The New=Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 388, 2 January 1850, Page 2

The New=Zealander.

Ke just and fear not: Let all the ends tbou aiius't at, be thy Country's, Thy God's, and Truth's.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2, 1850.

1849—1850. Since we last addressed our readers, one of the marked transition points in human life has heen experienced by them and us ; — one "year has finished its course, and another has come into existence. Old 1849 is gone, — gone as fully and irrevocably as any of the " years before the flood ;" — its week-days, and the fifty-lwo Sabbaths which it brought us, all have borne their report to Heaven respecting every one of us ; and Young 1850 is here, with its beaming countenances, and joyous hopes, and rosecoloured anticipations, and — its dark forebodings, and wincing hearts, and treasured up stores of deep disappointment to many, which are just as sure as if they had already occurred. We should be ashamed to affect — but we should be far more ashamed iofed — the pseudo-philosophical indifference which would be regardless of the event. At the close of 1848, the New Zealander admonished its readers on this subject therefore have

precedent for these remarks; but we have what is far better than precedent — an impressive consciousness of individual duty and xesponsibility. The year just ended has not been marked by many public occurrences in our own colony, to call for special comment in a general retrospect. A few matters may, we think, be advantageously noticed, but the references to them, which we intended to make to-day, have given way to the news received by the Wesleyan Missionary brig. We shall another day lay them before ourreaders. Rut inEuropean history, the year has been indeed eventful. The summary of intelligence which even our present number contains, may abundantly prove this. The very words — France — Rome — Hungary— recall facts, which mark 1849, as, we do not hesitate to say, (amidst all its seeming indecision and uncertainties,) one of the most decisive years in its probable results that Enropean history has known. " Multitudes, multitudes in the Valley of decision." Our remote position necessarily restricts our observations heie, by reminding us of our ignorance of what may or may not have taken place before now. We have heard of vicissitudes in long established and seemingly secure governments, which in their rapidity and in their contrast with previous conditions seemed more like the '■ transformations in a harlequinade, than real events; and it would be presumptuous to speculate on what may be the actual state of ! Europe even while we write. But we do know, that there is One who presides at the helm of affairs, and who holds the hearts both of Kings and People in his - hands ; and we do know, and with humble gratitude make the acknowledgment, that amidst the shakings of the nations, our home-country ha 3 been preserved. Other Empires have tottered into ruins ; England has stood, — or rather has been kept standing — because the command hasr gone forth, l< Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it ; so will I do for mtj servants sake, that I may not destroy them all." It is our high privilege to be connected with a nation so morally and religiously great ; may we prove not unworthy of the connection ! But England has her sins, — sins crying in proportion to the light against which they are committed, and the mercies which should have moved her people to obedience. And has not this colony contributed her share to the aggre- ! gate % Are the mammon-worship t the profanity, the self-indulgence, the self-seeking, the Sabbath deseciation, the inordinate love of pleasure, the general subjection of the concerns of eternity to those of time all forgotten % They may possibly be forgotten here, but they are surely recorded above. Let us commence the new year as colonists, as citizens, as members of domestic society, as accountable men and women, in an improved spiiit. 1 To day is yetterday returned ; return'd Full power'd to cancsl. expiate, raise, adorn And re-instate us on the lock of psace. Let it not Bliare its predecessors (ate, And like its elder sister, die a fool !' f Be it our effort, in our respective spheres — whether they are of greater or lesser publicity or influence — to " redeem the time,"- or, as the word there rendered " time " means, the season, the opportunity, whether of getting or of doing good. In the diligent employment of all such means, let us " redeem," or buy back lost time, — from sin, from the world,from covetousness, from indolence, from levity, from vain amusement, from unedifying, if not perverting, company and associations. Let us act in the spirit of the fine lines of W. H. Longfellow, (an American poet, whose genius is only now beginning to obtain in Europe the appreciation it merits) —in his beautiful « Psalm of Life." " Life it real 1 life if earnest ! And the grave is not its goal ; Dust thou art, to dust retumest, Wai not written of the soul. " Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way, But to act, that each to-morrow Finds vi farther thau to-day. " Truit no future, howe'er pleasant ! Let the dead past bur/ its dead ! Ait ! act in the living preseiit, Heart within, and God o'er head ! " Let us, then, be up and doing, Wiih a heart for any fate ; S ill achieving, still put suing, Learn to labour, and to wait.'*

By the John fVeslcy, we have received Sydney papers to the 1 9th of December, and English news to the 31st of August. The Queen and the Royal family continued to enjoy the quiet of their beautiful Highland retreat at Balmoral, where it was supposed they would remain until the latter end of September. Lord John Russell had succeeded Sir George Grey as the Minister in attendance ; the noble Premier is described as looking " care-worn, dejected, and sickly." On the Sabbath, her Majesty attended divine worship at the Parish Church (Presbyterian), of Craithie. It was expected that the Royal party would pass a few days at a small shooting lodge, on the banks of Loch Muick, at the base of Lochnagar. The friends of Ireland will rejoice that Her Majesty left that interesting part of her dominions with the feelings which dictated the following communication to the Lord Lieutenant, which is so well calculated to deepen on

the heart of the susceptible Irish people the j impression of devoted attachment to the Queen's person, of which so many evidences were exhibited during her Majesty's — only too short, (but, we are happy to hear, likely to be soon repeated) — visit to their shores. Royal Yacht, August 13, 1849; My Lord, — It is with sincere pleasure that I perform the duty which devolves upon me, in obedience to her Majesty's command, of expressing to your Excellency, at the close of her Majesty's Visit to li eland, the heart-felt satisfaction which she has derived from her reception in that portion of the United Kingdom, and from the gratifying evidence j which umirersally presented itself from the t ; me her Majesty's arrival at Cork to that of her departure from Belfast, of warm and devoted loyalty and attatchrncnt to her throne and person,| and of affection for every branch of her family. The circunntanres ' winch have attended this visit cannot fail to strengthen the deep in'erest which, your Excellency is aware, has long been felt by her Majesty in all that concerns the banpines* and welfare of her Ir in people. He* Majesty rejoiced to observe among the niulti- i tudes who enthusiaitically greeted her appearance the absence of all distinction of class and party ; and she indulges ths hope that the feelings elicited on this ocension may tend to promote among all her faithful subjects in Ireland that union of heart and affection which is essential to the prosperity of their common country. I, am further cominanJed to assure you of the satisfaction wiih which her Majerty remarked the general regtrd and esteem enteitained for your Excellency, which have been so justly earned by your able, judicious and impartial discharge of the high trust confided. I am, with great truth and regard, my lord, your Excellency's obedient servant, (Signed) G. Grey. We observe that the Queen's appteciation of Lord Clarendon's merits, will be further manifested by his^ speedy elevation to a Marquisate. We regret to learn that the ravages of Cholera continued. The last weekly report of the health of London which has reached us, is for the week ending the 18th of August, in which there were 1/230 deaths from Cholera, besides 1000 deaths from other diseases. The daily return to the Board of Health, for the 30th of August, reported 232 deaths in London from Cholera ; 258 in the country ; and 12 in Scotland, making a total of 502, besides 62 deaths from dysentery. A day was about to ! be publicly appointed for special prayer and humiliation on the occasion. There is important intelligence affecting the concerns of the Church of England ; and also intelligence of important disciplinary steps taken in the Wesleyan Church. Both these subjects have sufficient public interest to induces us to explain them at some length, when we can command more space than to day is at our disposal. Meanwhile we may just state for the information of those who have attended to recent ecclesiastical movements at home, that the Court of Arches has decided against the Rev. Mr. Gorham, in the case Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter, thus affirming, on an authority which can be set aside only by the House of Lords, that Baptismal Regeneration is the doctrine of the Established Church -.—and that, on the " Fly Sheet " question, the Wesleyan Conference has expelled from its body, the Revs. J. Eve-, rett, Samuel Dunn, and W. Griffith, jun. The ex- King and Queen of the French (now simply the Count and Countess De Neuilly,) paid a visit to the Lord Mayor of London, at the Mansion House on the 23rd of August. A number of the most distinguished citizens were invited to meet them ; and the Lord Mayor, in proposing the health of Louis Philippe, chai acterized him as " a man who could not but be illustrious under any circumstances, adverse or prosperous, by which he was sur« rounded." The crowd outside manifested a generous sympathy towards the fallen monarch. A murder of extraordinary atrocity had produced a great sensation in London. A Customhouse officer named Patrick O'Connor, who was possessed of considerable property, had been in the habit of visiting frequently at Bermondsey, at the house of Frederick Manning, (a person recently discharged with damaged character from the service of the Great Western Railway,) and Maria, his wife, or reputed wife, a " Swedish lady " of great personal attractiveness. O'Connor was missing for some days from his duty in the Docks, and soon after it was discovered that Manning and his wife had deserted their house. The police, in examining their apartments, noticed traces of recent removal in the flags of one of them, and on taking up these flags, the body of O'Connor was found in a square hole, with the legs tied up to make it fit the receptacle, and covered with lime, which had consumed much of the corpse. The deliberate barbarity with which the deed had been perpetrated was shown, amongst other revolting circumstances, by the horrible fact that the hole was dug and the lime purchased more than six weeks before, so that the deceased must have been sitting nightly in social intercourse with his murderers, over the grave thus prepared for him. By the efforts of the detective police, (whose ingenuity is as well known as it is admirable), the female fugitive was traced from her house to a cabriolet, from it to a railway terminus, and thence to Edinbnrgh. A description of her was immediately communicated by the electric telegraph to the Superintendent of Police in that city, where the information was acted on so promptly and successfully, that — by perhaps the most amazing achievement yet recorded of the electric

telegraph,— intelligence of her arrest was received back in London within an hour after the transmission of the first message ! At the moment when the officer of justice entered her lodgings, she was engaged in t reading in a newspaper the narrative of the murder ! A variety of property known to have been in the possession of the deceased was found on her person and in her luggage. It was feared that Manning had escaped, but the Times of the 31st of August announces that he had been arrested the previous day in Jersey. So great was the excitement an the subject that, on a supposition that the fugitives had sailed for New York, two powerful war-steamers were placed at the disposal of the police, and one of them, the Fire Queen, actually ceased and overtook the American packet-ship Victoria, in which two persons of the name of Manning* were passengers - t — of course, not the parties sought for. Such is the substance of the accounts given in very copious details in the London journals. The Times, in commenting or this case, says, "The black chronicles ot crime keep pace with the fatalities of this eventful season." An additional evidence of this is furnished in the confession of a woman, Rebecca Smith, found guilty at the Wiltshire Summer Assizes, of the wilful murder of her infant child, who acknowledged to the Chaplain of the gaol, that she had previously murdered seven others, of her children in the same manner. We have, at the same time, accounts of the convictions of Mary Anne Deering, at Lewes, who destroyed her husband and two sons, and made the attempt with a third, for the lucre of the fees from a Burial Society ; and of Mary Ball, at Coventry, for the murder of her husband, through jealousy. An extraordinary case is stated, which, we suppose, must be referred to religious monomania, rather than to a criminal purpose. The Rev. Richard Chapman, chaplain of the Coventry Goal, held the hand of this Mary Bali., whilst a prisoner in the condemned cell,. over the flame of a candle, until it was severely burnt, — with a view, according to bis own explanation of his motives, of giving her a notion of what the pain of hell is. The Magistrates had suspended him from his office until the next general Quart \t Session, when he would probably be finally removed from it.

An occurrence took place at Leghorn on the 16th of August, which might have led to a serious misunderstanding between the chief of the British squadron there and the Austrians. Some of the boats of H.M.S. BeUcro~ phon, which had been sent for a supply of water, were seized on their getting, with their guns mounted, inside the Mole, and the officer* and crews wei'e kept prisoners for two hours, ■< when they were released, but in art ungracious manner. Capt. B^ynes, determined 1 to maintain the homur of the British Flag, immediately demanded full reparation and apology from Baron Wimpfel, Commander-in-Chief of the Austrian army, then stationed at Florence, and in the meantime made every preparation to enforce his demands. The result was that the Austrian Commander conceded all that Captain Baynes desired, and sent an officer from Florence with an order that the boats of the Belteropkon, on coming into the Mole, should be received by the guards with arms presented, and band playing " God Save the Queen," a salute of 21 guns being fired at the, same time in honour of the British flag.

With a deep regret, in which all lovers of human freedom, and all who ha^e paid intelligent attention to the prospects of European politics will participate, we learn that the Hungarian struggle for independence has been crushed beneath the combined brute-force of Austria and Russia. The event was almost ' as unexpected as it was disastrous ; but there seems no doubt of its certainty. General ' Georgey, with a large part of his army, of from 30,000 to 40,000 men, had surrendered completely to Field-Marshal Paskiewuch, and had himself become a prisoner of war. The contest might therefore be regarded as ended, and the hopes of liberty, for which the patriots of Hungary so nobly contested, as. blighted and cast down, inasmuch as Geougey, wha had been invested by the late Hung irian Diet with its own powers, had submitted in the name of all persons in arms against the Austrian army* His own address to General Klafka was as follows : " Gei:e *al,— The die is cait; our hopei are crushed I Oar power has been crushed by the bouse of Haptburg* Lorraia", tided by the armies of Russia. The struggles and the sacrifices of our great aation were fruit* less, and it would be madnets to persevere. General, you will think my actions at Yillagosh mysterious and even incredible. I wtll explain ray motives to you, and to the world. I am a Hungarian. I love my country above all things, and I followed the dictate* o' my own heart, which urged me to restore peace to my poor an I ruined country, and thus to lave it from perdition. General, — b, virtus of the power of Director, whioh the nation conferred on me by the (dii« I led) Parliament, I summon you to ful oiv my example, an), by ao immediate surrender of the fortress of Coinor.u to end a war of which tbe protraction would for ever crush the greatness and the gljry of the Hungamn nation.— Gros Wardein, August 14.-— Arthur Gborgey." Dark suspicions of treachery in the matter had been hinted, but no evidence to warrant the imputation of such consummate baseness had been adduced. We shall, however, watch with lively interest whatever may yet transpire respecting this event; which we advisedly cha-

racterise as — almost, if not altogether — the most calamitous in itself, and fraught with the greatest perils to the best interests of Europe of all that have taken place during the political earthquakes of the last two years. In Rome we look for nothing but confusion at present, and " confusion worse confounded" meets our view. The Pope (like many others, who are no Popes, and who make no pretensions to infallibility) wishes to have his own way m everything ; while the French t j ie chivalrous heroes of Algeria and Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands— politely intimate, in nearly so many words, that as His Holiness found it convenient to avail himself of their swords, he must now make up his mind to endure their dictation. We take the following extract just as it appears in two or three of the papeis now before us : NoTn ADDRESSED TO TUB POPE BY THE FIIRNCH Govbrnmcnt — lii a no'e which wm yi?sterd«y dcs patched to Gaeta the Ministry decVe» to the Pope that General Oudinot has exceeded his instructions in giving up »he full powers with wlmh he was invested, to the Commission of Carlinals. and particularly for having the air of legalising by hit silence all that ihe Commission has done since the day of its installation. The French Government, adds the note, consders it its duty to warn his Holiness that France and iis representatives «t Rome will reserve to themselves the lrigh hand in all the acts of the government ; that in the event of the Pope, his advisers, or any of the intervening powers wishing to oppose the decision, the representatives of France have orders not to pay any attention to their protestations; and if need be, to call in the aid of the army of occupation to make the jast rights of the French Government rejected. It in obvious that we are a lonsr way off the end of this "flair. A semi-official article in the Debats speaks in terms of deep regret of the. re-actionary proceed, ings of the Papal Commissioner!. The foilawing are ihe concluding phrases :— •' We are morally responsible for what is done in such parts of the Pontifical territory as we occupy militarily; and when we see already the re-ftttablishment of certain in titutions, added to melest act* of violence ufjainst persons, we cannot allow ourselve* to be indifferent witnesses of snob a spectacle and appear to sanction i<; by our presence and by our silenre. We consider «hnt France lias fulfilled her duties towards the Papacy; she has others to perform towards the Rumans, towards the opinion of all the Italian peninsula, of all liberal Europe, and we may add towards herself. Wo cer tainly feel the deepest respect for the sovereignty of the Pope, and for his perfect independence ; we never theless think that both the one »nd the other would be very weiik without us, and that after accepting the •word ( f France, there would be no humiliation in accepting gome of her counsels." Meanwhile it is reported from Gaeta that the Pope is unwell, and presents a swollen appearance. It is conjectured that poisonous drugs have been administered to him and to M. de Courcelles. Venice was suffering fearfully from its; assailants. The Austrians "had succeeded in establishing at San Juliano pieces of 30 and 80, which was hard at work firing, and which smt projectiles to the most distant quarters," some of which were set on fire. The population of the city reduced to absolute want of tverything, had evacuated the most exposed parts of the town, and encamped near St. Marc. The latest news is that Venice capitulated on the 22nd of August. In France although there was a surface tranquillity, few regarded the state of things as settled. The country, we are told, "is so depressed, mated illy and morally, that the very efforts to restore her, threaten to be mischievous in their first effects " The " Peace Congress" had been held at Paris, and Victor Hugo (who presided), Mr. Cobden, and others, amused ihemselves and their hearers by romantic speeches about a millennial state, — the advent of which they are not the men to hasten much. > Mehemet Ah died at Alexandria on the 2nd of August.

Sydney was in the turmoil of a contested election for the seat in Council vacated by the resignation of Mr. Lowe. The nomination took place on the 18th ult., when Mr. Bland, Mr. Wilshtre, and Mr. IJogue, were proposed. The Herald recommended Mr. Bogue as " the least objectionable" of the candidates. Two preliminary meetings had been called to make arrangements for a public meeting respecting the proposed change in the Consti • tution of the Colony ; but both had turned out complete failures. The Bishop of Sydney had finally revoked the Rev. F. T. C, Russell's licence, and a Public Meeting had been held at which it was agreed to present an address of sympathy and a more substantial testimonial to the reverend gentleman. We shall return to the intelligence communicated in the papers now before us.

fl^g" The B*nd of H. M 58th Regiment, by the permistioaof Lieut, Col. Wynyard.C.B., will perform in the Groundi in fiont of the old Government House on to-morrow evening, from four till six o'clock.

)verture Op. " L».« Piamens" Auber rtelanga Op " Lbs HugenoU " Meyarbeer luartette Op '•' I Puntani" Bel'ini )lio. c Car. Op '' Beatrice de Fenda" .... Bttllini Valtz " The Brandhoffen" Strauss j ui ,drilic " The Chinese " Jullien I'olka "The Albion Schotlisch " ....... T rt ylor ion X «' My Beau iful Rhiue " , > ■ long ♦' Molly Bawn " BaU«

PROGRAMME.