The Sun.
London, England, 1845-06-19 00:00:00

The amendment was agreed to, and the Bill was, con-
sequently, lost.

The other Common Law Process Bills were likewise
thrown out.

The Small Debts Bill was ordered to be read a second
time that day six months,
Mr. F. KELLY giving notice that he should bring in a
fresh Bill on the subject on Monday.
The adjourned debate on Mr. C. BULLER'S motion on
the subject of New Zealand was resumed by Captain
Rolls, who defended Captain FITZROY, and vituperated
in the strongest terms the conduct of the New Zealand
Company.
Mr. AGLIONBY had never regretted his connexion
with the New Zealand Company, which was composed
of honourable and high-minded men, united together,
for the purpose of carrying out a benevolent object.
The complaints of the Gallant Officer who had last
spoken, were all founded on misapprehension. He
implored the Government to reconsider their policy,
so as to promote the permanent interest of the colony.
The House was subsequently addressed by Mr.
BARKLY, Sir R. INGLIS, Mr. HAwES, Sir H. DOUGLAS,
and Lord HOWICK, after which, on the motion of Mr.
MANGLES, the debate was adjourned.

But a few years ago a perfect apathy prevailed
throughout the country respecting the most impolitic
and unjust law ever passed by the Legislature—we
mean the corn law, first brought forward in 1815, and
continued to the present day, modified certainly in some
points, but still retaining all the more objectionable
restrictions which characterised it at first. When it was
proposed, the public were so shacked at the pretensions
of the landowners, that nothing but a foreign war pre-
vented a civil commotion, or a signal defeat of the Bill
from sheer terror. The houses of the leading members
of the Government were attacked, the lives of the
Ministers themselves were not without danger, and the
victory of Waterloo and a general peace, which
caused such universal joy, alone made the community
submit patiently to the plans of a Government who
had been so eminently successful abroad. But still
the glaring defects of this law did not escape the eyes
of men acquainted with the principles of free trade and
the best interests of the country—repeated attacks were
made on this obnoxious impost, and for little less than
twenty years have we been fighting against it, often
single-handed, though at times supported by
other journalists, yet the county Members were

still too powerful. The task was regarded as ut-
terly hopeless, and vast numbers looked upon a re-
peal of the Union, or the restoration of the heptarchy, as
probable as the repeal of the corn-laws. But "water
weareth the stones," and perseverance in a good cause
never fails of its legitimate effect. The eyes of
the public were opened at last. They began to
see the hardships to which they were subjected
by a law which did not even benefit its authors,
and latterly al commercial men have enter-
tained but one opinion as regards its ruinous results

on the vital interests of the nation. That general opinion

gave rise to the League, which was scoffed at by the
landed interest and their organs—denounced, by them,
as an illegal association, and stigmatised as a
body of selfish traders, who looked only
to their own personal advantages. But impartial

Englishman took a different view of the question. They
approved of its principles, admired the constancy and
boldness with which it fought, and finally lent their aid

by subscribing larger sums than had ever been collected
for similar purposes in the memory of man. It soon
became a national question, and though the landlords
were numerous and powerful—nay, almost omnipotent
in the Legislature—the small voice of wisdom
at last prevailed. The victory of argument was
entirely on one side; even the Minister " elect" of the
landed interest, whilst he opposed the change, was
wofully deficient in reasons ; the very advocates of the
injurious law dwindled down to a mere junta of senators
without influence or eloquence, and have latterly exhi-
bited such a lack of prudence, skill, and knowledge of
true legislative principles, that the " strong Ministry "
have been compelled to throw them overboard. Sir IL
PEEL and Sir JAMES GRAHAM are now good repealers,
and they want only time. When the proper season
comes they promise to walk as fast as Mr. COBDEN.
This is one of the greatest triumphs effected by perse•
Terence in right principles. Mr. COBDEN might well
ask the great meeting at Covent-garden last night
why that which was admitted to be just, and
politic, and urgent, should be delayed till
it pleased PROVIDENCE to visit the country with
famine ? "It was rather hard," said he, "to main-

tam an injurious law for the benefit of the farmers, who
were, after all, but 250,000 out of the 27,000,000 whcp
form the population of these islands. But who ever
heard it urged that it was for the benefit of the people
that the law had been passed ? Sir ROBERT PEEL was
very fond of talking of the great and important interests
which had grown up under this law. I plead for
greater and more important interests which are now
crushed to the earth by the pressure of this law ; and if
they want proof of this, why I bring their own Home
Secretary, with his prison reports and his statistical tables,
and I put him into the witness-box, to show what the law
has done for that class which is most numerous in this
land. I apply for the total and immediate repeal of
the corn-laws, on the ground of expediency, and be-
cause it could now be better effected than at another
time. I apply for it on the ground of justice, because, if
the law be a bad one, it should be at once annulled.
And what will be the effect on the great body of the
people, when the time comes which Government con-
templates—for they are going to repeal the law in a
season of distress ? And such a season may come—
aye, three weeks of showery weather, when wheat
is in its bloom, will repeal this corn-law ? But
how ? We have the experience of 1839, 1840,
and 1841, and are the people of this country to be
subjected to another such infliction before this law is
repealed ? What provision is made for such a cala-
mity ? This is an important consideration at this
moment. Divine Providence may repeal the corn-laws
by a had harvest, but at present He mitigates by his
bounty the rigour of the landlord's corn-law." We have

little space to add more on the subject, but words are
not now required—the fate of the corn-law is sealed; the
very farmers' friends have turned against it, and next
session, we confidently trust, it will be classed among the
things that " were."

Mr. C. BULLER, on submitting to the House of Com-
mons a series of " resolutions" relative to the government,

relations, condition, and usage at the hands of the Govern-
ment of the noble colony of New Zealand—(a series, by the

way, in its protracted extent worthy of the extensively
projected coastline of the island-chain to which they re-
ferred)—made a very clever, a vigorous, amusing, and
pointed speech. We have perused the report of it with
great pleasure, and are fully prepared to concede to it no
ordinary degree of praise. It was a speech honourably

distinguished from the general run of Parliamentar.

orations on analogous subjects, by the bold reliance of
the speaker on his own powers of illustrating its official
and statistical details. Confining himself, strictly enough,
within the limits prescribed by the forms of the House
and the real exigencies of his subject, he yet availed him-
self abundantly of every legitimate opportunity that
presented itself for expatiating into large and well consi-
dered views of European statesmanship in its adminis-
tration of that policy which should direct its views of
colonial connexion. It manifested, also, a becoming
scorn for that sort of cant—that overt zeal for Church
Propagandism which, in the case of New Zealand, as in
very many other instances, has been intimately connected
with covert selfishness and grasping avarice on the part
of men calling themselves " Church missionaries." In
addition to these qualities of excellence, Mr. CHARLES
BULLER'S speech showed a mastery of its matter—a
richness and variety of details—and a lucidity of ar-
rangement as agreeable and instructive as they are rare
in discussions on colonial affairs, in which it appears to
be the fashion with either House of Parliament to sup-
pose,—l. That the Colonial Department must be omnis-
cient as to the facts, motives, and opinions, involved in
the history of any questions arising within its jurisdic-
tion ; 2. That all human information, possible or actual,
to which any character of authenticity can apply, must
be comprised within the mystic pages of those " Blue
Books," that, like the Sybilline leaves of yore, are for
ever being blown out of the recesses in which they are
elaborated with the certain fate of being gathered up
and perused by no men, or proving utterly beyond the
comprehension of the men who do gather up and con-
sult them. Mr. BULLER not only diffused his materials
with a lavish hand throughout his elaborate address, but
took care that they should tell with all who heard them.
entertainingiettdwido nmo atan: these
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signed. It was a masterly
exposure of the bad faith, the
ruinous mistakes, the undignified petulance • anfested
by Lord STANLEY and his subordinates in thee Colonial
Department in the history of the transactions
that were w
recapitulated by the Learned Member for Liskearde
But it was not to our mind anything like an
adequate vindication of the New Zealand Company, of
which Mr. BULLER himself is a most active and an in-
telligent Director, or a successful apology for the still
unexplained, aye, and unatoned delinquencies of a direc-
tion which then, we believe, boasted, as it now boasts,
of Mr. SOMES, the Conservative Member for Bridport,
for its governor, or chairman. We do not see that any

plea, in justification, has been established, to remove
from them the serious charge of having induced parties
here to purchase lands of them in New Zealand—which
the Company cannot have believed themselves, surely,
pending their unsettled and uncompleted negotiations
with the Government, to have possessed so ab-
solutely as to be entitled to make them the
subject of bargain and sale with others. We do
not see that Mr. BULLER has purified the Broad-street
Direction from permitting, soliciting, encouraging
British subjects to emigrate to a most remote and savage
country, upon their arrival in which they found
that the lands which they had travelled some twelve
thousand miles to settle upon, were not yet so far
within the possession—or even the jurisdiction of the
Company—as to enable the latter to locate a single
settler there with a valid or effectual title. But as the
New Zealand Company, for our present purpose, are not
upon their trial, and for the purposes of the debate re-
cently raised in Parliament, the Colonial Department
are ; we shall advert only to a few points that
possess an interest so intrinsic as to be inde-
pendent either of the one or the other of
these points of view. As to the excellencies which
the Learned Member claimed for a well-conducted sys-
tem of colonial emigration in general, we are as little
disposed to contest them as we are to give an unquali-
fied concurrence in the eulogies he so unsparingly pro-
nounced on the system adopted by the New Zealand
Company in particular. Equally sceptical are we as to
the " disinterestedness " of the latter body, notwith-
standing the warm eulogiums he passed upon it. But
we can fully enter into the warmth and earnestness with
which the Learned Member takes up the cause of the
British settlement in that noble country, in its present
condition, through whatever course of events it has been
attained. The total of land in the islands of New
Zealand, of a quality available for settlement
and cultivation by British subjects, is not less,
it seems, than sixty millions of acres, the far greater
portion of it readily accessible from a line of coast ex-
tending nearly 3,000 miles—and its soil producing some
of the finest ship timber and other woods in the world,
and eminently prolific in its yield of all the principal
grains, pulse, and roots forming the staples of European
subsistence. Mr. BULLER developed, with a simplicity-
and force every way worthy of his theme, the remark-
able natural advantages of geographical position, and
still more singular accidents of political importance, that
now combined to impart a character of growing conse-
quence to New Zealand. The recent occupations of
France in the Marquesas and the Society Islands—the
establishments of America among the Sandwich group—
the probable early accomplishment of a permanent com-
munication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by
the Isthmus of Panama, of Darien, or even of Tchuhan-
tepec;—the great dominions of the States of Mexico,
Chili, and Peru, and our important territory of the
Oregon along the western and north-western shores of
America; these points are, well worthy of all the con-
sideration which the Learned Gentleman desires to draw
to them. We reserve our examination of the general
deportment of the Colonial Government to this colony
in its latter days—to its unaccountable coquettings with
the Crown rights of possession, and the chartered
reply of the New Zealand Company—its deplorable
slutntiering in the first instance over the questions of title,
government, protection; or no title, no government, no
protection; its backing up of Captain FITZROY, and Captain
FITZROY'S ogre-like patronage of the ruffian chief who
concocted the massacre which we have had so lately to
deplore. It is not our design at present to enter upon
any facts of which our present knowledge depends on
mere ex parte statements. Neither shall we attempt to
prove to Mr. BULLER that which we think we could
reedily do, that he has much underrated the aboriginal
character of the New Zealander, both for its moral and
its intellectual qualities, in the parallel he has run be-
tween it, and that of the Nomadie savages of North
America, and the Red Carib. But we cannot close this
notice of thanks to the Learned Member for a very ad-
mirable speech, without expressing our respect for the
clearness and good sense of some of the opinions avowed
by him on the general rights of civilised men to settle
on unoccupied lands forming part of the country of
barbarians, the paucity of whose numbers bears no rela-
tion to the vast extent of their territory. The strongest
point he has established in favour of the New Zealand
Company is, that they have voluntarily secured to the
native proprietors of all lands which they have dealt
with there for a permanent property or freehold in one

tenth of such lands. This will always form a redeeming
feature in contracts where the consideration paid by the
European purchaser to the barbarian seller appears to
be most inadequate. But here we reach a subject which,
more especially in connexion with the land. jobbing
activity of the Church missionaries, is too important not
to form matter for a separate paper.

The Madrid journals of the 11th contain no political
news. In one of them appears a letter from the Marquis
VILUMA, who has been charged with intriguing for the
restoration of absolute government, and aiding the
Camarilla in bringing about a marriage between the
QUEEN and the Prince of ASTURIAS. He denies the
charges, and says he is not the head of a party desirous
to elevate the dignity of the QUEEN on the ruins of the
Constitution. Politics had been abandoned for a season
at Madrid, the inhabitants being fully occupied with the
bull-fights. The Tiempo of the 10th gives the following
account of one which had created much interest, from
the number of foreigners who entered the arena :

"Yesterday, between three and four o'clock, the btalLfight, so
much talked of in this capital, took place in the Jesuits' garden be-
longing to M. Fagoaga. The bills had not ventured to state that
the bulls would be fought, nor should we venture to affirm it ; but
it is fact that the bulls made their appearance in the arena, and that
they were dispatched (to use atechnical term) in the best style the said
amateurs could manage it. We believe we are not indiscreet when
we say that the combatants in this strange fight were the very flower
of diplomacy and of the society of Madrid. Among theta figured
the Duke of Glucksberg (the Paris papers contradict this), M.
Mercier, of the French Embassy, MM. Beauvallon and
D'Epervilly, who have sought refuge in Spain in consequence
of a welLknown occurrence at Paris, the Count de
Castella, Mr. Russell, Count de Caceres, the Duke d'Alba,
Mr. Moore, Senor Fagoaga, Den Jose Domingo, and Mr. Living-
stone. Four nations were, therefore, in presence, Spain, England,
France, and the United States. Senor Tolgiaria killed the first
young bull! bl. Beauvallon killed the second, which was a rather
more formidable one, and dexterously wounded by Mr. Moore with
several darts ; the third died by the hand of Mr. Livingstone.
The fourth was spared at the request of a lady. M. Beauvallon
was to have slain the fifth, but that matador hurt his hand :with
his sword, and the bull was killed by M. Mercier. The sixth was
truly a formidable bull, judging from the general desertion that took
place in the lists, and he was dispatched by a professional matador.
Two young bulls next appeared, and were spared. The combatants
proved themselves capable of eclipsing in due time the glory of the
Romeros and Illos, and the amusements would have been com-
plete had it not been for the accident that happened to M. Beau.
vallon, who, in addition to the wound already noticed, also received
some hern-thrusts. But let us not forget the Picadores and Ban.
derilleros, who behaved superbly. M. Rupel and the Count de
Castille displayed both courage and skill; a horn killed a horse
under the former. The Viscount D'Eperville) and the Duke de
Glucksberg rivalled their two companions by the intrepidity with
which they assailed the two most dreaded young bulls. The Vie'.
count D'Epervilley received a blow which prevented his resuming
his lance, but it was fortunately attended with no serious conse-
quences. Among the Banderilleres and Capeadores were Mr.
Moore, the Marquis de Caceres, and Senor Fagoaga, who distin-
guished themselves. The Duke d'Alba received a horn wound." e
The Funds had risen, in consequence, it was said, of a
loan having been obtained at Paris for the purpose of
supporting Spanish Stock. On the 11th the Three per
Cents. closed at 31 13-16 for cash, and 32i at 60 days ;
the Five per Cents. at 21i for cash, and 214 at 60
days ; and the Debt without Interest at 6i for cash, and
71 at 60 days.

We learn from the Paris papers, that, in addition to
the Bills to be carried this session, mentioned in The
Sun of yesterday, the Chamber of Deputies, after some
discussion, had sanctioned the following :—Bills for
Trans-atlantic steam-boats, for improving the harbours
of Toulon and Port Vendres, repairing the Cathedral of
Notre Dame, rescinding the Bth clause of the Railroad
Act of 1842, and establishing a branch of the Bank of
France at Algiers, and for preventing the adulteration
of wine. The Chamber, on Tuesday, continued the dis-
cussion on the army estimates, in the course of which M.
DUPIN complained of the frequent changes made in the
uniform of the troops, which caused great expense to the
officers as well as the country. The Committee on the
Great Western Railway took into consideration a pro-
position made by a new Company, formed by the Rouen
and Versailles Companies, for the purpose of making
branch lines to Lisieux and Alencon, should the line pass
through Lee Mans. In that case the localities now
demanding the postponement of that Bill, would by this
arrangement be fully satisfied. The Committee and the
Minister of Public Works were understood to have ac-
cepted the offer. The Peers had appointed Committees
to examine the Bills for the lines of railway between
Paris and Lyons, and Lyons and Avignon. All the
Members are in favour of the Bills. The KING held a
Cabinet Council on Tuesday at the Tuileries, and after-
wards proceeded to the Louvre, and laid the first stone
of a pedestal for the equestrian statue of the Duke of
ORLEANS.

!The Three per Cents. closed on the Bourse on Tues-
day at 84f. 10c. ; the Five per Cents. at 122 f. 10c. ;
Orleans Railroad Shares, 1,217 f. 50c. ; Rouen, 1,087 f.
50c. ; Vierzon, 785 f. ; Havre, 870 f. •, Avignon, 1,030 f. ;
Basle, 266 f. 25f. ; Spanish Three per Cents., 41.
The following are the quotations for the new lines:-
Orleans and Bordeaux, 202 f. 50c. pretn.; Boulogne, 107 f.
50c. ditto ; Troyes and Montereau, 40f. ; Paris and Lyons
( Laffitte), 18f. 75c.; ditto (Calon), par; ditto (Ganneron),
6f. 25c. ; Northern line (Laffitte), 32f. 50c. ; ditto (Ro-
samel), 6f. 50c. ; Tours and Nantes ( Mackenzie), 91. 50c. ; ditto
(Droullard), par; ditto (O'Neill), 71. 50c.; ditto (Jacques
Lefevre), par ; Lyons and Avignon (Lecointe), 20f. ; ditto
(Talabot), 41f. 25c. ; ditto (Compagnie Meridionale), 7f. 50c. ;
Bordeaux and Toulouse (Mackenzie), If. 50c. ; ditto and
Cette (Espeleta), 7f. 50c. ; Creil and St. Quentin, If. 50c. ; Paris
and Strasbourg (Ganneron), 11f. 25c; Dijon and Mulhausen,
lf. 50c.