British Extract. LORD STANLEY AND THE COLONIES.

New Zealander, Volume I, Issue 50, 16 May 1846, Page 3

British Extract. LORD STANLEY AND THE COLONIES.

The storm which raged during the entire of the last session, with lespectUo.'New Zealand, has scarcely subsided into a calm, when again another colonial huincane threatens to disturb the political hemisphere. Now,' the cause of commotion is Lord Stanley's treatment of ihe people of Van. Dietnen's Land, to whom it seems he has been bending ships, withfull cargoes, of the gieatest villains niihangedithat could be picked oiu of the iilth and rubbish. of our gaols. Of this dispute, the public knows very little as yet. All we can glean about. it, is this; that for some unknown cause, Van«Dieinen's Land has seemed evil in the eyes of the Chief Secre'ary j and consequently he has detet mined that it shall feel the full measure of his 'official vengeance. Lord Stanley is the petted child of fortune. He is Loid Brougham, born to high rank, and an immense fortune ; and he can do in the maturity of his manhood, and the full vigour of his intellectual powers, all that capricious mischief, of which Loid Brougham in the decay of his powers, and the senility of) ears, can but feebly attempt on a narrow sphere, to imitate. No one likes to quanel with Lord Brougham, because, though his lordbhip can scarcely bite, he has a feattul loud voice— but no ministry, that is not tired of office, will venture into a collision with Lord Stanley, who can bark better, and bite more deeply than Lord Brougham, and who is besides the stalwart son of an octagenarian father. To light with Lord Stanley now, is to take out at least a thirt)-one )eais' lease of enmity, that knows no pause, feels no compunction, and that is so actively hostile that U requires some haplebs subject, on which it may fostei its tooth. To quarrel with Lord Brougham is to quanel with a man of whom it has been proved, that he may be shuffled out of an administration and yet Ins. enmity despised } but the veiy opposite is the case with Lord Stanley. As Whig Colonial Secretary, he quarrelled with the Whigs, oi the Whigs with him M* never abated a jot of his enmity, and his energetical hostility, until he turned out the W lgs, brought in the Tories, and became Tor) Colonial toecretary. Lord Stanley is the master of Lord Brougham in talk— a raie qualification ; but he has that which Lord Brougham has not— birth, rank, an historical name, and with them a pi nicely estate in land. Thus it is that we see the Toi ies take the poor service* of Lord Brougha .1, and give him nothing in exchange— scarcely even thanks— whilst they feel that Lord Stanley and his mad pranks — his land-law in New Zealand, his slave importations in Van Diemen's Land — are breaking in upon their iranquihty, weakening their power, and lessening their influence. Sull they cannot parf with him } because to do

so wonld be the preliminary step to their being obliged to send in their resignations to Her Majesty — resignations of which we have not the smallest doubt " Her Majesty would be graciously pleased to accept." The power of the aristocracy—the land -aristocracy — in this country, was never so strongly demonstrated as in the case of Lord Stanley. As Secretary for Ireland, he forced it to the brink of revolt. As Secretary for the Colonies, he has compelled Canada to rebel. As Secretary he has given an impetus to eventsin New Zealand, which brought disgrace upon the British flag, and ruin upon hundreds of British subjects ; and now, in the same situation, we find one universal outcry raised against him in Van Diemen's Land. Never was there a man more unfortunate in his policy, or more fortunate in his personal position. He is supported by those by whom he is feared, and it is in vain for those who abhor his conduct to exclaim against it ; for he is an aristocrat, and our ministry lives on the breath of the oligai chy. Such is English government in the nineteenth century ! — News of the World.

The Oregon Question.— The noise about the Oregon territory is plainly increasing in the Unired States; but notwithstanding the swell of clamour, there will be no serious consequences Irom it. They who will ultimately decide the question well know that, to the vStdtes, war— aye, even one twelvemonth's campaign— would bring ruin and speedy dissolution to the Commonwealth, and this danger they will not incur for the sake of the Oregon territory, which is of justasliitle worth to the trans-Atlantic republic as to ourselves. Goldsmith (we think, it is in the 4 ' Citizenof the World")indignantly denounces the sin and folly of Great Britain and France carryiug on a destructive war about " a few acres of snow in Canada." Great Britain and France, however, might in the middle of the last century commit such a folly with the assurance, that as old established, powerful, V/ell bampacted, and powerful states, they were at least sale at home. The Uuited States, however, have none af these assurances— they do not constitute an old or compact, or even a populous state, lor the mass of their people is reduced to a fourth of its numerical power by the vast extent of territory over which it is spread, and a sixth of the population is composed of implacable enemies*— indelibly marked as enemies— that is, of black slaves. And, beside sweeping their ships from every sea, and leaving them without a seaport, the war which their bullies pretend to threaten would eveuiually come home to their own doors; and what is to be the prize of this war— a few thous>aud square miles of snow ? Not so much ; some thousand of miles of terra incognita. Democratical absurdity will go a great way, it will not go quite so far as encountering risks so gre it for an object so contemptible. But if the Oregon territory is so little worth a war to acquire it, it may be asked, is it not as little worth defending ? We answer, No; and the real motive of the American clamour will explain the reason of our answer. The real motive ot the republic is hatred and jealousy of England. They do not Want the Oregon territory for themselves, for they have already ten times as much land as they can occupy, and this western divkion presents no advantage for cultivation equal to the advantages possessed by the boundless wastes of the interior. They want to wrest the Oregon from us, not that they themselves may have it, but that we may not have it. They witness with angry and jealous eyes the rapid progress of population and of general improvement in the Canadas and other British provinces. They know that a direct and open communication with the Pacific would infinitely accelerate the advances in wealth and strength of their northern neighbours — therefore they want to cut us off from the western coast. This is their object, and it shows the importance to some extent of the Oregon territory to us, however worthless in other respects, for " a right of way" is equally valuable, whether the path be over rocks or sterile sand, or the richest and best cultivated ground. The threatened movement is aggressive in all respects, aggressive in motive, and aggressive in fact; and aggression may be wisely resisted even though there is nothing valuable to defend. There is another good reasou why the United States should not go to war for the Oregon — they cannot conquer it, and what is more they know that they cannot conquer it. The very same circumstances to which they owe their own success in 4< the war of independence," namely the distance of the aggressor from his resources, and the wild inhospitality of a boundless desert country, must defeat them in any attempt upon the Oregon. With the possession of Canada , and the friendship of Mexico, and the complete command of the sea, Great Britain would, for all military purposes, be much nearer to the Oregon that the United States are; and besides we doubt not that in the particular locality Great Britaiu would take up a merely defensive position; which is in all similar cases of war, as it is always in law, the mehor easus. Jl is useless and perhaps mischievous, to bestow many words upon a contingency which almost certainly will never arise except from absolute insanity at the other side of the Atlantic, for at this side of that broad ocean men have grown wiser than to go to war for the sake of war — wiser, indeed, than >o squander their wealth aud their blood when they can possibly avoid it. Let the rabble of the American democracy howl their fill. We shall not go to war until they force us to it, and then upon their own heads be the result of a contest which they will undertake without one ally, without money, and without credit, against certainly one of the two most powerful nations in the world. Let them look to it. Vw viutis! — sianda«d.

War Superseded. — We have received a letter from James O'Conner of Mulberry-street, in this town, whose po'ver of desu uctiveness, aecoiding to his own account of it, beats Captain Warner and his famous " long range " altogether out of the tielil. The Captain if we remember right, thinks it a great thing to blow up a line-of-battle ship some five or six miles distant ; but Mr. O'Conner announces that he has invented an instrument of war, with which, assisted by nine men, he will undertake, in the event of a war with America, to enter and destroy the strongest fortification they have, or to attack, disperse, and destroy asolidsquare of 100,009 men. Mr. O'Connor dates his invention so far back as 1831, and says that he has been in correspondence with the Duke of Wellington and other official personages on the subject. For the rest he is quite as mysterious as Dapt. Warner ; and therefore, we can only say, that if any such machine has been invented, we shall be very glad of it, for it will uuquestionably soon lead to the abolition, or rather prevention, of all war between civilized human, beings.*— Liverpool Mercury.

"Sacrilege" Extraordinay.— A miscreant, in the dress, and assuming the appearance of a "Lay Brother," took up his station in the front of Clarendon-street Chapel, on Sunday, armed with a plate for the reception of the "Tribute j" and being more eloquent in action, for he uttered' no sound, and more active in bis, motions, for he was the first to approach every new comer, than his associates, it was soon manifest, by the | appearance of his platter, that success attended his mission of charity and love. Envy was generated in the minds of some of the rival collectors; and, whether to satisfy an idle curiosty, or with a view of emulating the example set, one of them asked the name of the ward which boasted of so zealous an agent ? The "Lay Brother" coolly replied "that he did not appear there m a representative capacity, havinga wholesome horror of the provisions of the 'Convention Act,' before his eyes, that he was "collecting on his own account; and "suiting the action to the word,'' heinstantly emptied the contents of the plate into the capacious side-pocket of a long black surtout, and bid defiance to the threats of those by whom he was surrounded, and who appeared shocked at his blasphemous exemplication of the "church appropriation clause" thus reduced to practice. — Straightway, the "miscreant" was d tagged off to the head police-office, whence he was transmitted for examination to the magistrates in Collegestreet ; Clarendon Chapel (where the alleged robbery had been committed) being in that division. On being brought up, Mr. Tyndall, the sitting magistrate, asked, "Who is the ptosecutor in this case, and what is the nature of the charge ?" Some hesitation having been evinced, the prisoner took advantage of the silence, and became on the instant his own prosecutor, and with all the simplicity and all the force of truth, preferred the following charge to himself:— "Please your worship, I wanted a few pounds for a particular purpose j and not choosing to work, and not being inclined to earn it, I thought it would be a very handy way just to go and hold a plate at Claren-don-street Chapel, and collect it for myself, from such as were willing to give it voluntarily. The people were very kind and good, I made no misiepresentation,riorany representation at all — having never opened my lips. What I got I put in my pocket, and there it is at this moment. I had as good a right to collect a trifle for myself, as the others had to collect for themselves, or for Mr.O'Connell, or Mr. Anybody cUe ; and I con tend for it that I committed no crime whatsomever." Mr. Tyndall having asked the paities who brought the "miscreant" in custody what they had to say to the statement he had just made, and they admitted that his story was perfectly true, the worthy alderman declared that he had no jurisdiction in the matter, for that no violation of the law had been committed and that therefore the man must be discharged. And the money ? He must keep that too, continued the worthy aldermanj(all alderman are "worthy" by courtesy,) unless some one proves a legal right to it. No such right being proven, the "miscreant" walked off scot free, with the trifle of change in his pocket. There's no use in "Bell, book, and candle," if this fellow don'l catch it. We beg to assure our readers that the case is literally true in every particular. — Dublin Evening Mail.

Horrible Discovery. — The Univers states that some masons in demolishing a hovise in the Rue St. Nicholas d'Antil discovered nine human skeletons. Professional men who have inspected those remains, believe that the remotest crime (for the skeletons were those of murdered persons no doubt) must have been committed 15 years since, and the most recent 15 months ago. The person who inhabited the house, which has for many years been known as a house of ill-fame, has been arrested.

Popery in theMetropolitanSee. — We announce with the deepest regret, and upon authority which, though we cannot name, we consider indisputable, that one of the Chaplains of the Bishop of London is on the point of being admitted into the Romish Church ! Surely such an event as this will make our too indulgent diocesan at length exclaim — "Nonommihus dormio '." — Church and Slate Gazette. The Rev. Frederick W. Faber, M.A., late Fellow of University College, Oxford, and Rector of Elton, near Stilton, Hants, has resigned his preferment, and conformed to the Roman Catholic Church.— Morning Post. Several members of the congregation of the Rev. W. U. Richards, successor to Mr. Oakeley, minister of Margeret-street Chapel, have recently entered the Church of Rome. The colliery population, generally, in this district, are in the most prosperous condition. All hands are employed, and. more are wanted in some quarters. The hewers, according to a con - temporary, are getting from £3 to £4 per fortnight.— A ewcastle Journal.

Glass Manufacture in Ireland. — A new company, comprisingmany of our wealthiest citizens and several of the principal merchants of Dublin, has been established, under the designation of the "National Glass Company of Ireland," with a capital of £150,000. The directors lately completed a contract for the purchase of extensive concerns at Kingsend, near this city, formerly occupied with the manufacture of glass. A new and wholesome spirit of enterprise has arisen in this country, and in this case it is applied to the j manufacture of an article for which Ireland pos- i sesses every facility. The abolition of the Ex- , cisc duty has removed the only obstacle to the successful working of this manufacture in this > part of the empire. An awful instance of the uncertainty of life oc- J curred on Saturday week, to Mr. Abrahams, an opulent Jew, residing at Kew-green. It appears that the unfortunate gentleman had just partaken of a hearty breakfast, and was joking with his wife about making his will, when he was seized with a fit, ard fell back'in his chair j assistance was immediately rendered, but of no effect, as life was extinct.— Watchman, No. 26. The collar of the uniform of the Royal Marines is to be blue, instead of the blue and red, as at present, from and aftei the twenty-third of April next,— English Paper Dec. 8.

HOW THE PROBABLE YIELD OFWhE/VT IS ESTIMATED. The following curious fact in speculative science is taken from the appendix to four lectures by Dr Twiss, professor of political economy at Oxford, to whom' it was furnished by Mr. Dixon, an eminent land surveyor of that' place :— "The present mode of calculating the probable yield of wheat of a given district for the coming harvest is as follows:— About the time that the wheat is blooming, generally about the beginning of June <i person u ill go round with a gauge secreted in a hollow cane, which forms a triangle when opened, and represents a certain portion of an acre of ground. This is placed over various portions of the standing crop in the best and worst parts of the field ; the number of ears of wheat comprising within a triangle is counted, and the probable quantity of grain is taken into calculation according as the spring is wet or dry. On the former supposition, the grain is likely to shrink ; on the latter, to harden and come out plump. It may be observed, that if there has been a good general rain during the last ten days of April and the fiist ten days of May, on the average, no more wet is required for, wheat. An expert guager will form a very accurate estimate of the probable pioduce of a given district by this method."

An Australian's Notion of his State afi er Death. — Mr. Moorhouse, who has taken great pains, in his inquiries among the natives around Adalaide upon questions ot tins nature, states that they believe in a soul or spirit (itpitukatyaj j separate and distinct altogether from the body, which at death goes to the west, to a laige pit, where the souls of all men go. When all are dead, the bouls will return to their former places of residence, go to the graves of the forsaken bodies, and inquire, "Are these the bodies we formerly inhabited? The bodies will reply, — " We are not dead, but still living. The bodies and souls will not be re-united ; the former will live in trees during the day, and at night alight on the ground, and eat grubs, lizards, frogs and kangaroo iats>, but not vegetable food of any description. The souls are never again to die, but will remain about the size of a boy eight years of age.—The most «ingular belief is (said also to be general )is that white people of Australia are the souls and bodies of the black natives, who have risen from the dead, and revisit the scenes and persons familiar to them iv the former state of being. But the aborigines aie quite astonished that the new comers do not seem to recognise either the scene or the persons — not know even their parents or their children — or the place where they lived and died. — They suppose, however that the change must effect an entire oblivion of former things. — Eyre's Journal.

Sailors Supported by Sharks.-— ln the Times of the 11th instant some particulars were given relative to the upsetting ot'the slave schooner, Felicidade, on board w hicli the massacre of a prize crew had been perpetrated. That vessel was recaptured by the Star, and sent to Sierra Leone, m charge of Lieutenant Wilson and nine men. Whilst on the passage, during a heavy squall, the schooner went over, iilled and sank, so as only to leave part of her bow rail above water. When the squall passed the whole of the crew were found clinging to the bowrail. Some expert divers attempted to extract provisions from the vessel, but without success } and nothing but death stared them in the face, as the schooner was gradually sinking. Lieutenant Wilson ascertained that there were three common knives among the party' and it was resolved to make a raft of the main-boom and gaff, and such other floating materials as remained above water. — These they secured by such ropes as could be cut and unrove from the rigging, and a small quantity of cordage was retained to make good any defect they might sustain by the working of the spars : a small topgallant studding sail for a sail and upon this misetable float the ten persons made sail for the coast of Africa, distant 200 miles, without rudder, oar, compass, provisions, or water. Being almost naked, and washed by e»ery wave, their sufferings were very great. Famished for food and drink scorched by a burning sun during the day, and chilled with cold during the night, they thus remained during twenty days. Delirium and death relieved the raft of part of its load of misery, two blacks were the first to sink under their sufferings. Showers ot rain occasionally fell ; they caught some water in their little sail, which they drank, and put some into a small keg that had floated out of the vessel. The sea was almost always breaking over the spars of the raft which vras surrounded bj. several voracious sharks. The famishing sailors actually caught with a bowling knot a shark eight feet in length with there bare hands, and hauled it upon the raft ; they killed it, drank the blood, and ate part of the flesh, husbanding the remainder. In this way three other sharks were taken, and upon these sharks the poor fellows managed to prolong their lives till picked up (in sight of the land) in what may be termed the very Zero of living misery. Lieutenant Wilson and four seamen survived and recovered their strength. Order and discipline were maintained upon the raft ; fortitude, forethought, a reliance upon divine Providence, and good conduct, enabled these Englishmen to surmount such horrible sufferings, whilst the Kroomen tmd Portuguese sunk under them .

The Criterion of a Good Cow. She's long in the face, she's fine in the horn ; She'll quickly get fat, without cake or corn ; She's clear in her jaw, and full in her chine, She's heavy in flank, and wide in her loin ; She's broad in her rib, and long in her rump, A straight and flat back, with never a hump ; She's wide in her hips, and calm in her eyes ; She's fine in her shoulders, and thin in her thighs ! She's light in her neck, and small in her tail; She's wide in her breast, and good at the pail ; She's fine in her bone, and silky of skin ; She's a grazier's without, and a butcher's within.