The Sun.
London, England, 1845-07-10 00:00:00

etening A"-nit4

LONDON, THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1845.

The Lords did not sit yesterday.
The Commons met at Twelve o'clock.
The Lunatic Asylums and Pauper Lunatics Bill passed
through Committee.
The standing order 123 relating to Railway Bills
was ordered to be suspended for the remainder of the

session.

On the motion that the Universities (Scotland) Bill be
read a second time,
Mr. MACAULAY, in a most eloquent speech, supported
the measure, and complained of the conduct of the
Government in now opposing it, when, by their conduct
they had hitherto led the supporters of the measure to
understand that they did not object to the Bill.
Sir J. GRAHAM defended the conduct of the Govern
ment, and said that last year they had resisted a measure
exactly similar to the one now before the House.
Mr. J. S. WORTLEY commented in severe terms upon
the conduct of the free Church of Scotland. He thought
it necessary that the Church of Scotland should be
connected with the State, and was opposed to the pre-
sent measure. No new tests had been imposed, but he
thought they ought not to do away with the tests which
already existed.
The House was subsequently addressed by Sir G.
Grey, Sir R. Inglis, Mr. Pringle, Mr. C. Buller, the
Lord Advocate, Mr. P. M. Stewart, Sir R. Peel, and
Lord J. Russell, when the House divided, and there ap-
peared for the Motion, 108 ; Against it, 116 ; Majority
against the motion, S.
Mr. WATSON then moved that the House go into Com-
mittee on the Catholic Relief Bill, which was negatived
by a majority of 42.
The other orders of the day were then disposed of,
and the House adjourned at a Quarter-past One.

The last news of New Zealand will scarcely remove
the impression which so generally attaches to the his-
tory of that colony in the public mind—that it is the
victim of a singular fatality, or of egregious mal-adminis-
tration. By brief advices that have just reached Eng-
land, we learn that, in a conflict between the boat's
crew of one of her MAJESTY'S ships, in company with a
small party of troops, with the natives, more than a
hundred of the New Zealanders, and from eighteen to
twenty of our own people, had perished. If, after the
massacre of Wairau, we are little surprised at, we do not
the less deplore, this lamentable catastrophe. It would
have been strange indeed—an anomaly offered to the
experience of all European communications with
the barbarous, or even the semi-civilised, tribes of the
Southern and the South Pacific Ocean—if the moral
influence of such a cunningly-contrived and successfully.

accomplished movement as that which resulted in the
caption and murder of the `• Nelson" party, including
Major WAKEFIELD and his unfortunate companions,
had not urged on the dusky compatriots of those who
triumphed at Wairau to slake once more their thirst for
the blood of the strangers. However land-jobbing
missionaries, or jobbing land companies, may qualify the
fact, the fact, we have no doubt, remains an absolute
one, that the New Zealander, though he be a
tall, a stalwart, and even an intelligent islander,
is yet a sanguinary savage. Ages have passed away
without witnessing any material mitigation of the
" ferocity" principle, that forms, after all, the fond of his
character. It seems the most unlikely thing in the
world, that more ages should not elapse before they can
be reclaimed from the indulgence of their sanguinary
tastes (to say nothing of their predatory tendencies)—

. _
so long, that is, as they shall remain under the paternal
jurisdiction of the Colonial-office in Downing-street.
But let us speak more earnestly of the matter, meagre
as is the narrative we yet have of it, lest we should be
thought to speak with levity of another
catastrophe at this ill-fated settlement in which
sa many valuable lives, English and native,
have been suddenly and violently sacrificed. We
do most earnestly direct the attention of the public to
the amount of human misery, bereavement of property,
blighting of hopes, and loss of life, which have mourn-
fully recorded the different stages of the colony's brief
existence. Assiduously excited and wickedly exagge-
rated expectations in the mother country—disappointed
hopes and ruined prospects—poverty, peril, and death,
in the fertile but inhospitable solitudes of the island—
these have been the sad alternations through which the
investment purchasers here, and the deluded emi-
grants there, have successively passed. With whom
rests all the tremendous responsibility, the ulti-
mate atonement, for these deplorable incidents ?
The question is more easily asked than answered, more
readily answered than satisfied. The Government de-
partment charged with the general supervision, economy,
and management of its state and fiscal administration,
may be prepared with specious grounds of accusation
against the " Monster" Land Company that had set in
motion a vast machinery of contracts for bargain, and
sale, and settlement, without having an ascertained title
of feasible proprietorship to ten acres out of every two
hundred comprehended within the enormous block they
called their own. The Monster Land Company treated
with and petted—favoured and doubted alternately—now
tampered with, and now discarded by the Government—
patronised to-day, and cold-shouldered to-morrow, by the
Downing-street functionaries, and especially by the great
`• Lord" of (colonial) " misrule," might turn round with
at least as good a case upon the QUEEN'S Ministers, and
on their beads charge all the mischiefs and destruction,
the bankruptcies and the bloodshed, that have illustrated

in New Zealand the halting, timid, miserable counsels
of successive Governments, afraid to assert the clear and
undoubted title of prior possession and occupancy against
other States ; alarmed at the suggestion of at any rate
extending the shield of British Government protection
over a community of British subjects settled in that dis-
tant region ; and unequal to the laborious but honour-
able duty of upholding the inviolable rights of life and
property for free Britons in any and every part of
the habitable world. The present is not the opportunity
for going into the important inquiry how, and in what
proportions, the distressing responsibility we speak of
should be divided between Downing-street and Broad-
street-buildings. We have already intimated our own
conviction that the defence set up on behalf of the New