The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-05 00:00:00

not of mere class interests of the empire--two years,
we say, have come and have passed since the period at
which they might have hoped to make out a case to
arrest the decree of public opinion. But that decree
has past. Corn-law protection has no better legs to
stand on than Pennsylvanian repudiation or Walbrook
withholding.
The Chichester meeting was a very poor affair
however, and may wend its way quietly to oblivion—
a point which it will reach promptly, without a rail-
road. The speech of Mr. NEWLAND contained a suffi-
ciently fair resume of the relative statistics of produc-
tion and taxation as to agriculture and manufactures
(which it will ever be one of the distinctions of the
last year to have so widely diffused among the people);
but Mr. NEWLAND'S argument was a melancholy
failure in applying them in support of the doctrines
he advocated.

The news from Ireland is of an interest which in-
creases, with the approximation of the State Trials,
in intensity. This is no more than was to be expected,
but there is one additional feature of painful import-
ance about it, with the presence of which we could
have willingly dispensed. We allude to the palpable
disposition on the part of the law officers of the
Crown to press the proceedings against the State
traversers with a degree of "sharp practice" which
savours too much of hostile prepossession against the
offenders ! In these matters,—in Crown prosecutions
—under any circumstances—we hold that the ancient
theory of our law which was always avowed, but ge-
nerally so little acted on, and which in the modern
practice of our Courts upon the whole, has been much
more largely acted upon and practically re-
cognised, than contended for in argument by counsel•
or affirmed and ruled by judges ; is the more expedient
as well as the more humane. This sound theory is, to
leave the law, which is to govern judgment in the
cause, unstrained, and as little as possible qualified ;
but to afford the parties to be tried on charges of
having violated it, all reasonable facilities and in-
dulgence to enable them to prepare for their defence
and vindication. The law knows nothing of the indi-
vidual delinquent ; and any considerations specially
affecting his personal case, are therefore not to be
assumed as those which should govern its own admi-
nistration. But with regard to the affair of the
pending State trials in Dublin, this doctrine, for ob-
vious reasons, it is absolutely essential to act up to.
We do not feel it necessary to pronounce any opinion
on the published correspondence between the solicitor
for the Crown, and the several solicitors for the va-
rious defendants, or to decide between the merits of
Mr. PIERCE MAHONEY'S long notices to Mr. KEMMIS,
and Mr. KEMMIS'S brusque reply to them. All we
have to say on the point is, that we earnestly trust,
for the sake of all parties concerned, but most ear-
nestly of all for the purity and majesty of the law,
that no occasion will be afforded for any just com-
plaint hereafter, that the strictness of technical pro-
cess has been wrested, by the law officers of the Go-
vernment, to the purpose of hampering, hurrying, or
otherwise prejudicing the defence for the State tra-
versers.

We have received files of the New Zealand and
Australian journals, which give detailed particulars of
events that have transpired in New Zealand since the
disastrous and sanguinary affair at Wairau, in Juno
last, in which, it will be remembered, no less than
five-and-twenty whites are supposed to have perished
on the field, or to have been wounded and since
died. From the interesting narrative given of
this melancholy affray by the police magis-
trate, Mr. M‘Dortoon, and printed in the New
Zealand Colonist, it would seem that the outbreak
was really unpremeditated on the part of the natives,
who never fired a shot until after five of their number

had fallen from the fire of the whites, including the wife
of a chief named RAIIGIHAIATA, who held, at the mo-
ment of her death, one of the chief's infant sons in her
arms. The determined hostility of this chief to the

European settlers was well known. He had sworn to
extirpate them, but has himself since died from mor-
tification of the foot, occasioned by its having been
transfixed by the stump of one of the thorny under-
woods of the country. The better disposition of the
native tribes, generally, towards us may be well in-
ferred from the fact, that the native population of a
considerable district refused to receive this man into

w....._
the protection of their territory, lest they should
thereby bring down on themselves the displeasure of
the English Government settlers. On the 24th June
Mr. MDONOGH issued a proclamation, dated " Port

Nicholson," calling on the natives to keep quiet, and
not to fear that it was the intention of the English
authorities to take vengeance on them for the blood
spilled at Wairau ; it apprised them that diligent in •
quiry would be made in the first instance, and the
law left to take its course with the offenders, whether
these proved to be native or English. Coinci-
dently with this was issued a proclamation
by three native chiefs of consideration, calling on the
tribes to respect and punctually obey the proclama-
tion of Mr. M‘DosioGu. The Maori Chiefs at Wan-
ganui, also, offered to place at the disposal of our
authorities in New Zealand, 2,000 of their warriors,
to assist them in taking vengeance for the slaughter
at Wairau. The magistrate, Mr. SPAIN, at the
request of his magisterial colleagues, proceeded
up the coast to make his personal inquiries
about this unfortunate event. He returned from his
mission in the first week in July, having found the
Chiefs determined to protect RAUPARAHA, at all
hazards. At the latest advices, a strong detach-
ment of the 96th Regiment had just arrived
in Port Nicholson, dispatched thither by the Lieute-
nant-Governor, and whose intention it was to remain
there, whilst their Commander, Major BENNETT,
would proceed in a brig to conduct some investiga-
tions in person at -Wairau, and to visit Cloudy Bay,
and he would go to Nelson on his return.
We are glad to find that there is this spirit of fair
dealing and of wise, because humane, policy
afloat, which we discern in the proclamation of the Ma-
gistrate, Mr. M‘DoNoGir, to the native tribes. It
is now clear that the offences of the guilty—if (which
is very questionable at present) the savages were the
aggressors—will not be visited on the in-
nocent. We have no excuse or pretence to
occupy lands in New Zealand at all, or in
any other territory first opened to European com-
merce and enterprise by the discoveries of the earlier
Dutch and British navigators, if we do not carry
out the great mission with which Providence has so
evidently invested us. That mission is to be at once the
harbingers and the disseminators of the lights and bene-
Sts of civilisation and commerce among the yet unre-
claimed societies of men in another hemisphere, who
are surrounded with abundant means of physical sup-
port and enjoyment—who are gifted with high
capacity for intellectual cultivation ; but who,
from ignorance of the first acts of social
life, and the first elements of human know-
ledge, have remained for ages in the degraded
condition of human animals, instead of attaining to
the dignity of sentient men. Generations after gene•
rations of them have starved, or at best derived but a
precarious subsistence, in the midst of nature's plenty;
and have lived and died in brutal and sordid igno-
rance of their higher powers and nobler destina-
tion. Distinguished as Britain is by the singular
advantages of her geographical position, and fortified
and improved as that position has been by all the
happy accidents which, in the course of ages, could
develope its own strength and multiply her own re-
sources, internal and foreign ; the irrepressible genius
of her people for mercantile occupations and maritime
adventure is the visible stamp and seal of her patent
to conduct all other nations in the noble work of
diffusing knowledge, morals, industry, physical and
intellectual cultivation, the blessings of civilization,
the love of peace, and, with this love, the means of pro-
tecting its objects when menaced by war or invasion,
among all the children of the wilderness, whether in
the islands or on the mainlands of the Great
Pacific—of the Southern Ocean, or of the New
World. Grieved should we be, indeed, to see her
abandoning this glorious prerogative, consecrated, as
it has been, by three centuries of unremitted and
signally successful exertion, to become the imitator
of other Powers in the bad and pitiful arts of whole-
sale extermination. But we are sure that the hu-
manity and manliness which are the inseparable con-
comitants of English courage, would alone withhold
any English establishment, civil or military, from
chastising an accidental outbreak of the wild Indian's
reckless impetuosity, by the disproportionate ven-
geance and destruction of its own organised powers
and forces. We must not follow the footsteps of the