two-andsts% enty settlers
at Wairau. He has himself admitted that these
men had been guilty of the crime of mur-
dering unarmed men, fellow - subjects of his
own, and within his own jurisdiction. Does
Captain FITZROY imagine that his own private im-
promptu impression that they had been " hurried"
into this slaughter by the " misconduct" of their
victims can purge them of their legal guilt (on that
assumption), or relieve them from their responsibility
to the just demands of civil government ? If the
settlers are not guilty to the extent which he has
been pleased to assume, RAUPARAIIA and his party
must have been guilty in a far higher degree than
they are even charged to be. If RAUPARAIIA and his
party were really instigated by excessive provocations
on the part of the settlers, it is necessary, not alone in
justice to their reputation among the European
settlers in general, but for their protection from the
bloody feuds and retaliations which the descendants
of the latter may otherwise be expected to maintain
against themselves and their successors for long years
to come, that this misconduct on the part of its two-
and-twenty victims should be clearly established in
the face, and under the solemn forms of our legal
tribunals. Retribution on the one hand, or expurga-
tion on the other, is implicitly demanded ; and we
cannot doubt that the British Parliament will grant a
Committee of Inquiry, or recommend some other
efficient form of proceeding, with a view to
satisfy the great expectations of British subjects as to
the results of this melancholy affair.
The other intelligence from New Zealand is of a
much more agreeable nature. It regards the rapid
improvements effecting in the culture, preparation,
and manufacture of the PIIORMIUM TEriax. Now
that the colonists have got into the way of erecting
machinery adequate to split the fibres of this ad-
mirable "New Zealand flax" without breaking them,
and to cleanse the material or fabric from the husk or
skin, we have no manner of doubt that some three or
four years will suffice to give our countrymen in
New Zealand the full advantage of supplying the
home market here (the largest in the world) with this
commodity, so invaluable as a military and naval
store, as well as a commercial commodity of higher
quality and better texture than that for which we pay
annually such vast sums to Russia and other northern
States. Yet, until a very recent period, notwith-
standing that repeated experiments had shown the
superior properties of New Zealand flax (second
only to those of the Manilla article), when not
marred by the muscle-shell scraping, and filthy pre-
paration of the native makers ; no direct encourage-
ment could be obtained from the authorities at home
for the development of a material so indispensable to
our naval greatness, and for which we have so often
been at the mercy, as it were, of the foreign grower
or his Government. Colonial improvement, it seems,
like " kissing," goes "by favour?' We are heartily
,41ad that it seems to have come to the turn of New
Zealand to be saluted at last !

The recent meeting of the members of the Man-
chester Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures, held
in their rooms in that wonderful town, to consider of
a memorial to be presented to her MAJESTY'S Govern-
ment, praying for a repeal of the present import duty
on cotton wool, addressed its labours to the removal
of certainly one among the least defensible errors of
our commercial legislation. The collection of this
duty on the raw material of our largest staple manu-
facture has already worked infinite injury to the com-
merce of this country, and effected an immense ad-
vance for that of the United States, by at once excit-
ing and rewarding their competition in the markets of
Europe, Asia, and Africa, with ourselves, in the
coarser fabrics that have hitherto so largely employed
our manufacturing industry. This duty, it appears
from the statements (at the meeting in question) of
the Chairman (Mr. BAcr,Es), amounts, on cotton wool,
to eleven per cent., and when manufactured into
goods, to about five per cent. on their value. The Ame
ricans grow the producing plant at their own doors ;
whereas, with us, it must always (as the Manchester
speakers remarked) be an exotic. The Americans,
therefore, have no such important charge for freight
to encounter as our manufacturers have, and, stimu-
lated by their ardent desire to compete with us as ma-
nufacturers for the consumption of the world, they
are actually empowered, and qualified so to do, by
the suicidal impolicy of our own Government in re-

taining this most obnoxious duty. Our friends on the
other side of the water are not to be reproached with
" mealy-mouthedness" in asking of others any object,
the concession of which they deem calculated to pro-
mote their own interests. But JONATHAN, himself,
in his happiest moments of keen-sighted sa-
gacity, would scarcely have ventured to ask for so
much as we have doggedly persisted in forcing upon
his acceptance, by maintaining the tax on cotton
c 001. Let us see what the growth of the trade, itself,
has been in a course of years, throughout the far
greater proportion of which the question of this duty
was comparatively insignificant, inasmuch as no such
competition, among the subjects of the United States,
had then been established, as now exists. The Chair-
man aptly illustrated this growth by a single ex-
ample :

" Perhaps he would not be out of order in calling at-
tention to the port of Liverpool, which is one of the
largest seaports for the importation of cotton in the
world. In the year 1780, when the cotton trade was in
its infancy, the Custom-house revenue in that port,
arising from cotton, was under 1,0001, but by the indus-
try of the trade the revenue was now not less than
4,000,0001. sterling per annum."

It may be enough to leave this point thus exempli-
fied, without going further into the general statistics
of the cotton trade of the United Kingdom, and the
duties raised upon the imported raw material—mat-
ters to be found set out in ample detail in Mr. POR -
T E R'S admirable tables. But it is of moment to learn,
on the authority of practical men, what are the pre-
sent mate and the prospects of this branch of com-
merce in our principal foreign markets; what the
cause of that state and prospects ; and how far these
are to be identified with the continued imposition of
this duty on cotton wool ? The Chairman apprised
the meeting that he had busily employed himself in
soliciting informative and opinions on these points
from various quarters. One firm, very large con-
sumers of cotton, had addressed him in the following
terms :

" The goods we manufacture are mostly similar in
fabrics to those made by the Americans, and intended
for shipment to the same markets, such as Brazil, Mexico,
South America, and latterly China. They consist of
heavy plain domestics, stout grey drillings, also dyed and
bleached, grey and blue striped drillings, &c., all of which
are made from coarse yarn. The duty upon cotton
wool, such as we use, amounts to eleven per cent. ; and,
after being made into goods, to five per cent. upon their
value. The English manufacturer is driven out of the
market by sheer necessity, to relinquish the field to the
Americans. Such is the fact. Wo have discontinued
entirely the making of plai❑ heavy domestics for ship-
ping. The goods we have described are consumed to a
large extent in all the northern parts of Chitin, i Pant putt
may find them quoted in letters of comtnercial advice as
American domestics, drillings, &c. Why not English
domestics, drillings, &c. ? for no earthly reason but our
own impolitic laws. Remove all unjust and suicidal
burdens from commerce, and we should not fear com-
petition,"

Another correspondent, in noticing the rapid
strides of the American manufacturing producers
their energy In pushing their markets, and the indis-
rensable condition to the future prosperity of our own
cotton trade of abolishing the duty memorialised
against, had written thus :
" The cotton manufacturers of the United States are
extending themselves in every direction. The same
spirit of enterprise that completed the work at Lowell,
some twenty years ago, has found its way to the south
; and the west. In the vicinity of St. Louis, there is a
manufactory in process of erection ; also one in the
neighbourhood of Talahassee, Florida. In Arkansas, one
of an extensive scale has been established ; and at
Natchez, a cotton and wool factory is now in operation.
In South Carolina, several manufactories have been for
some time in the full tide of successful experiment. Tho
i New England manufacturers are unusually active, and
will be through the season. . . .
The value of the cotton manufactures in the United
States, and capital invested, show an increase of nearly
40 per cent. for the past four years. During the. lastl
ft
rhorme e
7y
1e377,
5o ud ro
lel
ax
rpso
trot s2t,oooCoh,
oi
on
0a
dh
oa
lvl he increasedr s ;
and
a thee
amount of cotton goods imported into the Brazils from
Great Britain has fallen off one-third since 1840, those of
the United States have been gradually increasing.
• • • • . The consumption of cotton
throughout the United States, during the present year,
will not be short of 450,000 bales ; and if the English
exporter is to meet the American manufacturer on equal
terms in foreign markets, it is essential that the present
duty he taken off raw cotton ; and the longer such mea-
sure he delayed,the more established will be the American
export trade, and the more difficult all present and subse-
quent competition."

Now, these are very serious averments, In wh'lt

- '
IA
1,,.„... ',:..riak-160P1...i0rk• • ,';'-%
, A.
..- NW 'llki
...,,.s o k .. At,
~..., --
•,:pi .0., la. i.:-'
5.,114„..14.• . . , - . -,-„,,,:..,,,Aer,,e,r,
rll '
..a.• . ,
c
. '4".%,,,,...! !,Z,;':>!..-•.(11': i''--"'". 4, .. • , _ .
...,,,-.",-,,... ••:. - "as,