Dtbatrs an proceetrings in parliament.

NEW ZEALAND

In the House of Commons, on Tuesday, Mr. Custaxs Btrumt moved, " That this House will resolve itself into a Committee, to consider the state of the Colony of New Zealand and the case of the New Zealand Com- pany." His speech, setting forth the reasons for the motion, was one of great length, occupying nearly four hours in the delivery, and filling eleven ' or twelve columns of the Morning Chronicle. He appealed, as a member of the New Zealand Company, to the House, to prevent the rights of pri- vate property from being violated in the persons of the Company, either . by arbitrary repudiation or disingenuous misconstruction. The individual . grievance, however, was lost in the far greater case of public mismanage- . meat; and he was willing to waive the letter of the contract, and to rest all . their claims on the equity of their case. He assumed at starting, that the ':House agreed with him as to the advantages of colonization; and he vividly ' described the great natural resources of New Zealand as a field for settle- ment; capable as it is, by its internal riches and maritime position, of becoming the Britain of the South—mistress of the Southern Ocean. Its attractions long ago drew colonists to its shores; and to such an extent has " land- aharking " been carried, that in 1838, twenty-three persons, employed by the Church Missionary Society, alone sent in claims for 196,000 acres of -land—.the Reverend Henry Williams obtained 11,000 acres, Mr. Fairburn to,000, the Reverend Mr. Taylor 50,000. In 1825, Hengi, a chief who resided in England under care of the Missionaries, introduced fire-arms in Irearquantities, which led to wars of extermination; and that, combined with the introduction of ardent spirits and other causes--among them the 'substitution of the blanket for the mat, which induces fevers—menaces the ;absolute extinction of the Native race. The New Zealanders are savages in the proper sense of the term; having been habitually and rather obsti- nately addicted to cannibalism; inferior in arts and government to the 'Caffres of Southern Africa or the Indians of America, but partaking of the -Negro's tractable character, and having even some turn for agriculture; while there. is no repugnance of races as between him and the White. There are probably but 100,000 people in all New Zealand, with a terri- tory equal in extent to the United Kingdom; and almost all of those are confined to the Northern half of the North Island. The civilized man is hound to treat with kindness the weaker race with whom he is placed in Contact; but to deny the right of man to cultivate the wilderness is 'absurd and even wicked; and both lawyers and moralists have agreed that the savage can only be considered as entitled to the ground he actually occupies. For Europeans to occupy the remainder oan do the aboriginal inhabitant no harm. Make him such lavish payment as he will accept, and you merely inflict the greater injury on the ob- ject of your mistaken bounty, by inflaming his passions. Against such a result the New Zealand Company endeavoured to guard, by making provisions for the Natives less in direct payments—though even in that 'shape probably more was given than Penn gave for Pennsylvania—than by making a reserve equal to one-tenth of all the lands in every settle- ment, to be, an inheritance for the New Zealand chiefs: that tenth, in the town of Wellington alone, is already valued at 20,0001. It was hoped that the mass of the Natives would become labourers; and that in such way the two races would be assimilated. That scheme for saving the Natives from humiliation and degradation has been thwarted by a narrow *lid unsound policy of an opposite kind. Mr. Buller recounted the dis- covery and taking possession of New Zealand by Captain Cook in 1769; its annexation to the colony of New South Wales; the subsequent attempt by a fiction to waive the sovereignty of this country, and to recognize the " independence" of the islands, as declared by some chiefs at the instigation of Mr. Busby; the giving way of all that tom- foolery to reality, when, spurred by a report that the French were about to send out a penal colony, a colony was organized and sent out. Almost at the same time, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Palmerston -)—who would not " stand any nonsense "—demanded explanations of the Colonial Office; and Captain Hobson was instructed to procure the cession pf the sovereignty. The result was the " treaty of Waitangi," negotiated by Captain Hobson's agents, at the cost of a blanket for every signature, iitd in some instances a glass of rum to boot; a treaty which was over ridden by Captain Hobson before it was concluded, since he finally took possession of the greater part of the islands on the title of discovery, with- out waiting for signatures. The treaty contains an article confirming to the Natives the full and undisturbed possession of their lands, estates, fisheries, &c.—the common provision on taking possession of any country for se- curing to the inhabitants undisturbed possession of their property: but Mr. Roller argued, that it must be construed to refer to private property alone, and not to sovereignty, and therefore that it could not properly obstruct the settlement of the unoccupied lands. Another article in the treaty forbade any direct dealing between the Native and the White man but those whose interest it was to revive " land-sharking " set the Natives against that provision, intended to protect them. They began to repudiate the treaty, and quarrelled among themselves for the right to sell land; and under their pressure, Captain Fitzroy, disregarding an act of Parliament which fixed, the Government price of land at IL an acre, first allowed it to be height direct from the Natives on a "fee" to Government of 10s., and then re- duced the "fee" to ld. That permission, indeed, is the legitimate result of the interpretation which Lord Stanley put upon the treaty of Waitangi, in making it recognize Native property in the unoccupied lands; and therefore Lord Stanley, and not Captain Fitzroy, should be blamed. The interpretation was but a part of a policy systematically hostile to the colonization of New Zealand; for that, in truth, has been at the bottom of the whole mischief,—the hostility felt by the Colonial Office to the colonization of New Zealand. Mr. Buller described the attempt of the first colonists to establish some kind of rale among themselves; Captain Hobson's being sent as Governor, and his location of the Colonial Govern- ment at Auckland, far away from the English settlements; the wild specu lation in land fostered by the officials, which soon exhausted the capital of the Auckland speculators and reduced the town to beggary and stagnation; the hostile temper which made Captain Hobson send soldiers to Welling- ton to reduce the settlers, who only desiderated the presence of govern- ment, to submission—his crimping of settlers for Auckland—his successive appointment of two Magistrates who were obliged to be removed for gross misconduct—the appointment of Mr. Clarke, a gunsmith and catechist, to be " Protector of the Aborigines," with his son, a lad of eighteen, for Sub-Inspector. In spite of all this mismanagement, the process of colo nfzation went on: Wellington, New Plymouth, and Nelson, were settled.-- a supply of labour was furnished—roads and useful public works were set on foot; for the Company, originally forced by Lord Glenelg to assume the character of a trading corporation, so far from being one instituted for the sake of gain, sold its lands and expended the proceeds in public objects, leaving a very small proportion to pay the expenses of its establishment. When Lord John Russell heard that New Zealand had become a British colony, he recognized what was always the principle of our law, the repu- diation of all purchases from the savages, who, having no title but occu- pancy, cannot of course confer a larger right: but he relaxed the rigour of that principle, and, regarding the promotion of European settlement as a meritorious consideration, he made an agreement with the Company, (in 1840,) undertaking to grant land to them at the rate of an acre for every 5s. expended, on condition of relinquishing all title derived from the Na- tives. That sense of the agreement was plain: it has been confirmed by the subsequent avowal of Lord John; and, on the strength of it, the New Zealand Company embarked in greatly extended enterprises. jln the Cfe- bony, however, the authorities construed it to mean that the Company mist prove the validity of the purchase from the Natives. Lord Stanley has supported that interpretation; and told the Company, that if dissatisfied they might "go to law." Thus pressed by the bad faith of Government, the Company accepted a new agreement from Lord Stanley, (in May 1843,) under which they were to be put in possession of their lands as holders with a prima fade title to defend their position against Native or other claimants. Captain Fitzroy was sent out as the new Governor, with instructions from Lord Stanley, which were kept secret from the Company until February 1844; when they proposed to refer the whole matter to .a Select Committee, composed of five opponents and ten supporters of the present Government: for three of those ten, three others suggested by Mr. Hope were substituted; yet that Committee, so composed, adopted re- solutions so favourable to the Company, that Mr. Buller intended to propose the adoption of the same resolutions by the House. The arbitration of that Committee, however, has been set aside; and by the last accounts, Captain Fitzroy had been thirteen months in the colony without putting the Company in possession of a single acre of land. The result has been calamitous to the settlements; and many of the colonists are reemigrating to other colonies, or returning home in de- spair. Meanwhile, nothing whatever has been done for the Natives, whose interests were the pretext for this hostile policy. On the contrary, the Na- - tives have been permitted and encouraged to commit such outrages on the White settlers, that a war of extermination between the races is imminent. Deprived of his revenue by the rain of the colony, Captain Fitzroy has re- sorted to the wildest vagaries to recruit his finances, till at length he has come to the old Spanish tax on the sale of all kinds of property. For those extravaganciee, Lord Stanley, who appointed and upheld Captain Fitzroy, is to blame; and Mr. Buller called upon the House for redress. He stated, that if the House went into Committee, he should move all the resolutions passed by, the Select Committee last year, except the first, which, as it censured the Company for settling the country without leave, it would be hypocrisy in him to move. He might also propose some additions, called for by the alteration of circumstances since the -Committee's resolutions were passed. [Such is a meagre outline of the heads of Mr. Buller'¢ speech; which was closely woven in its texture, and filled up with proofs and illustrations. We subjoin extracts; somewhat puzzled where to choose, the whole was so excellent.] Diminution V the Native race.—" The decline of their numbers was so large as to be visible to superficial observation. Some districts, formerly peopled are now absolutely uninhabited. A tribe of 21000 in one place is reduced to another of equal numbers to twelve survivors. * * * Of the race which have thus described, there appear not to exist in the whole extent of New Zealand more, if so many as 100,000 inhabitants. There is one little island which may be regarded as uninhabited; the Middle Island, far the largest of the three, we may call uninhabited also, as its inhabitants are supposed not to amount to 1,500 in an extent as large as England and the Lowlands of Scotland. In the Southern half of the Northern Island there are not 10,000 inhabitants. Almost the entire Native population is to be fouhd in the Northern half of the Northern Island." Natured right to waste land.—" I know noprinciple of reason, no precept of revelation, that gives the inhabitants of one valley in New Zealand a right to ap- propriate a neighbouring unoccupied valley in preference to the Englishman, who cannot find the means of subsistence at home. I apply to the savage no principle which I should not apply to the most civilized people of the world. If by any unimaginable calamity the population of France, for Instance, were reduced from the thirty-five millions which it now maintains, to 200,000, which is about the proportion of the population of New Zealand, and if these 200,000 were almost limited to Brittany and Normandy, and cultivated, as the New 7.silendera do, no more than one acre in a thousand, do you think we should allow this hand- ful of men to devote that fine country to perpetual barrenness? Do you think that every neighbouring nation would not deem itself justified in pouring out its destitute myriads to obtain their food from the soil on which weeds and wolves would otherwise subsist alone? It seems to me wicked to dispute the right of man to cultivate the wilderness. Justice demands, no doubt, that if civilized man, when thus seeking new fields for his labour, be brought in contact with a rude and weaker race, he is bound to treat his new neighbour with the utmost fairness and kindness. Not merely are we bound not to deprive him of any actual pos- session which he enjoys, but justice requires that we should do our best to pre- vent his being thrown into a position of relative inferiority, and to insure an im- provement in his condition corresponding with the general improvement of his conntag. I know not how, in this respect, we can lay down any better principles than those always recognized, and almost always acted on, by our ancestors. They never pretended to assert a right of depriving the Indian of his possessions. 'The principle of our law, in conformity with the general law of nations, was, that in settling among savages, it was not our duty to recognize in them any rights of which they themselves had no conception, or to create for them some fictiou of right analogous to the proprietary rights of modern Europe. The rule laid down by Patel, by all writers on the law of nations, and by our own lawyers, ;is, that in dealing with the savage, who possesses no notion of individual property" m land, or of apower of alienating it, it is sufficient to recognize his right to that which he actually uses, and no more. The same writers have always maintained that the civilized man had a right to limit the Indian in his wasteful use of large tracts for the chase. In New Zealand no such difficulty occurred: the savage did not hunt ; his occupations of land were as definite as any in European fields; they consisted of the ground which he had actually cleared. If you left him this, what injurry did you do him by occupying the remainder? You took from him nothing which any lawyer or moralist ever regarded as his property." Lainalt throwing away of land.—" The Legislative Council states, that inquiry had shown that the Crown could not at the outside claim more than 1,700,000 of the 60,000,000 acres of available land in New Zealand; and that the other 58,000,000 of acres were the private property of 100,000 Natives, who had never cultivated 100,000 acres. The Crown being under engagements as to about 1,500,000 acres, has in fact about 200,000 for its whole demesne. All the rest is to be the property of the Natives; and in their hands is to be the prize of land- Sharks, and the cause of rain to the Natives." Lord Stanley's regard for Native rights.—The Select Committee suggested a tax of 2d an acre on unoccupied lands, with forfeiture on non-payment; but lands occupied by Natives to be exempt.. "Lord Stanley says, It is, of course, in- tended that the tax should apply to all lands claimed as the property of Native tribes, and not in actual cultivation; and, I presume, it is contemplated that non- payment of the tax shall be followed by confiscation of a portion of the lands equi- valent to the amount of the tax unpaid.' Now, the Committee clearly meant no such thing; for as they had just before said that all lands in New Zealand not granted, and not actually, occupied or enjoyed by the Natives, were Crown lands, they never could have intended any thing so absurd as that the Crown should tax its own waste lands, and confiscate them for its own non-payment to itself. But Lord Stanley tells Captain Fitzroy that he may have some difficulty in deal- ing with the tribes only partially subject to his authority, and that withal he will

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have to go gingerly to work; though,' he adds, if it can be peacefully effected, it would appear to suggest an easy mode of obtaining a large amount of disposable

land,'—aa i easy as robbery always is to the stronger party. And this is the end Of all Lord Stanley's respect for treaties and Native rights He loudly declares that the whole land is the Native's, and that he will protect him in it against all attempts to take it from him; then he tips his Governor the wink, and says slyly, ' clap on a land-tax, and you'll get the whole in a few years.' "

Colonization as conducted by the Company.—" In spite of all this mismanage- Dient, the Company's settlements went on, and new settlements were formed at New Plymouth and Nelson. And here, as not having been then a member of the Company, or in any way a party to the measures which I praise, I may without any reserve express my admiration for its system of colonization. By expending in emigration 15s. out of the 20s. or 30s. paid for every acre sold by it, it secured a large supply of labour to its settlements. By this means capitalists were in- duced to embark in the new colony. The settlers were not left to chance or their own efforts for the construction of roads and public works. The Company, with- out being under any obligation of the kind, opened a large extent of roads into the Interior, , at Wellington and New Plymouth. At Nelson, it augmented the price of its land, in order to have a fund to devote to public works. It went further: it sought to preside, not merely the means of material comfort and progress to the new settlements, but to give them, from their very origins those institutions whereby the higher objects of civilized and Christian men are furthered. It de- voted a portion of the purchase-money to the foundation of educational institu- tions, and another to the endowment of the Bishopric, which had been established through the exertions of the founders of the Company. So impressed were the public with the value of such institutions, that we found them ready to embark larger slues for settlements in which these advantages were secured, than in those where we- had undertaken to provide merely 'a supply of labour. In the same space of time, we sold more acres for 30s. a piece at .Nelson, than we had sold for 20s. at Wellington. And the result of our system was such a commencement of colonization as has not been seen for two centuries. We got men of property to invest it in New Zealand, with the intention not of making a rapid fortune by

culation in land, but of making their home and that of their descendants in that distant country. We got men of the first rank and family to become set- tlers; and we thus contrived to join with the simplicity and enterprise of a new Society the refinement of English manners and the control of a public opinion Congenial with our own." ' Claims of the Settlers.—" Putting the Company aside, however, the poor

settlers in Cook's Strait had committed no offence. Some of them men of thehighest classes, had quitted fair prospects in England, hoping that in a new country a yet fairer future was open to their energies. Others were labourers, whom, humble as their position was, we most praise for the unusual spirit of enterprise which induced them to submit to that long voyage, and live in a strange country. Such men as these, thus combating, thus gallantly surmounting the opposition of the wilderness, thus bettering their own lot without trenching on stny other man's comfort, would surely have excited the sympathy of' any just and kindly man: I have been reading lately a book, by Mr. Jerningham Wakefield, one of the first settlers in Cook's. Strait, giving a plain, unpretending, and there- fore all the more interesting narrative of the Solt events of these settlements. I know nothing more affecting than the accounts which he gives of the improve- ments which lie saw, whenever, after an absence of a few mouths, he visited Wellington, or New Plymouth, or Nelson. Incidents of the pettiest character and everyday familiarity in oar lives, are the great epochs in his chronicle of a new society. Now he describes to you the landing of a body of emigrant; their first rude shifts, their cheerful and unselfish communali7 in labour; then he de- scribes the same spot with log-horses and incipient ens; and then with pride he contemplates brick dwellings, gardens, and the flowers, fruits,. vegetables, and harvests of England. Every step in the. progress is duly chronicled. It would he impossible for me, by collecting these images together, to raise in your minds that impression which the book, without labouring to do so, creates by these inci- dental touches. It is an impression of great industry, great comfort, above all, of rapid, steady, secure progress. You feel that here at least all the first discern, forts ruid_pails of a colony are got over. There is no appearance of external hos- tility. The savages are turned into labourers and domestic servants, attached to the various families of the colonists, accustoming themselves to European habits and European comforts. It seems certain that the colony will very soon be in- dependent of external supplies of food; nay, that before long it will be able to pur- chase luxuries, by exports of food, and wool, and oil, and flax, and timber. All that these people needed or asked, was to continue unmolested in their honest toil. I think a wise ruler could have had no mixture of feeling in contemplating such a scene. He must have seen with pleasure the destitute enabled by honest industry to raise the food which he wanted, and the untouched forest made sub- servient to the good of man. He would have said, ' Go on, and God's blessing on your labours; and count on me for being ever ready and willing to aid and encou- rage you, and turn out of your path any harm that evil mischance may bring

across it I cannot doubt, if some good angel had taken Lord Stanley to the spot and shown him this fair scene, or had thought and inquiry brought

image mage of things as they were before his eyes, that, as he is not a bad man when he thinks, he would not have allowed himself to be led away by official jealousies and the animosities of interested subordinates-' that he never would have wreaked on those poor colonists the pique which the uncourtly letters of the New Zealand Company had provoked; that he never would have marred this fair prospect by bringing the dull delays of an anomalous litigation to arrest this industry, and by stimulating the savage and the settler into fearful and needless

collision."

Native titles, and absurdity of making them the subject of judicial investiga- tion.--" After all, the settling these questions with a Native tribe was a matter not of law, but rather, if I may apply so fine-sounding a term to a negotiation with savages, of diplomacy; and should have been quietly settled, instead of re- sorting to the forms of judicial proceedings. I know not what was got by such forms except infinite confusion and perjury. Put the savage into the witness. box, and give him to understand that it he denies his bargain, or swears that he misunderstood it, he shall have a fresh lot of muskets and tobacco, or of dollars to purchase them, and you may depend upon man in his natural state being such an unbounded liar that there is no amount of falsehood at which he will stick. The evidence of the Natives, with the exception of a chief or two, simply served to confuse a very plain transaction; and the very nature of the rights to be deter- mined rendered any satisfactory result impossible,. even on the best evidence. One tribe was on the land; and occupation gave it a right. Another said, it had for- merly conquered the occupants, and only permitted them to reside on its land; which gave it a right to go on the land when it chose, and therefore to a compen- sation for that right. A third tribe would then start up, and say that it had in former times mwated voluntarily from the spot in question, had a right to re- turn, and therefore must be paid. This was called the law of New Zealand. Why, what in truth were these but circumstances proving the utter absence of all definite notions of right to the soil, and of the utter precariousness even of occu- pancy in that horrible state of barbarism ?" Merits of the Wairao case.—" Rauperaha is a chief originally from the interior of the Northern Island, who succeeded in getting a footing on the Northern shore of Cook's Straits, and ultimately planted himself in a small island in the middle of that channel. Watching his opportunity, he stole over with his band to the opposite coast of the Middle Island, and, after some fighting, succeeded in de- stroymg man, woman, and child, of the tribe which he found at Wairao. He had never dwelt there, nor anywhere else in the Middle Island: he and his people had no habitation there. Literally, the witnesses before the Committee all agree in saying that the whole amount of Native cultivation in the'whole district did not exceed one potato-field of one acre. Our Agent had bought all Rauperaha's claims in this part of the island, and got his signature to the deed of sale. And yet all access to this fine valley was to be denied to a set of industrious Euro- peans seeking to cultivate it, until the Commissioners should have ascertained whether Rauperaha had been paid enough for having some years before murdered the ancient occupants; that being, in fact, the sole right he had to the land. Is it not horrible to think that the lives ofgallant and excellent men, of as kind friends as the Natives ever had, were sacrificed because our Government chose to claim a sanctity for such rights as these? " How the matter between the Colonial Office and the Company now stands.— "What, then, has this agreement of May 1843 been? A delusion, an injury to the New Zealand Company; a clear promise, publicly made, but so obscured by private comment, that the agent who had to carry it out has never once thought of giving it any effect whatever. We made an agreement, by which we were to receive a large grant, of which the Minister, who was the other party to it acknowledges the full effect: but another Ministry came into power, which repu- diated our claim, though a claim which a Committee of this House decided ought to have put us three years before in possession of a vast amount of property. We then made a second agreement with the Minister who refused to execute the first, whereby we ought to have got possession of that property eighteen months ago. That Minister gives no more effect to his own agreement than to that which he has repudiated; and at the end of four-and-a-half years from the first contract, after we have spent 300,0001. of our own capital and 300,0001. more we have received from the colonists, we remain without an acre of the property guaranteed to us by the faith of the Crown. This is shameful usage of a Company against the conduct of which the Government has never brought a charge, and the public- spirit of which is evidenced by every act of its existence. You have arbitrarily deprived it of its property, and, by that withholding of its rights, exhausted its means of continuing its laudable enterprise. Its losses have been the consequence of its confidence in your good faith. But, however great our disappointment— however heavy the blow on some of our poorer shareholders more particularly— what is this compared to the injury, the suffering, you have inflicted on the emigrants, the greater part of whom went out under your superintendence to settle on the land guaranteed to the Company by your faith, and who have since been deprived of access to those lands, and of all means of employ- ment, by your refusal to abide by your repeated engagements? They have been denied access to the lands which they had bought and paid for. They have found themselves exposed to the aggressive intrusion of tribes who have come from a distance and occupied their lands, in the hopes of extorting payment, with the sanction of the Government. Their houses have been e down, their crops set on fire, and their lives menaced. In every case of such out

to the Company's settlers, all redress, all protection, has been refused by the Government. Our settlers have been publicly informed, that wherever any Native

makes any claim to land they occupy, however preposterous, their duty is to acquiesce, and give it up. They have seen the Natives, instigated by hostile sug- gestions, and encouraged by the Government, cherish a constantly deepening feeling of causeless resentment and aggressive violence. They see all the me- nacing indications of a general ontbieak on the part of savages, whose warlike ex- cesses are peculiarly indiscriminate and revolting. Their attempts to put them-

selves in a state of defence have been peremptorily checked by the authorities; who aupp their volunteer force, and offered them the inefficient protection of

fifty soldieers for a district of two hundred miles in length and a population of tett thousand. By stopping the New Zealand Company's operations, a useful expendi- ture en roads and public works has been arrested, and a vast number of labourers have been thrown out of employ. The last intelligence that we have received iS, that Captain Fitzro , impelled by the pecuniary necessities brought on his government by his unparalleled mismanagement, has, in direct contradiction of the views which he promulgated before leaving this country, gone, with his usual violence, into what he calls the policy of concentrating settlements. Having refused to

give the people of New Plymouth and Wellington a title to the lands which the Commissioner had awarded them, he has offered to give them land in the neigh- bourhood of Auckland, where it was well known that he had none to give. On their refusal to accept these terms, he threatened the inhabitants of Wellington to remove them bodily to Auckland." [Mr. Hops--" When did you receive this in- telligence ?"] " Oh, quite recently; much more recently than anything the Co- lonial Office has heard. You know we are always two months ahead of you with our intelligence. Well, will any one wonder that the result of these things has been to produce rain and despair? From all our settlements we hear of constant emi- gration to the Australian Colonies, and even to South America. And not a ship comes to this country but it brings back some labourer or emigrant of a higher class, who, having exhausted his resources in New Zealand, comes back to the precarious chance of regaining employment in the country where he had aban- doned his connexions."

Mismanagement of the Natives.—"I will not now comment on what is a shameful feature in the conduct of the Government, and that is, the utter absence of any measures exhibiting a real care for the improvement of the race. All the money nominally spent on them has been, in fact, jobbed away in pernicious ap- pointments of Protectors and Sub-Protectors. The Native reserves in our settle- ments have been taken out of our hands, and kept unproductive; while those of the Government in its own settlements turn out to be non-existences. Nothing has been done by the Government for the education of the Natives, nothing for their religious instruction. The New Zealand estimates exhibit a vote of just 901. a year for these purposes. The policy of the Government towards them may be described in a few words. Afraid of their physical force, it has had no object in view, with reference to them, but that of pacifying them with the immediate concession of their demands, without a thought of the effect on their welfare. • • • Scattered handfuls of whalers lived for years all along their coasts, among them, making use of them as servants, intermarrying with them, main- taining ascendancy over them, and holding their own in almost unbroken security. For five months before the establishment of British authority in New Zealand, our settlers at Wellington, fifteen hundred in number, lived quite peaceably with four hundred savages in the midst of them, and their various tribes all around. Mr. Jerningham Wakefield mentions, in the book to which I referred before, that during the first years of the Wellington settlement there was hardly a respect- able family that had not a couple of Maori labourers attached to it. One or two very clever Natives made fortunes in European occupations. Mr. Wakefield him- self employed a large number in what he hoped to make, for their benefit, a very increasing flax-trade. Your Government came, and set them quarrelling for an additional price for land; and has raised up an animosity, which a sense of in will not speedily allow to subside in the stronger race. You encouraged their aggressive spirits by refusing to check the first petty outrages; and you have gone on till you have raised a fend of blood between the two races. You have filled the savage with an overweening idea of his own strength,yon have altered the kindly feelings of the settler into those of resentment and alarm. What could you gain to compensate for this? It is not more certain that the sun is in the heavens, than that this animosity must ultimately end in the degradation and extermination of the Native race; all the experience of the world proving that when the savage enters into conflict with the White man, he must ultimately pe- rish, being as weak in comparison with the other as the Child with the full-grown man."

The New Governor.— "Yon could not even recall Captain Fitzroy without mingling some mischief even with so beneficial an act. For, with warning of the great likelihood of such a step being forced on you, you had taken no steps to provide a new Governor, and have allowed six weeks to elapse between the news of his recall and the name of his successor reaching New Zealand. I have no oljiection to make against Captain Grey, who is said to be nominated to the post. He has the character of an able, zealous, and conscientious gentleman, and has acquired credit in the government of South Australia At the same time, I should better have liked, in the present difficult state of New Zealand, to see sent there from this country some one of higher station and greater weight: and, so infinite- ly important is the choice of a Governor, that, for this special occasion, it would have been a wise economy to employ such a man as Sir Henry Pottinger4 at a salary worth his acceptance, in setting this distracted community to rights.

Mr. MONCRTON MUSES seconded the motion; enforcing some of the ar- guments. He fully agreed with his honourable friend in thinking that this was a ques- tion of national importance, with respect to which they were not to consider any particular Government or any particular Minister, but the real question affected, which was the and the power of England throughout the world. He be- came a member of the Committee of last year knowing as little of the matter as Members usually did: he became a member of it without any preconceived ideas or prejudices; and he had formed his opinion upon the subject after the fullest and fairest investigation and the most deliberate exercise of his judgment--an opinion in which many of his friends who sat on the same side of the House with himself altogether concurred.

Mr. G. W. HOPE (Under-Secretary for the Colonies) said, that he rose under no small embarrassment, not merely on account of the magnitude of the question, but in consideration that there rested upon him the defence of one who if he were present would be well able to defend himself; and he feared that injustice would be done to his character in consequence of the great deficiency of his advocate. He would not attempt to answer all the aspersions on Lord Stanley, but by answering the reasoning on which they rested.

His noble friend had been charged with hostility to the Colonial interest, and with hostility to the New Zealand Company, and hostility to emigration: but he knew something of the noble Lord's sentiments, and he could assure the honourable Member, that lie looked upon emigration, well regulated, as one of the great resources of the country. He looked upon it not as a resource to be taken up inconsiderately, or as a resource against mere pauperism. Mr. Hope believed, that in the most important particulars, the opinions of the noble Lord were identical with those of the honourable and learned gentleman. Because the noble Lord did not admit that colonization was a remedy for all evils, it was too much to assert that he was an enemy to colonization. There was the testimony of the New Zealand Company themselves that the noble Lord had not acted in hostility toward them: to prove which, Mr. Hope read a letter written by Mr. Somes, on the 10th June 1842, acknowledging the "generous spirit" in which Lord Stanley had done justice to the objects of the Company, and th,wkinp him for the tenour of instructions which he proposed to issue to the Governor. What- ever concession the noble Lord was able to make he had made; and he relaxed some of the strict terms by which the Company had before been bound down. But when a demand was made which involved the interest of the Natives of New Zealand, a discussion arose as to the rights of the inhabitants. Mr. Hope contradicted the attempt to describe the New Zealanders as being of such low character— Cannibalism is fast disappearing; 40,000 of the Natives have become Chris- tians; some of them own vessels, engage in trade, and follow the pursuits and professions of Europeans. Why, then, had the honourable and learned gentleman laced them in so debased a scale of civilization? Because it was necessary for Orr that. they had no rights, or that they should not be respected. .4114,pe insisted that the separate nationality of the New Zealanders tlffial -Veen recognized in such a way that the recognition could not be repu- __iffialed: it hal been recognized by successive acts of Parliament, by William

the Fourth, by Lord Normanby, the "treaty of Waitangi," by purchase of land which 2,000 British emigrants effected with the Natives in 1886, and by the purchases of the New Zealand Company itself, alluded to in the pub- lished despatches of Colonel Wakefield. All the persons from New Zea- land with whom he had conversed had alleged that the Natives were per- fectly capable of effecting sales, and were completely cognizant of the title

to their own possessions and of the boundaries of their lands; and, what was more, that good valid purchases of land could be effected, which

were not likely to lead to any trouble and disturbance. Lord John Rus- sell had approved of the treaty of Waitangi and Captain Hobson's manner of carrying it into effect; and had instructed Governor Hobson to respect

" the territorial rights " of the Natives, and " whatever may be the custom or the prevailing notion among them regarding the right of property and land." The construction of the treaty to which objection had been taken was not due to Lord Stanley, but to Mr. Spain, an officer appointed by Lord John Russell—

But when Lord Stanley was called upon to make compensation for an expendi- ture for which the Government was not answerable, he naturally looked to the treaty to ascertain what were the terms of the agreement which had been entered into ; and, instead of coming to the conclusion which the noble Lord the Member for the city of London had arrived at, he came to a more reasonable conclusion. That noble Lord, in making the agreement in November 1840, had in view the treaty which he confirmed in July. It was not unlikely, nay, scarcely possible, that he should do otherwise ; for what were the circumstances under which the Company came to the noble Lord ? They accepted altogether their title from the Crown ; they did not rely at all upon any purchase. But it was stated in the agreement that they had purchased largely • nay, more, that it appeared as early as May 1840 that large purchases had been effected. Not only that, but before the Company applied to the noble Lord, they had sent out two thousand persons to take possession of land in the colony. Now, if the Company did not purchase that territory, was the noble Lord [Stanley] to presume that they went out to deprive the people of their land, without any title or any purchase ? They sent out thousands of persons •, and as early as May 1840, they had received 107,0001. for land sold. Was it, then, to be presumed that the whole of these transactions was a mistake, and that the Company had purchased nothing? Was the noble Lord to regard the whole of these purchases as mere waste paper, and that the whole responsibility was to fall upon him?

Mr. Hope read a few lines from Lord John Russell's letter to Mr. Somes, in order to show that Lord John understood the Company to have made large purchases of land. Mr. CHARLES BULLER called upon him to read on. Mr. HOPE complied, and read the remainder of the letter; which explained Lord John Russell's view, that the Government would not be released from its engagement to the Company if the claims of the Company were incomplete or totally unfounded.

It appeared that the Company had laid out 60,0001. in the purchase of land. Mr. ULt.ER-" Not all in land."

Mr. G. W. Hont—It might not have been all laid out in land; but the question was, whether the Company had any land? The Company claimed as against the public 60,0001. as purchases made by them of land; and yet they claimed under the agreement with Lord John Russell, from the Government compensation, upon the ground that they had not made any such purchases. The only construction which could be put upon all this was, that their purchases were not satisfactory under the treaty. They were to take their lands in particular localities; but those localities might be such as were occupied by the Natives. And so it turned out; for the lands claimed were in the occupation of the Natives. r• Mr. Hope read an extract from a letter by Colonel Wakefield th Geyer:. nor Hobson, in August 1841, in which he said, " It is presumed that the Company has acquired a valid title from the Natives to a very large terri- tory" • and also an extract in which the Directors of the Company approved of Colonel Wakefield's conduct in the negotiations. Mr. Hope was not prepared to say that Captain Fitzroy had done all that had been expected of him; but he had done all he could to give possession to the settlers with the consent of the Natives— So far from Captain Fitzroy being indifferent to the interests of the settlers, it appeared that he had determined in the last resort to have recourse to military force to obtainpossession of the land. Could he have gone further? Lord Stan- ley had been charged with all the disasters which occurred in the colony, and more especially with that lamentable occurrence which took place at Wairau: but the occurrence of these transactions rested with others, and not with Lord Stan- ley or Captain Fitzroy. Colonel Wakefield made his purchases in a hurried and desultory manner; and Mr. Spain's testimony was explicit, that they were incom- plete transactions, and that the title had never been tally acquired. The embar- rassments complaiqed of arose from the precipitate conduct of the New Zealand Company in the transmission of settlers while the titles were incomplete; and when they now turned round on the noble Lord the Secretary for the Colonies, it was for the purpose of covering up these transactions from the public view, and hush- ing them into silence.

He now came to the real question—the real state of the colony; and he averred that the representations of Dr. Evans, on which Mr. Buller relied, were exaggerated. As to further measures for the security of the colonists, a regiment now under orders to proceed to New South Wales had had its destination changed to New Zealand. All the force necessary to maintain the moral influence of Great Britain was prepared, and would be ready to be employed on the scene of action: a vessel of war was already stationed in one of the harbours of New Zealand, and Govern- ment was prepared to take every measure that circumstances might require. Captain Grey would not be fettered as to details, but at the same time he agreed with the Government in its general views: from Captain Grey's zeal and activity in the public service, he was led to hope that great benefit would result from this appointment. • * • He could not conclude without expressing his fervent wish, that by the magnificent operations now carried on we may be enabled to fill up our dominions in New Zealand, not, as in many other regions, on the rains of the abori- ginal races, but by combining in the bonds of good will families of mankind whom it had been hitherto found impossible to amalgamate, and by pursuing a just and conciliatory course of conduct, annihilate that antipathy of feeling which has caused the White and the savage to look upon each other with a mutual feeling of aversion. He must protest against the course taken by the honourable and learned Member, and the noble Lord opposite, and would give his decided opposi- tion to the motion.

The debate was adjourned, about one o'clock.

The debate was taken up on Wednesday by Captain Rous; who de- sired to give the New Zealand Company a full opportunity of explaining and defending the charges made against them. He denied the low charac- ter given of the Natives; mentioning proofs of their " chivalrous" disposi- tion and shrewdness. He traced the rise of the New Zealand Association, formed by certain honourable gentlemen in that House; their cupidity being excited by " a Mr. Wakefield," who recommended New Zealand as a site for colonization: their plans were rejected by Parliament; but, in spite of the united authority of Crown, Lords, and Commons, the Association

famed themselves into a Company, in which 1,600 shares or 40,0001. were transferred to the members of the Association, though their property in New Zealand would not have fetched 1001. in the Sydney market; they sold 100,0001. worth of land-orders without possessing one acre in the colony by a bond/de tenure; without waiting for advices, they sent out 216 cabin-passengers and 909 labourers, under Colonel Wakefield, to a barren country without shelter or protection from the cannibals; aided by Mr. Barrett, a whaler who had led a vagrant life among the Natives, Colonel Wakefield professed to buy 20,000,000 acres of land—the price consisting of shoes, hats, umbrellas, beads, ribands, razors, shaving-boxes, shaving brushes, sealing-wax, combs, Jew's-harps,muskets, and tomahawks. Captain Rona defended Captain Fitzroy's conduct, as rendered inevitable by his diffi- culties. He made in his own person two distinct charges against the New Zealand Company,—first, that they had illegally sold land-orders to the amount of 126,0001., when they had not one acre of land bond fine belonging to them; secondly, of decoying men into their service, and inducing labourers to quit their homes on the promise that they should be provided for, and then leaving them destitute. In proof, he quoted a regulation by the Company, holding out a promise of supplies for immediate wants and employment for those who could not obtain it elsewhere; and then a letter by Mr. Wicksteed, the Agent at New Plymouth, who said that he " endeavoured to evade it by sending the applicants for employment a long distance from home, making no allowance for time spent in the journies, or for time lost in bad weather." The sooner the Company was extinct, the better for New Zealand and for the world at large.

Mr. _4.cadosinr said, that the statements of Mr. Carrington, who was Captain Rous's authority, should be received with caution: Mr. Carrington, who had been a surveyor to the Company at New Plymouth, had made extortionate demands for remuneration on account of services performed under a written agreement; and if he had grievances to allege they should be discussed in a court of law, and not in that House. The charges against the Company had been preferred before a tribunal, the Select Committee of Jest year, and they had been met. Further, the Government Commis- sioner of Land-Claims had reported that the 60,000 acres at New Plymouth had been fairly purchased by the Company. If the House would go into Committee on the subject, Mr. Aglionby would meet every point advanced by Captain Rous; but the question now before it was a far larger one of public interest, and he would abstain from encumbering it with the details of the Company's vindication.

Mr. BARELY (the new Conservative Member for Leominster) supported the motion; first laying down the general ground on which he did so.

He knew that there were parties in that House who underrated the importance of our colonies, and represented them as burdens to the mother-country; but it was his deliberate opinion that no colony became a burden to the mother-country without mismanagement on the part of the mother-country. He was not one of those who considered that there was any necessary connexion between a colonial system and the protective system of trade. On the contrary, he sincerely believed that, but for misgovernment, the colonies of Great Britain would have been as ready to receive the system of free trade as any other country. He believed that most of the errors and evils which had arisen in New Zealand were very much to be attributed to this disposition to undervalue our colonial possessions, and there- fore to disparage the importance of the objects which the New Zealand Company professed, under the auspices of the Crown, to endeavour to attain by the sys- tematic colonization of that country. The Colonial Department was totally des- titute of anything like a comprehensive system of colonial policy. Its action ap- peared to be entirely based on the state of parties in that House; now yielding to the prejudices of the agricultural interest, and now yielding to the demands of free trade—at one time consulting the Colonial interest, and at another opposing it—now admitting corn and flour from Canada, and now placing every restriction on the admission of corn and flour from Australia.

With respect to the question before the House, a most fatal error, which appeared to pervade the whole of the controversy which had taken place, was the confounding the colonists with the Company. He should much regret if those who supported the motion were understood to vote a general want of confidence in Lord Stanley, still less in the Government. He should be the last person to stand up in defence of Captain Fitzroy; but he could not help thinking that allowances were to be made for him; and that most of the emergencies which called forth these acts might have been foreseen, and prevented by instructions. And what guarantee was there for the future, when the new Governor, Captain Grey, was to be sent without instructions? With regard to the resolutions, they would need modification to suit the circumstances of the time, which have altered since the report of the Committee last year; and he could have wished some more practical suggestion He threw out one—while he would consider the interests of the settlers first, he would treat the Natives with good faith and kindness, like children; he would let the Missionaries be the pioneers of civilization, but would curb their desire to interfere in secular matters; and with regard to the Company, he said they should at once be prepared to buy up liberally all its interest in the colony, with a proper treatment of those under its authority, or at once to banish all un- worthy fears of the motives which influenced gentlemen in forming that Company.

Mr. G. W. HOPE explained, that Captain Grey was put in possession of the general views of Government, especially their disapprobation of Captain Fitzroy's proceedings in regard to the land-claims and the militia. Sir ROBERT Nous opposed the motion. He contended that Mr. Bul- ler's conclusions were based on a fallacy—the assumption that the New Zealanders were a people with whom the English could not deal as on a foot- ing of equality; and he insisted that the Natives do know the nature of property and of dominion over land. He observed that the Company bought land for 7,3881. paid to the Natives, which they sold for 128,1361. And these were the men who complained of the Missionaries' instigating the Na- tives against them, and of Captain Fitzroy's taking the part of the Natives. He admitted, however, the respectability of the names in the Company, and the honourable motives of the Directors.

Mr. HAWES accused Captain Roils and Sir Robert Inglis of attempting to distract attention from the real question, by diverting it to the policy of the Missionaries and the conduct of the Company, instead of fixing it on the conduct of the Government, the welfare of the settlers, and the national in- terests at stake. Sir Robert Inglis said that the Company bought land for 7,3881. and sold it for 120,0001, implying that they had put the balance into their pockets: he ought to have stated, that there was a large outlay on many important public objects—their outlay really amounting to some 500,0001. As Mr. Hope had not touched on the causes of the present disasters of the colony, he would. He could not give the Missionaries credit for suc- cess; for they had succeeded in diffusing little of that Christianity which prefers peace to war. Mr. Hawes criticized the proceedings of Govern ment which followed from Mr. Busby's " confederation" of chiefs' con- tending that New Zealand never was a really " independent " state, and imputing the Missionary efforts against the settlement of the country to the fact that the Company interfered with their power. He reminded Mr. Hope, that in a Committee on the state of New Zealand which sat in 1840, he was joined in a minority with Mr. Hawes in asserting the very principle of the report made by the Committee of last year—condemning the ac- knowledgment of the Native right to waste lands, as preventing the proper remedy for evils connected with claims to land. Notwithstanding the two agreements of November 1840 and May 1843, the whole affairs of New Zealand are left in confusion. The whole is the consequence of the mode in which our Colonial government is administered by a Board in London, with too much to do, and a proneness to listen to the interests of parties in this country and not to the interests of the Colonies. It was by the at- tempt to govern in that way that we lost the United States, that we risked Canada, and that we are losing New Zealand. In the East Indies, independ- ent of the Colonial Department, we have an empire most remarkable in its career of prosperity. He knew not one instance in which they had succeeded by Colonial Office government in doing anything else than bringing about danger, difficulty, distrust, and insubordination.

SIR HOWARD DOUGLAS, having read all the bulky volumes that had been printed on the subject, and commanding the regiment to which the detachment now serving in New Zealand belongs, vehemently attacked the Company. Their sending out settlers in opposition to the wishes of the Government was pronounced by the Committee of last year to be " highly irregular and improper"; he would rather say, rash and lawless. If he had been sent out to prevent the arrival of the settlers, he would have shipped them off to New South Wales. [Lord JOHN RUSSELL--" Which would have been against the law."] (Much laughter.) Sir Howard Douglas warned the House, that if the treaty of Waitangi were violated, a much larger military force would be necessary to maintain our position in New Zealand. He called upon Government to revoke or annul the charter of the New Zealand Company; and to adopt the only means by which, in his opinion, the most serious misfortunes might be averted,—namely, to extend to New Zealand, at a convenient time, (and he thought the sooner the better,) that higher order of colonial government termed a provincial establishment, which gave the power of establishing a free representative system.

Lord Howicx concurred in thinking that a representative system would lead to a better state of things in the colony. He passed over, as altogether unimportant in comparison with the great national interests at stake, the disputes between the Government and the Company: the real question for consideration was, whether the policy which had been adopted towards New Zealand had been calculated to promote the welfare either of England, of the settlers, or of the Natives. He acknowledged that Lord Stanley was not to Maine for the mistakes committed by his predecessors; and the in- judicious proceedings began long before the treaty of Waitangi. Looking back at all pest proceedings with the benefit of their present knowledge, it was impossible to say that any of the successive Secretaries of State who had held office since the Peace had in their Administrations been free from mistakes. The recognition of New Zealand " independence " in 1831 or 1832, by the Government to which Lord Howick himself belonged, was mistake. Perhaps the Administration which was the nearest to being free from error was that of Lord John Russell; whose faults were rather those of not giving sufficient instructions, and of not happily selecting his agents—for most of the difficulties had already begun when Lord Stanley came into office. A large exception was the appointment of Captain Fitzroy, for which Lord Stanley was answerable. The question, however, was not whether this or that man was to be blamed, but whether the policy pursued towards New Zealand, as judged by its fruits, was wise. He concurred in blaming the Company for attempting to colonize the country without the sanction of the Crown; but in the most emphatic manner he acknowledged that they were greatly indebted to that Company which saved New Zealand to the British Crown, conceived a wisely-formed project, and showed great zeal, ability, and perseverance, in the execution of that project— Those, however, who condemn the " rashness" of the Company, overlooked two material facts: at first, while the Company received no assistance from the Go. vernment, for whose support they were obliged to pay large sums, the settlements prospered, and the Natives were on the best terms with the settlers; but then, two years later, when the Government came in a spirit of vexatious interference, the difficulties became serious. And in the Northern part of the island, where the local Government has had all its own way, it must Le entirely responsible for the anarchy and confusion. From 1832, when Natives were kidnapped to supply the market for dried heads, sold as curiosities in Sydney, to 1840, great progress had been made: at that time British authority was established; and from the moment that they had provided against the evils of anarchy and the due security of property—from that very moment, instead of things improving, they became far worse than they had been before; and the evils of anarchy were, if pessible, greater than at any former period. He asked them, how they accounted for this It was impossible for them to account for it otherwise than that there had been a great error in their policy. The government of the country must, he said, be ill- conducted, or such serious evils could not have followed. The great faults of the policy were the mismanagement of land and the want of making British authority respected by the Natives— Whatever the interpretation of the treaty of Waitangi, it would have been de- sirable to retain the nght of preemption and the exclusive sale of lands by the Crown. The principle of the New Zealand Company was the proper one: it was, to sell the land, to distribute it to those who meant to use it, and then employ the price given in emigration to the country, and on public works; thus return- ing to those who bought the land, the money in the best manner, and the most useful to them. Every shilling wasted upon the Natives was of no value; every such was a shilling withdrawn from objects that might be beneficial to the Native and the settler. In condemning the actual proceedings taken, Lord Boma illustrated the worthlessness of the Native claims by the instance of a chieftain who maintained that be had the best title to a particular district because he had eaten the former owner. Lord Howick pursued this inquiry at considerable length, and with masterly treatment; showing how the history of the colony proved the insubordination to have grown in proportion to the laxity and vacillation of the British authorities. The massacre of Wairau in 1843 he traced to the impunity with which Rangihaeata had seized some buildings in 1842— He bald it deliberately, he said it coolly, but he gave it as his decided opinion, that the tragedy of 1843, that dreadful calamity, was directly traceable to the. impolicy with which the affairs of the Colonial Office were administered He said the blood of these men cried out for a more effective protection of British subjects. In the despatch of Lord Stanley, dated 18th April 1844, he found no word of re-

mark on the state of anarchy which was then proved to exist, and not one word of instruction as to the means to be taken to remedy this state of things, and reestablish moral authority.

Towards the conclusion of his speech, Lord Howick expressed his con- currence in the wish that Sir Henry Pottinger had been sent out rather than Captain Grey; and he called upon the House to decide whether the first step should be taken in a new and improved system of governing New Zealand.

The debate was again adjourned, at about half-past one o'clock.

On Thursday, Mr. ELLICE (Member for Coventry) resumed the discussion, by calling for some declaration from Government of their future policy ;

personally addressing Sir James Graham, and afterwards Sir Robert Peel, who entered the House in the midst of his speech. He hastily dismissed the past; blaming the Company for having sent out emigrants without the sanction and protection of law, but in the strongest terms acknowledging their service to the interests of this country, for without them those colo- nies would have been lost to us. In his experience of forty years in Colo- nial affairs, he never saw such an utter want of foresight, system, common Deere, and common prudence, as had been displayed in the administration of New Zealand: instead of setting the Natives, the Missionaries, and the English settlers against each other, Government should have reconciled the conflicting parties,—should have used the Company, not warred against it. But what would be their policy for the future? "What is the construction which her Majesty's Government put upon the treaty of Waitangi ? The Government ought to tell us at once what their meaning of the treaty of Waitangi is. Do not keep us in doubt. Tell the people of this country, whether, if they go to New Zealand, you can give them land; or whether yen must first go through the farce of giving some more tobacco and Jew's-harps to these poor savages, before you can give them any? Do you intend to treat New Zealand as a penal settlement? Do you moan that the people in the colony shall not have any control over their own affairs? What do you intend to be the institutions under which this colony is to be carried on ? " Or did Government mean to tell the House that no change was to be made--that the colony was to be govenied on the old system, from the Colonial Office? Mr. Barkly had sug- gested that Government should purchase the rights and interests of the New Zea- land Company. "I am entirely of a different opinion. In the first place, it would cost a great deal of money; and, in the next place, I should be very anxious to know, when the New Zealand Company should be dissolved, where you were to find a substitute. I want to know what protection and what patronage the new settlers are to look to should the New Zealand Company cease to exist? With all its faults, that Company has done inestimable benefit, and is capable of rendering

Mill further aid to the colony by the means it possesses of promoting further emigration. But, for God's sake, tell them what you mean to do withthem. Deal

with them fairly, and let them know what is to be their ultimate situation as land- owners in these islands." It appears that more force is to be sent out—another re- giment: a regiment cannot be sent out at a less cost than 100,0001.; new barracks must be built, and so forth ; so that Government ought to give some estimate on that score. He was not one of those who joined in censuring Captain Fitzroy: his mea- sures were not very intelligible, but his difficulties were great, and he was not fore- warned of them—that he would have no money in the exchequer, for instance, when the colonists only began to invest their capital in their proper occupations: and such would be the ease with his successors, unless Government were to state how they were prepared to conduct the colony. He took it for granted that it

was to be made really a British colony; for at present it was no such thing. Since it was no longer a dependency of New South Wales, he did not know by what authority it was administered, or by what authority Les were levied there. Did Government mean to bring in any act to constitute it a British colony? That would provide for many irrearities and doubtful acts. Did they mean to give

it a representative government? Otherwise it would still be treated as a penal settlement; "and if the colony should prosper and its population increase, it would require more than one regiment, and would require precautions against more than savages, to maintain order: for the people themselves would not sub- mit—and I know not whether, if I were their counsellor, I should advise them to submit--to the absolute control and government of the Colonial Office, helpless as they are, and driven to a state of desperation arising from the treatment they have received." " There is another point to which I wish to advert. You are about to establish a great agricultural colony; and what do you mean to do with the laws relating to land ? Do you mean to send to New Zealand the whole code of English real property-law? Do you mean to introduce there the law of primo- geniture ? The great object ought to be, to treat all lands in New Zealand as chattel-property; for if you do not settle the question at first upon some intelli- gible footing, you will occasion endless confusion."

Mr. CARDWELL entered into an elaborate string of quotations from documents; to prove, first, that the separate nationality of the New Zea-

landers, and their territorial rights, had been recognized, not only by suc-

CeSSiVe Colonial Ministers, beginning with Lord Normanby, but also by the Company; next, that Lord John Russell's agreement of November 1840

was inconsistent with those rights, if it bore the construction now put upon it by the Company; but that originally, Lord John Russell himself; the Company, and Colonel Wakefield, the Company's Agent in the colony, re- cognized the " validity " of the Company's purchases from the Natives as the presumed basis of the grant promised in Lord John Russell's agree- ment. In defending Lord Stanley, Mr. Cardwell hinted that the apparent breach of that nobleman's own agreement of May 1843 was imputable to Captain Fitzroy, who had disobeyed his instructions.

Mr. MANGLES confined himself to one branch of the subject—the policy of the Church Missionary Society and of the Government towards the

Aborigines of New Zealand; placing the Society first, because it was the author of the policy which Government adopted. He stated that he had long been connected with the Society, and had been for several years a member of the Committee that managed its extensive operations in North- ern India. He landed the courage and devotion of the missionaries who first carried Christianity into New Zealand, when it was dangerous to enter the conetry. Their example induced others to visit the country; the Native population improved, and systematic colonization began. Then it was that the Church Missionary Society made the first false step; opposing co- ionization, on the grounds that it would be unjust to the aboriginal owners of the soil, and that it would interfere with their own great experiment of conversion to Christianity, which they represented as advancing hand- in-hand with civilization. That was the picture of their wishes rather than of the facts; for they had not been able to keep out a set of lawless and abandoned White men, who fostered the passions and added to the vices of the Natives: exterminating wars between the Natives were carried on with more destructive engines; themes rapidly diminished; and all this was in the very district where the influence of the missionaries was para- mount. In fact, the moral power of the missionaries could no longer cope with the evils growing up around them; as was proved by the proposal of Mr. Dandeson Coates, to establish a jurisdiction in the colony, at the cost of this Government, with the Natives for police. The Society did not see that the only way to counteract the lawless settler was to let in a prepon- demting number of the peaceable and orderly. In execution of their falae policy, the missionaries held the pen for the Natives in signing documente, like the treaty of Waitangi, which were beyond their comprehension,—for the Government of New Zealand had become a missionocracy ; and the false bias was adopted with undiscriminating credulity by the Colonial Office. Mr. Mangles contrasted with the weak rule of vacillation and false indulgence in New Zealand, the paternal but vigorous rule of our Govern- ment in India, where we do not take lessons in government from the Natives and missionaries, though we protect and encourage them; and where Sir Charles Metcalfe hung up not only the assassin of Mr. William Fraser, but the Prince who employed him. Picture to yourself British India go- verned for five weeks as New Zealand has been governed for five years!

Mr. CoLQusOnN, acknowledging the services of the Missionaries, agreed that out of their sphere they should not be permitted to interfere. He confessed that he thought that the government of New Zealand was not in a satisfactory state. He imputed the fault not so much to any Colonial. Minister, as to the system of despotism, absolutely uncontrolled, of the Colonial Administration; and to persevere in it without reformation would be to paralyze our Colonial empire. The present question was, whether men should be excluded, for five years, from soil which they had pur- chased, and without which they could not obtain a return for their capital, pay for labour, or even live; and whether the House should see that go on without a remedy? The consequences were replete with danger, unless Parliament determinately interposed. To the proposed resolutions he could not assent, as he objected to several; and whether the treaty of Waitangi was wise or not, it ought to be maintained. The thing wanted, however, was not the arguments in defence of past policy from the Under- Secretary for the Colonies or the Secretary to the Treasury, but amend- ment for the future; and he entreated Ministers, with a view to the inte- rests of the settlers, of the Natives, and of the empire, to announce that the policy of the Colonial Office was about to undergo a change.

Mr. SHEIL said, that the facts of the case, as between Lord Stanley and the New Zealand Company, were few and simple; and those "facts" Mr. Shell worked very effectively against Lord Stanley. Lord John Russell agreed to grant to the Company four acres for every pound sterling which they had expended in colonization: the terms of that contract were plain, and it was placed beyond controversy by Lord John's adoption of the ex- planation given by Mr. Somes, Governor of the Company: has that con- tract ever been fulfilled? has a single acre been conveyed to the Company for their great outlay? If their case rested on that contract alone it would be complete. Lord John went out of office; Lord Stanley came in, and he at once entered into conflict with the Company. They expostulated in vain, and agreed to refer the matter to a Select Committee; on the compo- sition of which, with ten Ministerialists to five Liberals, Mr. Shell en- larged: the Committee adopted the same conclusion as that which Mr. Buller now invited the House to affirm—the resolutions condemning Lord Stanley; and in the majority voted Mr. Monckton Milnes, Mr. Charteris, Lord , Jocelyn, and Lord Francis Egerton ; the lasteven moving an amendment more condemnatory of Lord Stanley. That is a fact. What did Lord Stanley do? He wrote a despatch; and as the Report, written by Lord Howick, condemned him, Lord Stanley seemed to think that he had only to refute Lord Howick in his despatch. The petition from the merchants of London, presented by the Conservative John Masterman, and signed inter alios by the Conservative George Lyall, was the next text for Mr. Shell; who reminded the Premier how he had on an occasion boasted of great sustainment from the support of the London merchants. What was the answer to that petition? With an eloquent allusion to the distracted state of the colony—the emigrant converted into an exile—Mr. Sheil called upon those who thought that a great department of state ought not to be ,administered in a spirit of sple- netic authoritativeness and fractious sophistication, to vote for Mr. Buller's motion.

Sir JAMES GRAHAM began by stating his concurrence in two or three points asserted on both sides of the House,—the importance of the subject; the value of the colony of New Zealand, with its natural resources and geographical position; the advantages of a well-ordered system of coloniza- tion; and the deplorable condition of the colony. He admitted, with Lord Howick, that the difficulties arose from two causes—the question of pro- prietary rights, and the absence of official control over the lawless spirit which manifested itself there. First, as to the question of title. He re- capitulated the facts respecting the recognized independence of •New Zealand, even as early as 1814, but subsequently by Lord Normanby; and those relating to the treaty of Waitangi, adopted by Lord John Russell. Now, Lord Stanley's first difficulty on entering office was to reconcile the terms of the treaty, which secures to the Natives undisturbed " possession" of their lands, with the terms of the charter of incorporation granted to the New Zealand Company, which spoke of the lands "occupied and enjoyed" by the Natives: in the words used by Lord Ingestre, as spokesman for the New Zealand Company, words in which Sir James agreed, the treaty of. Waitangi went upon the "Missionary principle," Lord John on the "Coloniz- ing principle." Sir James repeated and reinforced the documentary evidence, that all parties—Lord John, the Company, and its officers—contemplated that the Company would be obliged to prove "valid" purchases from the Natives: and among the extracts was one from a letter by Lord John Russell to Sir George Gipps, written on the 21st November 1840, in which he said he fully intended to carry into execution his plan of a Commission to inquire into the titles and claims to lands in New Zealand. Lord Stan- ley felt bound to abide by the treaty of Waitangi, the validity of which had been demonstrated by Mr. Cardwell; and in the end of 1842, the Company demurred to proof of their title before the Commissioner of Land-Claims. A second agreement was entered into in May 1843; and express instruc- tions were sent to Captain Fitzroy to fulfil that agreement, by putting the Company in possession of their lands, with a prima fade title for them to defend against other claimants. Captain Fitzroy disobeyed those instruc- tions. That officer has been recalled, for disobedience of instructions in important particulars. Sir James could make allowances for his difficul- ties; but his issue of inconvertible paper, his neglect of the instructions of Lord John Russell and Lord Stanley to embody a militia composed of settlers and of Natives who could be relied upon, and his total abolition of customs-duties, were indefensible. In the course of controverting some ge- neral strictures on Government, Sir James noticed the remark that the Colonial Office is too much swayed by home interests and influences; ob- serving, how powerful is the home influence of the Company, represented on both sides of the House, and how Lord Stanley would have led a much

more quiet life had he yielded to that influence instead of standing up for the interests of the Natives. Sir James proceeded to reply to Mr. Ellice's questions--

With respect to the construction put by Ministers upon the treaty of Waitangi, they construed it to secure the Natives full possession of their lands and estates so long as they wished to retain them; to give the Crown the right of preemption; and to extend to the Natives all the rights and privileges of British subjects. An act of the local Government, confirmed by Lord. John Russell, prohibited the sale of lands" occupied by the Natives; which of course implied, that lands not so occu - pied, for which preemption was secured to the Crown, were something that the Natives had the power of selling. Mr. Ellice asked what they intended to do with land? They intended to do that with respect to land which Captain Fitzroy was directed to do, but which he omitted to do,—namely, within a time to be limited, to call upon all claimants, whether Natives or settlers, to come in and prove their titles, and to register their lands. At the expiration of that time, all parties claiming to appear and to register having done so, the right of sovereignty accrued under the treaty of Waitangi, and the right of the Crown to all unregistered lands would be indisputable. He con- ceived that it was quite open to the local Government, as in Canada, to impose a tax, a moderate tax, on waste land, the title of which should have been proved. He was satisfied that by the operation of the construction thus put upon the treaty, within a moderate time the Crown would become possessed of a large proportion of the unoccupied lands. It was then asked, how they proposed to deal with the Company? He answered, that instructions would be positive to fulfil the contract entered into by Lord Stanley, in 1842, with the Company, and to put them as promptly as possible in possession of land, within the limits assigned, of which they should make selection, and of which they should claim to be put in possession, having made that selection. In strict accordance with the arrangement of 1843, they would be put in possession of a prima facie and contingent title; subject only to the proof of a better title vesting in other parties. With respect to defence, Govemment had ordered a regiment to be sent out to New Zealand; and in the mean time, they had reason to know that the Governor of New Zealand had obtained from New Holland a considerable augmentation of force. Hove was New Zealand to be governed? It was the wish of the Government here, and it had been the direction to the Government there, to give on application municipal institutions to all the settlements of the New Zealand C=pany; the Governor having authority to enlarge the powers of the municipality or the district. Dispersion of the settlements, not concentration, was to be the rale. He would not deny that a central representative government would be necessary for contpleteness: but to admit the Natives to such an institution would be prema- ture—to exclude them would exasperate distrust and discord; and therefore he could give no pledge on that score. As to the law of primogeniture, it is the rale that the British subject carries British law and institutions with him;. and it would involve a serious responsibility in any Government to subvert that birth- right.

Sir James said a few words in favour of the new Governor, Captain Grey, who is favourably mentioned in the resolutions of the Committee for his policy towards the Aborigines; and concluded by saying, that Lord Stan- ley's colleagues would feel the motion, if carried, to convey a censure on all the Cabinet.

Lord Joint RUSSELL addressed himself, first, to disproving the alleged in- consistency between the treaty of Waitangi, which he had adopted, and his agreement with the Company in 1840. He did so with a chain of minute and close reasoning. If the treaty be taken at all, it must be taken entire. It secures full possession to the Natives of their property, and the right of preemption, to the Crown. It must be interpreted in the same way as it wod be in the case of any other country,—as in the cases of the ceded colonies of Demerara, Trinidad, or Canada; in which no one ever pre- tended that such a guarantee would secure to the most civilized inhabitants a property in all the wild lands. Why, then, make an interpretation at variance with all practice, and especially in favour of savages and cannibals, so thinly scattered over the country that there is barely one to every square mile, and in the Middle Island, debig as England and Scotland, but 1,500 Natives? He gave no such interpretation; and having given instructions on his own view of it, he did not foresee these numberless disputes respect- ing waste lands. He did not become acquainted with the Company in a manner the most auspicious. He found a quarrel subsisting between the Colonial Office and the Company; but he regarded them as a kind of body likely to be useful in processes of colonization which the Government could not so well undertake, such as the collection of emigrants; and, as soon as the authority of the Crown was declared, he seized the opportunity to make his agreement with them—the substance of which, was that for every 5e. expended in shipping, emigration, stores, &c., they should have an acre of land: not a word was said in the agreement about valid purchases. He presumed that the Company had bought of the Natives a larger quantity of land than that would indicate; and if that were so, or if the Crown had sufficient waste lands, there could be no in- consistency between the treaty of Waitangi and that agreement. He said, execute the treaty in its spirit and in its letter; but if keeping faith with the Natives keep it also with the Government. Lord John then dwelt on the ill judgment which had fostered extravagant claims by the Natives; showed the futility of gravely investigating titles founded on massacres, extermination, and man-eating; quoted Mr. Spain's declaration, that the Nitives cannot be brought to abide by British law even when it is in their favour; and asked if such concessions as Captain Fitzroy had made--of the prednaption right, of customs-duties—was the way to main- tain authority? He insisted that it was necessary for Government to con- sider some plan for the future,—not such a one as that for recovering lands which the Natives never possessed by making them pay a tax, and then forfeiting the lands for non-payment; which would be unintelligible to them, and might provoke a real insurrection. The voice of the settlers in a representative government could alone extricate the colony from its em- barrassments: but then, the capital of the colony must be established where the settlers are, that the Government and the governed might act in concert. Of Captain Grey's appointment he approved. He should vote for going into Committee; though he could not, under the altered circumstances of the times, adopt the resolutions; which ought deeply to look into the future: and he recommended to the House the worthy task of providing for the establishment of a free state in New Zealand.

Sir ROBERT PEEL began, like Sir James Graham, (much of whose ground he retraced with less preciseness,) by making admissions as to the import- ance of the colony, and so forth; representing that Captain Fitzroy had been superseded, and that Captain Grey, who had succeeded in settling difficulties in South Australia, had been appointed, or would immediately be. go, with fall powers. He discussed at great length the future form of goyernment for New Zealand. He admitted that, for civil purposes, the capital seemed inconveniently placed at Auckland; but that was a matter for local consideration and decision. He allowed that a representative form of government would be suited to the colony: but he saw difficulties in the great distances between the settlements; and he thought that muni- cipal institutions, with large powers of local taxation, would prove, as they had done in North America, the best germ of representative govern- ment. A government by a proprietary company in conjunction with the Crown, was, he thought, an anomaly that could not succeed: but he considered it important to maintain the present Company in the full exercise of its powers as a commercial and colonizing body, not mixed up with affairs of state; and he did not despair that a relation would speedily be established between it and the Government so that they would act in harmony. Coming to the motion before the House, Sir Robert put together several of the past arguments against it, as a matter of Parliamentary busi- ness,—the admitted inapplicability of the resolutions to the present time; the interpretation-treaty of Waitangi, which he concurred with his col- leagues in maintaining; the injustice of censuring Lord Stanley in particular for events in causing which his predecessors shared. And he called to mind that the House itselfhad no small share in those events. In 1834, on the motion of Mr. Fowell Buxton, the House adopted a resolution, that in future a different and more humane policy should be pursued towards the Aboriginal races; in 1836, Mr. Buxton obtained a Committee on the subject; the report of that Committee, in 1837, produced a great impression : acting under the influence of that report, and of public opinion, which just then set strongly in favour of the Aboriginal races, Lord Normanby wrote despatches, which it was for others to call unwise, whence the " independence " of New Zealand and the treaty of Waitangi. Sir Robert thought that it would have been much better to rest the title of the Crown on prior discovery; but the treaty, however incon- venient, stands there, and must in good faith be maintained. At all events, let not the House make a victim of Lord Stanley, who had only carried out their own views These arguments Sir Robert corroborated by a plentiful quotation of resolutions and despatches, and such documents. He read an account of the meeting at which the treaty of Waitangi was signed: when some Natives warned others, that if it were signed their lands would be taken from them; but they were assured to the contrary; and he ex- horted the House not to violate that assurance. So far from being harsh to the Company, Lord Stanley proposed to give them compensation for lands to which they had not proved their title; but he could not of course be responsible for the disregard of his instructions. Sir Robert called upon the House not to censure one who had acted on conscientious scruples, and in the desire to maintain the rights of the weak, the distant, and the unpro- tected.

Mr. CHARLES BULLER briefly replied, with some sharp strokes where his opponents had laid themselves open; such as in the attempt to force the lands from the Natives by a tax, while affecting to uphold their rights- iPennsylvanian repudiation without its boldness. He should have been less nclined to press his resolutions, had a distinct pledge been given that the representative system would be established. He concluded by calling on Members—notwithstanding the hint that this was to be made a Govern.- went question, and that after all the nice little votes they had given to ex- tricate Government from awkward situations they should not stink at this one—to do justice in the case.

On a division, the motion was negatived, by 223 to 172 ; majority, 51.

ACADEMICAL EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

The resolution of the Committee of the whole House for the grant for new Colleges was reported on Monday; when there was a short and desultory conversation, signalized by the appearance of Mr. O'Cornezia.., to protest against the measure: he thanked Sir Robert Inglis for calling it a godless scheme of education; saying, " I believe that religion ought to-be the basis of education, and I came over for no other purpose than humbly to repre- sent the necessity of making religion the basis of education—to establish it not only as a part, but an essential part of it."

MAYNOOTH COLLEGE.

The third reading of the Maynooth College Bill was moved in the. House of Lords on Monday, and gave rise to a last discussion. The argu- ments advanced for and against the bill were such as have been hackneyed in the course of these debates, and the interest of this last was confined to certain passages of disputation.

Lord CAMPBELL began with a long and elaborate repetition of several arguments for the bill. He said, he did not support it under dread of agitation or foreign war; nor because Government had achieved a triumph over agitation; nor because it was an endowment of the Roman Catholic Church out of the public revenue, since he must dissent from such a pre- position while the Protestant Church in Ireland retains its present monstrous dimensions: he supported it because he considered it as a recognition that hereafter Protestants and Catholics were to be dealt with alike in questions of right, civil and religious; and he trusted soon to see more measures in- troduced in that spirit, better conceived than the Landlord and Tenant Bill—a Municipal Corporation Bill and a Registration Bill. He declared that the only hope for peace and contentment in Ireland lay in imitating Lord Normanby's administration: the Repeal cry could only be checked by re- versing the policy lately pursued by Government; which led Lord Camp- bell to strictures on some past matters--appointments in Ireland, and se forth. lf, however, it were now their policy to place Protestants and Roman Catholics-on an equal footing, he trusted that- they would long re• main in power to carry it out. (" Hear, hear!'" and laughter.) He trusted • that it was not now the policy of the Government to which Lord Lynd- hurst belonged, to treat the Irish as aliens in blood, language, and religion. (Cheers and laughter ; in both of which Lord Lyndhurst joined.)

The Bishop of LLANDAFF opposed the bill, and Lord Campbell's doctrine that it is unjust to confine state endowments to one church—a mistaken and heretical notion: there is but one Christian church in the world, held in thraldom for a time by a foreign potentate, but emancipated by the Reformation. The Reformed and the Unreformed Church are one and the same; and therefore there has been no transfer of the temporalities. And if it were proper for the Government to say what was the best form of re- ligion for the country, then, he contended, they were equally at liberty to confine the ecclesiastical emoluments and temporalities of the country to that particular form of religion. He moved as an amendment, that the bill be read a third time that day six months. Lord ELLENBOBOUGH, though supporting the bill, also combated Lord.

Campbell's ides. The Duke of NEWCASTLE was among the most vehement opponents.

He began by a string of questions to Lord STANLEY; elicited these facts—that, means of educating the native youth bing much wanted in Malta, a clergyman, brother to a Baronet who is in Parliament, has applied to Government for permission to establish a school; that that application is under consideration; and that the clergyman is a member of the Society of Jesuits. The Duke of NEWCASTLE proceeded with his speech. He declared the Roman Catholic religion to be nothing but "superstition and idolatry." He described Government as conceding to the Irish because they are rebellions and numerous: the Duke of Wellington said that the Government were quite overwhelmed. The Duke of WELLINGTON- " No." The Duke of NEWCASTLE--" Yes! I will not be put down by ' No ': I say, yes." Government said that the Repealers were so prostrate that there was no chance of their raising the standard of rebellion again, and that now was the time to be exceedingly liberal. On the contrary, seeing that those persons are nothing less than rebels, holding Parliaments of their own and legislating for themselves, nothing could be more un- worthy than to give them a boon to satisfy them. He believed it was un- lawful to encourage the Jesuits, and that the Government were subjecting themselves to the penalties of a preemunire by founding or maintaining such establishments.

The Duke of WELLINGTON denied the interpretation put upon what he said by the Duke of Newcastle; and repeated the substance of his re- marks about Ministers having attained a " position of strength," and the Repealer:, being totally unable to carry any measure by intimidation and violence. In the course of defending the bill, he denied that it must be taken as the forerunner of other measures to follow it; though Govern- ment fully intended to consider every measure that could tend to the wel- fare of Ireland. To show that it would be impossible to endow the Roman Catholics out of the Established Church, and that the Established Church is secured by the most solemn engagements, he referred to the oath in the act of 1829; saying, " I take that oath to be nothing, I quote it for no- thing, but the enunciation of a principle."

On a division, the third reading was carried, by 181 to 50; majority, 131.

On the question that the bill do pass, the Earl of WiNcraLsEs moved as an amendment, that its operation be limited to a period of three years. On what day, he asked, was the bill to pass?—On the anniversary of the day when the proud Barons of England wrested Magna Charta from the tyrant John. Lord CAMPBELL—" They were Roman Catholic Barons." (A laugh.) The Earl of WMCHILSEA could prove that the roljaiion of the English Church at that time was very different from what Boman Catholicism was at present. The alltexalment was put, and negatived; and the bill passed.

PEAKERS M THE FOREGOING DISCUSSION. For the bill—Lord Campbell, the Earl of Ellenborough, the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Duke of Wellington, the Earl of Chichester, the Earl of posse, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Brougham. Against it—the Bishop of Llandaff, the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Wick- low, the Marquis of Breadalbane, the Earl of Clancarty, the Earl of Winchilsea.

NATIONAL EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

In the House of Lords, on Tuesday, the Bishop of CssnEL presented petitions against the National system of Education in Ireland—one from 1,306 clergymen of the Established Church. He proceeded with an at- tack on the system; declaring it to be a failure; deploring the termination of other educational institutions, such as the Kildare Street Society, the London Hibernian Society, and the Schools for Discountenancing Vice; and intimating, that the proper course would be for Government to support the National Schools, along with the parochial schools under the superintend- ence of the parochial clergy. The Earl of St. GENNsurs collected from the Bishop's speech that he wished to give to the Church Education Society a share in the annual grant, and in the superintendence over the schools; a proposition which he combated. In England, the money granted by Parliament is expended by two voluntary and irresponsible societies; but in England there is no re- cognized Board established to expend the money voted for education. It is not true that the National Board prevent the reading of the Scriptures— they neither prevent nor compel: there are 3,000 schools and 400,000 scholars; in 940 schools, the whole Scriptures are read; in 1,340, extracts are read; and the Reverend D. Begot, Dean of Newry, has given very satisfactory evidence from personal examination of the pupils as to their proficiency in their religious instruction. If a grant were made to the Established Church, the Roman Catholics would claim to be put on the same footing In the debate which ensued, the National system was defended by the Archbishop of DUBLIN; who expressed his belief that a great deal of oppo- sition now made to the system might be traced to the delay of Government in declaring their intentions respecting it. He explained, as to the extracts used in several schools, that they were prepared by Dr. Arnold; whose au- thority had been erroneously quoted against the system. The Board was assailed by the Earl of WICKLOW, the Earl of CLANCARTY; and supported by the Marquis of NoEMANBY, Lord MONTEAGLE, the Duke of WELLING- TON, and Lord STANLEY. Lord Stanley declared that Government had not only issued no instructions at variance with those sent out by Lord Grey's Government, but were prepared fully to pursue the system unal- tered.

The conversation dropped without result.

BANKING IN IRELAND.

The third reading of the Banking (Ireland) Bill having been moved, on Monday, Mr. SMITH O'BRIEN proposed a clause to secure the interests of the Hibernian and Royal Banks. The clause made it lawful for any bank now existing in Ireland, although not heretofore a bank of issue, to issue notes on the basis of Three-and-a-quarter per Cent Stock transferred to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt.

Mr. O'CoNNELL seconded the motion. He quoted a passage from Lord Devon's Report, describing the Irish as the most miserable people in Eu- rope: the prosperity of the country is very much increased by banking facilities, and Sir Robert Peel, therefore, instead of restricting, ought to increase the currency—

It was then too late to enter further into any opposition to the bill, and he had to apologize to the House for trespassing upon their time, but he wished to put upon record his humble opinion on the subject. He was old enough to remember the former currency bill which had been mlled after the right honourable Baronet; and he recollected that that bill had created more mischief in the country than had been effected by the French Revolution in France.

Sir ROBERT PEEL maintained that the prosperity of Ireland would de- pend more upon the stability of the banking system than upon any amount of circulation: he had seen the same state of poverty in Ireland when there was the most extensive and unrestricted paper-circulation. He be-

lieved that, after a short time, when people got confidence in the banks, it would happen as in Scotland, where there was little disposition to change the notes.

After a brief discussion, the disuse was negatived, by 77 to 34; and the bill passed.

CHALLENGING A MEMBER POE FREE SPEECH.

In the House of Commons, on Monday, Mr. ROEBUCK drew attention to a question not only relating to him personally, but affecting also the privi- leges of the House.

Honourable Members will perhaps bear in mind what occurred in the course of the debate on Friday last. On Saturday, a carriage drove up to my door, and the following letter was delivered to my servant- " Reform Club-house, 14th Jane 1845, Six o'clock, p. m.

" Sir,—Unfortunately, I was not In the House of Commons last night when you spoke in Committee on the Irish Colleges Bill. If I had been present, the necessity of address.. ing a letter like this, which is one of inquiry, could not have arisen. But, having been absent, I am compelled to resort to the newspaper reports of the proceedings which took place, and of the language used; and I beg, In the first instance, to ask you, if the following words were spoken by you, or words to the same effect? This consideration might have led to what had been witnessed, and those who followed in the train of such a leader deserved little respect either for their position or their intellect.' If you used those words, the Insult they convey to me, as a Repealer, Is plain. My second question therefore is, are you prepared to 'justify' them? The meaning of the word I have underlined I am sure you are too well read In the old history of chivalry to misinterpret. I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, J. P. Bosoms."

Sir VALENTINE BLAKE spoke to order. Any Member had an undoubted right to deliver his opinion upon a question in debate; but he had no right to catechize or lecture other Members, and to utter offensive words regarding them.

The SPEAKEB—" The interruption of the honourable Baronet is most irre- gular." (Cheers from all sides.) Mr. ROEBUCK—" With this letter was sent a copy of the Morning Chronicle newspaper. I wrote an answer, which I delivered next morning myself; and it was to this effect- " Sir—You will receive the answer your letter requires in the House of Commons, on Monday ; and I now give you full warning for your guidance in the mean time. I am determined that the free expression of opinion shall not in my person be coerced or checked ; and I shall therefore use the most stringent and effective means to punish your present menace, and to prevent future violence. I hope that you are sufficiently well read In the old law of your country to be aware of the position in which you have placed yourself. " I have the honour to be, &c., J. A. Bossuck." I have now to move that the letter of the honourable Member for Sligo be read. by the Clerk at the table." The SPEAKER asked, if the Member for Sligo was in his place.? Mfr SOMERS presented himself: The letter was read by the Clerk at the table: Mr. ROEBUCK proceeded to move a resolution in censure of Mr. Somers;

stating his reasons.

He might have claimed the attention of the law, and lie should have done so but that this matter eoncerned the privileges of the House—its free expression of opinion on public men and public measures. "I used the words imputed to me,- and I had a right to use them. ("Hear, hear!") I have a right to assume that I committed no breach of the rules of this House, not having been called to order by you Mr. Speaker, or by any other Member. ("Hear, hear!") What are the words complamed of? I assume a right to say that I have little respect for the intellect of certain public men; and to go farther, and to add that I have no re- spect for their position in society. For using these expressions, a party cornea forward and suggests to me that he should be allowed to shoot at me. (Cheers and laughter.) Is that, let me ask, any proof of superiority of intellect? (Cheers) Does that course support an opposite proposition to that I endeavoured to establish? (Cheers.) If it do not establish it, what does it do? It gives to any Member careless of his own life, and having that species of physical courage which leads him to brave the chance of the pistol, the power to assail any other Member in the House who chooses to do his duty. 1 think it a far wiser and more courageous course at once to meet a proceeding of this description, by sub- mitting the matter to the House in the way I now submit it." (Cheers from all sides.) He called upon the House for protection; expecting their concurrence, when they viewed the calamities arising out of the practice of duelling that daily afflict society. He moved, "That John Patrick Somers, Esquire, having sent a. challenge to a Member of the House for words spoken by that Member in his, place in Parliament, is guilty of a contempt and breach of the privileges of this. House."

Mr. HOME rose to second the motion; but at the same moment Lord ASHLEY stepped hastily from the bar to the body of the House, and said- " I second the motion with the greatest satisfaction: and, in seconding it, I take liberty of tendering to the honourable Member for Bath my most sincere and heartfelt thanks; and I believe I may tender him not only my thanks, but the thanks of a very large body of gentlemen in this House, and of a still larger proportion of his fellow subjects out of it, who have viewed with disgust and horror the pre- valence of this miscalled law of honour. Under these special circumstances, we- are doubly indebted to the honourable Member, because he is asserting for us not only a social but a great constitutional privilege ; for I can foresee the time when, if this system were introduced into this House and into other deliberative assem- blies, our liberty of speech would be at an end. We should then meet as our an- cestors at one period met, not to feel the influence and the force of reason, but to dread the influence and the force of the sword. Therefore, in my own name, in the name of many gentlemen round me, and of many thousands of our fellow sub- jects, I tender to the honourable Member for Bath my most sincere thanks for his manly, courageous, and constitutional proceeding." Mr. Somas rose, and said- " Sir, I have no hesitation whatever in withdrawing the letter, which is looked on as an attack upon the honourable and learned Member. It was merely a letter of inquiry. (Laughter.) The honourable and learned Member did not condescend to answer those inquiries. I do not call in question his motives for refusing; but I bow with unaffected deference to the de- cision of this House and of the Chair. (Cheers.) I am not one of those who will play with the authority of the House, or attempt a dexterous accommodation of offensive terms. I take the sense of the Speaker and of the House to be paramount upon all occasions, and will not be one to run counter to them. An opposite course might lead to a great waste of time. I deeply regret that I wrote this letter and that any matter personal to myself should have occupied the attention of the House fora single moment. If the honourable and learned gentleman is satisfied with that explanation, I trust the House will be also satisfied; for I do not think I can say anything filer or more explicit. At the same time, I trust the House will bear with me for a moment whilst I call the honourable and learned Mem- ber's attention to observations which I am sure he must regret, and to the coars: imputations which are frequently put forth against certain Members of this House. (Cheers.) Honourable Members must really give me the liberty of saying that the honourable and learned Member's observations are not always in accordance with—I must be permitted to say it—truth. No; I will recall the observation, and will say with what entitles them to public respect. I now resign myself to the honourable and learned gentleman. Henceforth he may say anything he pleases of me, or of the party to which I belong. I have to apologize to the House for in- truding myself on its attention; and I once more declare I regret to have been the cause of occupying its attention for one moment." (Cheers.) Sir GEoRGE GB.EY thought, that after that explanation, the House ought to pursue the matter no further—

He concurred most heartily in the high approbation expressed of the example set for the second time by the honourable Member for Bath, as well as in the energetic denunciation of the barbarous and unchristian practice of duelling. He was opposed to it on principle as much as any man. At the same time, he begged to limit his applause of the conduct of the honourable Member for Bath to the present occasion, for he would not extend it to the part he took in the debate of Friday night. Honourable Members who did not accept hostile messages— who, instead of yielding to the mistaken opinion of society, brought matters of this kind before the House—ought to be especially guarded in the language they applied to others. A long and desultory conversation ensued. Sir ROBERT PEEL and Sir ROBERT Imams, highly complimenting Mr. Roebuck, concurred in recom- mending the withdrawal of the motion; which was also urged by Mr. ED- MUND BURKE ROME and Sir HENRY BARRON, with a somewhat stronger expression of indignation against Mr. Roebuck. Mr. MIRE maintained, that the motion ought not to be withdrawn; since a question of privilege was at issue. Lord Homeric concurred in this; and suggested that the motion should be affirmed, with an additional resolution stating that the House was satisfied with Mr. Somers's ample apology. Mr. ROEBUCK said, that he wanted no apology for himself: it was the affair of the House, and he left it in their hands.

Mr. Slum O'BRIEN attempted to recur to what Mr. Roebuck had said of himself in the debate which gave rise to the present proceedings: but the SPEAKER stopped him, as disorderly. At the suggestion of Sir ROBERT PEEL, the word " contempt " was struck out of the resolution, as needless; and the motion was affirmed. Viscount HowicK then moved, that in consequence of the full and ample apology which had been made by the honourable Member for Sligo, the House would not proceed further in the matter. Agreed to.

Sue HENRY PorriNGEB. Both Houses of Parliament adopted, on Monday, addresses in echo of the Queen's message recommending a pension of 1,5001. a year for Sir Henry Pottinger, in consideration of his public services, particularly in China. The address was moved in the House of Lords by the Earl of ABER- DEEN, in the House of Commons by Sir ROBERT PEEL; and their eulogies of Sir Henry were reechoed by the Marquis of LANSDOWNE and Viscount PALMEE5rox. In the Upper House, the Earl of ELLENBOROUGH complained that Sir William Parker, the naval commander, had not also had a pecuniary reward—" our oppo- nents having been more beaten by force of arms than influenced by the diplo- matists." In the Commons, -Mr. WILLIAMS took exception to rewarding public services by a money-grant rather than by continued employment. One passage in Lord ABERDEEN 's speech, about the great opening for British commerce re- sulting from the negotiations in China, is interesting. " I think," he said, " I may be permitted to state shortly, that the amount of British goods imported at Canton during the year 1844 is valued at 3,451,00014 and that the exports of Chinese goods for British markets, from the same port during the same time, was not less than 3,383,0001. This is a much larger sum than the annual British and Foreign trade with the whole of China previously amounted to. Be it recol- lected, too, that this return is confined to Canton; I say nothing about the North- ern ports of Shanghai and Amoy. I have every reason to believe that the trade . in botlathose ports is rapidly increasing, and that there is every prospect of that increase being continued for a long time. Our intelligent Consul in that part of the world, Mr. Macgregor, gives the most favourable view of our commercial prospects. He says, that there is no appearance of any glut; that all persons engaged in Chinese commerce had fulfilled their engagements; that no bankrupt- cies of any note had been declared; and to this I myself may add, that I hope it will be in my power to lay such papers before the House as will show that the interest and the importance of these events are greater than any estimate yet made has affixed to them."