The Sun. — 1845-06-21 (London, England)

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, JUNE 21, 1845.  but much over-rated principle of self-paying colonisation, the New Zealand Company had few claims for preference over any of the numerous land companies that were at that time seeking public patronage. The Direction of this Company appears to have thought that " there was no harm in asking ;" and accordingly, in its communication with the Government, asked for the mostenormous powers, as far as territorial possession and rights were concerned, that ever had been heard of. From Karakoora to Egmont, or to Nelson, the whole " block" was parcelled out in the Company's prospectuses with the self-possession of an estate-agent, commissioned to let out a given plot of ground on building leases. If the Colonial-office had been prudent, alarmed, and coy before, on the question of Crown title or no title, she threw herself into .the very arms of this seductive Company ; gave all that was asked, and was willing to add more into the bargain. Before its own title was defined to its own satisfaction, or to the right of locating its own immediate servants on the island soil,—the Government permitted itself to be cajoled into a sort of official coquetting with the New Zealand Directors, which ended in its granting delegated powers a: .d representative authorities far greater than any it ventured to reserve to itself. The Company (for, with all our respect for Mr. AGLIONBY'S high character and legal talent, we must turn to the plain but terrible charges brought by Captain Rous4which it might have been convenient fur him to treat as brought forward out of time, but which, we are satisfied, will never be met)—made promises which it had not then, and has never since had the power to redeem ; deprived of lands it did not possess ; induced emigration to a soil upon which it had no power to guarantee a foot of settlement ; and of itself disppointed by the Government, deceived its fellow-subjects on a scale of unpardonable magnitude. After a careful perusal of the debate, we are compelled to denounce the concern as a dishonest one from the beginning. Mr. ELLICE declares that, in an experience of 40 years of the Colonies and Colonial administration, he has never known anything to equal in fatuity, folly, and mischievous mismanagement, the whole dealings of the present and former Governments with New Zealand. Were they, let us ask, the absolute dupes of that Company? We do not believe it. We rather suspect, from some passages in Mr. HOPE'S lame pleading, that the Government must have anticipated an accession of Parliamentary and political influence from their outrageous adoption of a pushing Direction, full of monied names and names of local authority and mark. We must object to this debate of so many evenings, as also a dishonest debate. The chief participators in it may be divided into three classes ; one of them only intent upon clearing Lord STANLEY and his subordinates ; a second, bent on making out a good case for Captain FITZROY, the ex-Governor ; and a third, interested almost exclusively to achieve the difficult object of whitewashing the New Zealand Company's Direction. The wrongs of British emigrants, the murders of British settlers, the insults on the British flag ; the hideous savagery of out most intimate native connexions were, for the most part, slurred over. Great public and political principles have been silently passed over although notoriously outraged. The condition of New Zealand, and the relations of the Government with the New Zealand Company, were disgraceful anomalies when the discussion began. It has left them scandalous, admitted, unalloyed facts. Mr. HOPE and Mr. CARDWELL, Sir R. PEEL and Sir J. GRAHAM, appear to have thought that the only result needful to be accomplished was the justification of Lord