The New-Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 536, 4 June 1851, Page 2

The New-Zealander.

Be just and fear not : Let nl) the ends thou ainib't at, be thy Country's, Thy God's, and Truth's.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 185 1.

After one of our frequent intervals of paucity of arrivals, we have had poured in upon us since our last, heaps of journals, the mere cursory examination of which with a view to ascertaining their most interesting contents, is a work requiring no inconsiderable time. The Stately has brought our London files to the 30th of January, — (although we still are without those for part of December, and the first fortnight of January) — and these contain varied, and in some particulars, important intelligence. The Alexander has placed us in possession of New South Wales papers to the 17th of May, in which we have, amongst other things claiming notice, the exciting news of a rival gold district to the Californian El-Dorado having been discovered at Bathurst. Journals from the other Australian colonies have also reached us ; containing, if not urgent matter, yet some articles which are far from undeserving of notice. Finally, the Overland Mail has supplied the vacancies in our files of Wellington papers ; but these being not merely older than those received by the Havannah, but also devoid of anything like general interest, do not add to our difficulty in choosing matter for our present number, — a difficulty arising fiom the number of conflicting claims on our attention. We can only select to day what seems of most immediate interest, and reserve further details for future numbers. The Court was still at Windsor, but was expected to return to Buckingham Palace on the 3rd of February. On that day, a Privy Council was to be held, at which the terms of the Royal Speech on the opening of Parliament, would be finally settled. It was understood that the Session would be opened by Her Majesty in person. In the House of Commons, the Address was to be rfioved by the Marquis of Kildare, and seconded by Mr. Pj?q, M.P. for Norwich. Meanwhile, there weVe the usual indications of the near approach of the session : prolonged sittings of Cabinet councils were almost daily held ; deputations from various " interests" in town and country were seeking interviews with Ministers ; the West End was rilling ; and, in short, the metropolis generally presented tokens of the immediate commencement of " the season" — which this year was to have added to its other attractiveness and bustle, the unprecedented excitement of the " World's Fair." Amongst the notes of preparation for the Session, some of the loudest were calls for various reductions of taxation, The Revenue tables for the quarter and year ended the sth of January, had been satisfactory ; there was indeed a decrease on the quarter, as compared with the corresponding quarter last year, of £109,428 ; but this was less than had been expected from the abolition of the Brick duties, and the diminution of the taxes on Stamps ; while on the whole year there was an increase amounting to £164,922. Altogether, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was said to calculate on a surplus of from one million and a half to two millions of Income above Expenditure, at the close of the financial year. The claimants for a participation in the benefits of this surplus were numerous, and urgent ; —tea, coffee, soap, malt liquors, and especially paper, being pressed upon Sir Charles Wood's consideration, as articles on which the duty should be lightened. The only relief, however, which it seemed tolerably certain would be granted was the zemoval of the Win-

dow Tax, — a concession for which the Government can claim no great credit, as they escaped being compelled to repeal it last session only by a majority of three. Even this boon is not to be unconditional, for there is to be substituted in its place a modified house duty, which it is calculated will produce about £600,000, I leaving the sacrifice of revenue by the removal of the obnoxious impost on light and air little more than £1,200,000. There can be no second opinion among disinterested persons as to the superior importance to the health and comfoit of the public generally of the removal of this tax, — one, which indeed never should have been imposed, even as a war tax. But the grand topic of speculation was the course which would be adopted with reference to the Papal Aggression. The manner in which it would be alluded to in the Queen's Speech, was discussed with the liveliest interest, particularly as it was reported (on apparently better authority than such reports usually rest on) that Her Majesty had expressed her decided disapproval of the passage referring to the subject in the draft of the Speech submitted to her, regarding it as so lukewarm and evasive as to be likely to serve as a screen for legislative shuffling. The Royal dissatisfaction, it was said, had compelled the Cabinet to resume the consideration of this paragraph. There was little doubt that Ministers were not agreed amongst themselves as to the length to which legislation should be carried ; and each new rumour of course added to the solicitude to know in what manner the preliminary difficulty connected with the Speech from the Throne would be dealt with. A more tangible key to the intention of Ministers than any rumour could supply, however, was afforded in a Letter from the Bishop of Durham to the clergy of the Archdeaconry of Lindisfarne, When it is remembered that Lord John Russell's memorable letter was addressed to the Bishop, apparently in reply to a communication from him, pronouncing the aggression " insolent and insidious," it is reasonable to infer that Dr. Maltby is in the confidence of his distinguished correspondent, and that the views which he expresses are likely to be in substantial agreement with those of the Premier. Accordingly, the Spectator observes, " It would seem probable that the meridian of,, Durham is again to be the line by which the public will find the little planet of a measure on Papal Aggression, which the Premier and the other observers in the political observatory aie supposed to have recently discovered; the Bishop seems again to be a pointer in the tail of the Government constellation." We think it therefore advisable to lay the Bishop's letter before our readers, and the whole of it will be found in another column. It will be seen that the steps which it indicates are, the enactment of restrictions upon the introduction and circulation of Papal Bulls ; the prohibition of the assumption of episcopal titles, conferred by Rome, and deriving their names from places " in this country ;" the forbidding the existence of monastic institutions ; and the putting forth of Jesuits from amongst Scotch and English Protestants. . . .A question which it might have been foreseen would arise, and which now that it had arisen was agitated with great earnestness, was — Whether the enactments I against the Papal Aggression, whatever they may be, should be applied with equal stringency to Ireland, as to other parts of the United Kingdom. The Irish Prelates had addressed the Queen on this important question, reminding Her Majesty that the Established Church in Great Britain and Ireland is one by law ; urging the plea that at the time of the Reformation nearly all the Irish Bishops renounced the Papal authority, and that the present Prelates of the Established Church are indisputably the regular successors of those Bishops, the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland being only a new and rival episcopate gradually introduced by the Popes; and praying that " whatever may be the defensive measures determined on for securing the National Church against injury, the two portions of it may not be regarded or treated as having separate interests, but that one and the same legislative protection may be extended to both branches of the Church in common." On the other hand, it was argued that the relative positions of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches in England and Ireland respectively, present " no conceivable analogy," and (according tothe Globe,') that there is no more than *' an unreal and fictitious identity" between the Protestant Churches in the two countries, and that, in short, we should " make a clean breast of it by confessing in black and white, that our Irish establishment has been a great mistake, and that it really stands on very different grounds from those of the Church of England " The question is obviously one of deep importance, and would, we apprehend, prove one of the most embarrassing to Lord John Russell's Cabinet — whether viewed in the light of principle or expediency, — that the subject could present. In the midst of the commotion, the Pope had appointed an additional Bishop in Ireland, by dividing the united dioceses of Cloyne and Ross, and restoring the Bishopric of Ross to an independent footing, by a Bull creating Dr. Keane, parish priest of Middleton, its Bishop, — Dr. Murphy, the former incumbent of the joint see (at whose request the separation had been made) remaining Bishop of Cloyne, The

Tablet exults in this step in an article of which | the following is a specimen : — "While Lord John was writing, and Lord Palmfrsxon diplomatizing, and Sir Edward Sugden j Mking up old statutes, and Exeter Kail exhibiting , symptoms of an approaching demand for strait waistcoals and all England rushing round innumerable ; platfo'rmi to repel Papal aggression of English terri- J tory 1 , Dr. Murphy has teen earnestly supplicating the Pofe to make m further Papal aggression; to sever two ; united sees into two disunited sees; to unmake a bishopric that was two bodies with one head, and give each body a head to itself in future ; to circumscribe British territory, and unciicumscribe it, and mould it, and cut it, and patch it, and darn it just as he pleases ; to remodel a great part of the Comity of Cork ; and to plant a new bishop where in the memory of man there has never been a distinct and seperate t2rritorial episcopal jurisdiction. What is more, the Fope ha 6 granted this unheaid of request, he has actually made the new territorial demarkation." It will be evident from what we have thus briefly stated, which is but part of the matter supplied by the papers before us, that the movement had not only lost none of its strength, but that it was drawing to it new circumstances of a very exciting character. Several public appointments of colonial interest were announced. The Gazette of Jan. 27 contains the re-appointment of Sir C. A. Fitzroy, as Governor-in-( hief of New South Wales, and his appointment as Governor-in- j Chief of Van Diemen's Land, Victoria, and South Australia, and as Governor-General of all the colonies of Australia, including Western Australia. In the same Gazette, Sir W. T. Denison is re-appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, and Sir H. E. F. | Young, Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia ; and Charles Joseph Latrobe, Esq., is I appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria Sir James Emfrson Tennent had been appointed Governor of St. Helena.... J. Y. Drysdale, Esq., had been appointed Colonial Secretary, and R. G. M'Hugii, Esq., Colonial Treasurer of St. Lucia Charles Justin r McCarthy, Esq., had been appointed Colonial Secretary of Ceylon. Rumour said that this last appointment was very distasteful to Lord John Russell, but insisted on by Earl Grey. Dr. Field, the present Bishop of Newfoundland, was to succeed to the Bishopric of Nova Scotia, and the Rev. Ernest Hawkins, 8,D., was to be the new liishop of Newfoundland. . Lord Uedlsd ale's election to the Chairmanship of Committees in the House of Lords was certain, Lord Wharncuffe having retted from the contest. . . .The Order of the Garter was to be conferred on the Marquis of Noemanby, in consideiation, says the Times oi "his important services as Ambassador in Paris, and in several other high offices of fctate." The " Crystal Palace" was nearly in a stage ready for the reception of articles intended for exhibition, although the elaborate decorations and the fixing of the machinery, as well as a vast variety of business details, remained to be accomplished. The Executive Committee had taken possession of their offices within the premises. An impression having got abroad that the date for opening the Exhibition had been postponed, the Committee had formally notified that it would certainly open on the Ist of May. The question of how to regulate the admission of " the world's people" was exciting much discussion. Mr. Paxton had written to Lord John Russell urging that, after the first fortnight, and with the exception of Wednesday in each week, entrance should be without any payment whatever. " I ask," he says, " for the working men of England a free entry into the structure dedicated to the world's industry,—free as the light that pervades it." And as respects foreign visitors, he would shew in like manner a •« cosmopolitan spirit" towards "the whole family of man, who have been invited to come and participate in the first banquet the world has ever dedicated to peaceful industry and to intellectual triumphs."

The realization of the expectations long since expressed by geologists that gold would be found in considerable quantities in New South Wales, is an event of so much magnitude, and fraught with probable results of so much interest to the Australasian colonies generally, that we have deemed it right to place before our readers at once the fullest information afforded by the Sydney papers on the subject, rather than condense it into any summary of our own. We accordingly give in our other columns copious extracts, containing all the facts of any importance, and the most noteworthy of the opinions published on the subject. It will be seen that the precious metal had actually been found in the Bathurst district, not in mere particles, but even in large lumps, and that thexe is only too much reason to apprehend that the gold field will prove, if not so abundantly productive as the California mines, yet sufficiently attractive to make the thoughtful observer tremble for the consequences, which may result to New South Wales primarily, but also to the neighbouring colonies, from a temptation, the strength and eyil of which the experience of California (to name no remoter instances) fearfully attests. It is to be hoped, however, that as the Government there possesses powers of counteracting, ©i at least restricting the mischief, which did not exist in California, those powerswill be exercised with energy, and with that promptitude on which their successful employment must mainly depend. We content ourselves for the present with commending to the atten-

tion of our readers the judicious suggestions and remarks in the letter signed " Viator" and the article which we transfer from the Herald* The distracting and injurious influences of the discovery was. already felt in a wide-spread unsettling of men's minds, and a disturbing of ordinary business. Many had already gone to Bathurst, and many more were preparing to abandon the pursuits of quiet and remunerative industry in the headlong chase after the treasures of the gold-field. The commercial and market reports in the Herald of the 17th ult., contain several striking evidences of this. " The market being very unsettled (in consequence of the advices from the Bathurst district) we refrain from giving quotations, as having a tendency to mislead — prices are advancing." Again — "the great excitement has produced a temporary panic amongst shippers of produce to England." And, once more, — "In regard of Flour, such is the excited state of the market, consequent upon the news from Bathurst, which has given rise to considerable speculation, that it is utterly impossible to give a quotation. £25 has been offered and refused : the millers in fact declined to make sales this afternoon." Here is an ominous foretaste of what may be looked for. Dependent as to a considerable extent we unfortunately and unnecessarily are on Sydney for a supply of flour, which New Zealand could more than sufficiently produce for itself, we shall too probably feel the effects in the price of this article especially, if the excitement should go forward.