The Sun.
London, England, 1845-12-24 00:00:00

NEW ZEALAND.

(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.)
The fol!owing account of the actual state of this de-
voted islu:nd- may be depended upon. The writer is
talen!ecl gentleman, with much industry, and has a wife
and eight children totally dependent on his single exer-
tions. Every word he has uttered is truth. The Direc-
tors of the Company must rejoice at the departure from
office of the troop under Lord Stanley, in a firm belief that
their successors will do quickly what Lord Stanley has
[dell/ most unwillingly promised. There never was a
colony so cruelly used or neglected, and the sooner the
Directors of the Company and the relatives of those
unfortunates who went out under the protection (as they
believed) of en honest Government, SPEAR OUT-AND IN
LANGUAGE NOT TO BE MISUNDERSTOOD-THE BETTER.
It is cruel—it is barbarous—so long to have left them
unheeded and unprotected, there to remain the victims
of the fearful misrule of the late Governor.
Extract of a letter from Motucka, Nelson, Yet,: Zea-
land, May 30, 1845 :

" I should, indeed, under present circumstances, be
very cautious how I induced any one to come out to
New Zealand—not that my opinion of its climate, snit,
or capabilities is in the smallest degree altered;
neither do I see any reason to change the opinion I they
formed of the evils which were likely to result from the
mal-administration of the Company's affairs, the defects
of their.original plan, and the continued hostility of our
local government. And yet I am one of the
most hopeful in our little community. I believe
that we shall eventually succeed, and that in the
face of circumstances discouraging in no ordinary
degree. No vessel leaves our port without taking away
some of our colonists—the last, I am told, taking thir-
teen families in' the steerage ; and of the educated class,
out of about fir'y, ten were enumerated to me lately as
making preparations for leaving. The effects of the
original deceit become more and more palpable, and as
in all such cases, sooner or later, are now recoiling on
its authors. They asserted a body of capitalists were
prepared to go out to found this settlement of Nelson.
Not one ever came out. They arranged a scheme of
1,100 sections of land, and found a place, with barely 500,
so that one-half their purchasers must draw a blank,
or, what is equivalent, lend not worth the expewe
if cultivation. If this settlement is to prosper, it must
be by the representations of actual colonists to their
English friends. Now I will venture to assert that not
one person can be found here to advise a friend to put
his hand in the ballot-box; and the New Zealand Com-
pany itself, if it wishes to preserve any reputation for
honesty or fair dealing, cannot allow any one to do so
after the strong statements which have been forwarded
to it from here. But I much doubt if the Directors will
have the opportunity. The late events at the Bay of
Islands (of which, when you have read the accounts in
the Nelson Examiner, on the files of the New Zealand
Company's house, you will know as much as we do here),
although three hundred miles off, will deter all from
venturing to so unsettled a country, *here Go-
'erament tells colonists only thirteen miles from
the capital. Auckland, that they are out of the pale
of protection. And here again the chalice is returned
to their own lips. A Governor sent out to rule 8,000
or 9,000 Englishmen, fixes his seat of government 300
miles off, where the land is already sufficiently occupied
by native tribes, most of whom, by presents and mis-
sionary persuasions, he induces to sign a treaty making
them subjects of Great Britain. He believes he can
govern these half-civilised, half-converted savages by
moral influence alone, without any physical force to beefs
him. He dies, and his successor, imbued with the same
ideas, as well as conscious of his own inability to enforce
compliance with his orders, begins by slurring over the
murders at the \Vairau, allows all individual acts of native
aggression, robbery, and violence, to go unpunished, and
drawing the greater part of his revenue from the Com-
pany's settlements, tells them en masse they are inter-
lopers and trespassers, and if they dare to resist native
aggression will do so at their peril. But his Maori sub-
jects begin to be troublesome. They say they did not
understand that in signing a treaty they were to pay
more for their flour, sugar, and tobacco than formerly;
and, lo ! the Governor abolishes the customs. They
next complain that the treaty does them an injury in
preventing them from disposing of their lands to whom-
soever they please; and again an ordinance is passed allow-
ing all teen to buy of them on payment of one penny per
acre. Nothing now remained but the mere shadow of
allegiance, and accordingly some who did not sign the
treaty very logically refused to be bound by its provi-
sions, and cut down the British flag, once, twice, and a
third time, on the last occasion being joined by another
party, who, after a sharp fight, enter, sack, and burn the
settlement of Russell. They now threaten Auckland,
which has already as a settlement for peaceable people
received its coup de grace, and without a very strong
military force and much bloodshed will not,
in my opinion, exist a twelvemonth hence. Welling-
ten has its own troubles. The natives refuse to leave
the lands for which they had been paid over and over
again, in the hope of still more ; the settlers are, so to
speak, penned up in the town, and how they get on at
all is a mystery. Here, at Nelson, we have got on our
lands, and the Maoris are too few to annoy us ; and we
feel only the moral effects of these distant commotions,
being, as it appears, overlooked by our Governor, who has
never visited us since his arrival, 18 months ago; so that
the cause of our standing still must be looked for elsewhere.
I believe them to lie mainly in the particulars I have already
enumerated. Take my own case, for example. The scheme
talks of concentration and its consequent advantages
of mutual aid, protection, and society. I have one neigh-
bour half a mile off, and one only. The land around is ex-
cellent, but silent and waste; several settlers wculd wil-
lingly have set down beside me, but cannot; before and
behind me are native reserves, and on each side unsold
allotments, which may remain so my lifetime. How,
then, can I ask any one to join me? You will gather
from this account that the agency of your land is merely
nominal, and that, with the exception of your town
acres, you have no title yet given you fir a single foot
of ground in New Zealand. Your land at Ma-
nawatu for years to come will be useless ; that
in the Hutt, leading to an extensive inland valley, the
Wairarapa, will be valuable as soon as the natives are
brought into subjection. Selling or exchanging your
land for wood is at present out of the question, even
your Hutt land, and as to that at Manawatu, the Com -
pany not being able to give possession, is, I fancy, bound
to return the purchase-money."

THE ARMY.
COURTS-MARTIAL.
CIRCULAR ON THE RETURNS OF COURTS-MARTIAL.

It having been deemed expedient to discontinue the
detailed half-yearly returns of courts-martial hitherto
required from regiments and depots, from the Ist Jan.
next, I have it in command to notify the same to you,
and to call your attention specially to the following
instructions, rendered necessary in order that the series
of records preserved in this department may be continued
uninterrupted by the proposed arrangement:—
"Horse Guards, Dec. 6, 1845.
" The inner sheets, containing the entries of courts-
martial up to the 31st instant only, are to accompany the
summaries furnished at the first half-yearly inspection
after the receipt of this order. Subsequently to that
inspection, general officers are to forward, with their
confidential reports, the summaries (without the inner
sheets), and the 'general abstract of the summaries, &c.,'
filled up as at present.
" The size of the monthly return of courts-martial
has been somewhat reduced, and the form slightly
altered. As the return will be bound up and preserved
as a record in the Adjutant-General's office, commanding
officers of regiments and depots are strictly enjoined not
to allow the slightest deviation therefrom in any par-
ticular, and after the Ist of January, 1846, no other
form of return is to be used.

" The greatest attention is to be bestowed on the
preparation of this return, and previously to its trans-
mission it must be carefully examined, and if necessary,
corrected by the general officer, who will make such re-
marks as be may deem fit in the column set apart for
that purpose.
"As this new form will not reach regiments at many
of the stations abroad in sufficient time to be used for
the month of January, 1846, commanding officers, not-
withstanding they may have already forwarded returns
of the old.form, are to prepare others of the new one for
as many months as the old ones may have been for-
warded, commencing with the above month, and transmit
them to the Adjutant-General.
" I have the honour to be, Sir, your very obedient
humble servant, (Signed)
" JOHN MACDONALD, Adjutant-General."

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.
MAXCIIESTER, TUESDAY EVENING.—Very few subscribers
present ; nothing done.

SCARCITY or GRAIN IN INDIA.—The price of grain
has again risen in the Calcutta market. Immediately after
the recent inundations the prices had become extremely ex-
orbitant. Some days after the traffic in rice for exportation
was suspended, but has since been resumed, and the people
sow are obliged to pay for the balam rice which they eat, at
a rupee and 14 amiss per maund, while there is every pros-
pect of further increase in the price to 2 or 2* rupees per
maund. The price of grain has likewise been enhanced. It
cannot be procured under a rupee and 10 annas per maund.
Other articles, especially those adapted for exportation, have
risen in price. It is difficult to say to what extent suffering
and distress may be prevalent among the humbler claws.
But still the fall of rain in the commencement of Kartick re-
vived the hopes of good crops. To what, then, is to be
ascribed this scarcity of grain in the markets P—Calcutta
Bhashur, Nov. 4.

ANTI-CORN-LAW MEETING AT DEVORPORT.—
The Devonport Independent says that one of the largest
meetings that ever took place at Devonport, assembled
within the walls of the Town-hall on Thursday even-
ing, for the purpose of considering the propriety of
petitioning her most gracious Majesty that the ports
of the country may be thrown open for the free impor-
tation of corn and every article of food. The requisition to
the Mayor to convene the meeting was signed by upwards
of 1,200 of the most respectable of the inhabitants, com-
prising Whig, Radical, and Conservative, showing the great
interest taken in a question of such importance to the future
comforts, nay, existence of millions of our fellow-subjects in
this country and in Ireland. The Mayor took the chair at
seven o'clock, and a petition in favour of opening the ports
was agreed to with enthusiasm.
Mr. Hutchinson, of Trinity College, Cambridge,
was received into the Roman Catholic Church, at Birming-
ham, on Sunday last. We understand that above thirty of
the late parishioners of the Rev. Marshall, of Swallowciffe,
Wilts, have, together with their pastor, conformed to the
Church of Rome. Mr. Oakeley, late Fellow of Balliol Col.
lege, has entered as a student in Theology at St. Edmund'a
College, Hertfordshire, under Dr. Griffiths, Vicar Apostolic f
the London District.

Viscount and Viscountess Villiers and the Hon.
Miss Villiers arrived in town on Monday, from Upton House,
Warwickshire, and yesterday went to Worthing, for the ad-
vantage of the sea air, her adyship being extremely delicate
after her recent severe illness. _ _ _

Viscount Morpeth has left Grosvenor-place for
Castle Howard.

• 4 ..y.