1 DECEMBER 1866, Page 3

The innate savagery of the British character has broken out

this week at New Brighton, on the Mersey. A vessel, the Elizabeth Bitek.ham, laden with rum, was recently wrecked there, and the barrels floated ashore. The bystanders broached them and drank the raw spirit till they dropped, one young man dying on the spot, and a hundred others being seriously injured. A number of servant-girls and other women who hurried down to "see the fun" were tempted to taste, and were all, girls and wives alike, vicdated on the beach, one who resisted strenuously being nearly murdered by three rifflans -The same scene, under the same temptations, would, we may fairly assume, have happened anywhere else on the coast, and we have, thereiore, as civilized men, an obvious right to kill negroes and New Zealanders as savages.