SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1851.

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 527, 3 May 1851, Page 2

SATURDAY, MAY 3, 185 1.

The English summaries and extracts in the Hobart Town papers received by the Antares contain various items of December news, from which we compile the most interesting intelligence. The fourth of February had been fixed as the day on which Parliament was to meet for the despatch of business. The Queen had received in person several Addresses in condemnation of the Papal Aggression. Amongst them were those of the two Universities, that frtfm Oxford being presented by the Duke, of Wellington, and that from Cambridge by Prince Albert, who at the head of the Deputation, read it to Her Ma t jesty in his official robes as Chancellor of the University. In every case, a " most gracious answer " was returned. We haive already copied the Queen's reply to the Address from the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London ; we now subjoin that to the Address from the Court of Common Conncil, which significantly intimates a determination to maintain religious liberty in its fullest extent, and therefore to maintain " pure and spiritual" Protestantism:— Your tried and consittent adrocacy of the equal enjoyment of civil rights by all classes of your felloir■ubjecti, entitles the expression of your sentiments on the present occasion to peculiar consideration. You may be attured of my earnest desire and firm determination, under God's blessing, to maintain unimpaired the religious liberty which is ju-tly prized by the people of this country, and to uphold at its surest <>afeguard, the pure and spiritual worship of the Protestant faith, which has long been happily established in this land." Amongst the almost countless Protests against the Aggression, we select for present insertion one of a marked and special character. It was drawn up under the direction of the Archbishop of Cantkrbury* and was signed by himself, the Bishop of York, and all the English Bishops except the Bishop of Exeter, (who, as usual, crotchetty and dogmatical, preferred an Addrest worded in his own way) and the Bishop of St. Davids, to whose reasons for withholding his signature the papers before us afford no clue. As this document is second in importance to no Address on the subject which has yet been issued, we give it in full :—

To the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty. The humble address of the ArchbUhops and Bishops of the Church of England. May it please your Mnjesty.— We, the Archbiihops and underlined Biihops of the Church of England, approach your Majesty wiib sentiments of reiteration and loyalty at a time when an unwarrantable inault has been offered to the Church and to jour Mnjesty, to whom appertain! the chief government of all estates of this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil. This our country, wboie Church being a true branch of Christ's Holy Catholic Church, in which the pnre word of God is preached, and the Sacraments are duly ministered according to Christ's ordinances, is treated by the Biihop of Rome as baring been a heathen land, and is congratulated on it« restoration, after an interval of 300 years, to a place among the Churches of Christ, endom. The return of our people is anticipated to • communion the errors and corruption* of which they deliberately renounced, and which continues to maiut».n practices repugnant to _ God's word, inculcate! blasphemous fables and dangerous deceit*, and prescribes ->« necessary to salvation the belief of doctrine! grounded on no warranty of Scripture. It is part of the tame arrogant assumption, that in defiance of the law which declares that " no foreign prelate or potentate shall use and exercise any manner of power, authority, or jurisdiction, spiritual or eccleEUitical within this rain," the Bishop of Rome lit*

iretended to exercise spiritual dominion over the reople of this country; and in nominating certain Romish eccleMsstirs to particular place* or sees in England, bas reasserted h't claim of supremßcy om the fcfrwlom. and has interfered with a prenaativr constitutionally * rlongine to your Majesty alone. We com-Mer it our duty to rrrord our oni'ed protest againft thin attempt to subject our people to a spiritual tyranny from which they were freed at the Rffor^atioDj and we make our humble petition to your Ma'esiy to discountenance by all cons'ituti'»nal nieans the claims and usurpations of ilip Church o' Romft hy which rr'.igious divisions are fostered, nnd the labour of our clergy impeded in their endeavouri to diffuse the light <.f true religion amongst the people committed to 'h'ir charge — J. B Cantuar, F. El<or. C. J London, E. D -nrlra, C. R. Win-on, R. Bath and Wells, J. Linooln, C Bsns^r, G. Rochester. H. Carlisle, J. H. G'oocnrer Hnd Bristol. C. T Ri on E Salislmry. G. Peterborough, H. Worcester. J. Lichfield, A T. fhicbester, T. Ely, S. Px>n, T. Vowler, St. A^saph, J. P. Manchester, R. D. Hereford, J. Chft'ter, S. Norwich, J- Landaff. J. Sodnr und M an. Nothing definite had transpired as to the steps likely to be taken in the matter on the meeting of Parliament-, but the Giohe stated that a Bill was in preparation, on which the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, and Mr. Walseby were busily engaged. A Royal Commission was about to issue to inquire into the whole subject of the law of divorce, including both the proceedings in the Ecclesiastical Courts and those in Parliament — not merely the divorce a mensa et ihoro, but the more weighty question of the divorce a vinculo matrimonii. The whole of Her Majesty's ships that were accessible at home, were to be put out of commission in December, and then to be re-com-missioned, in order to bring into operation on J the Ist of January the new system of provisions, grog, &c. Amonst the current reports were that the Earl of Shaftesbury would resign his Chairmapsnip of Committees of the House of Lords next session, and be succeeded by Lord Redesdale; and that Sir A. B. Brooke, Bart., M.P., was about to be raised to the Peerage. The friends of the Canterbury Settlement contemplated sending out " a fleet" with the main body of the colonists — to sail on (he first of June. At a Meeting on the subject, Dr. Rowley, " Dean and Head of the Chapter of the new Diocese of Canterbury." read a long correspondence between the Council of ihe Seciety of Canterbury Colonists, and the Committee of Management of the Canterbury Association, the substance of which is embodied in the following resolution of the Joint Committee : "That tbe measure* of both parties shall be so framed ai to promote and facilitate the proposal simultaneous departure of a large body of colonists in the first week of June, 1851. In th<J meanwhile every purchaser of land, intrusting the selection thereof to the association, will be entitled, on reaching the set tleimnt either before or along wi'h the main body emigrating in June next, to exchange the land to ■ selected on hi* behalf lor other land to be selected by hitmelf, or, il he should prefer it, to keep or sell luch land, and, in any case, t<> jurcbase, by paying for it in the settlement, a second quantity of laud equal to the first, with the Fame privileges of pasturage and prior right of purchase, ai by the present ternat of purchase are secured to all buyers in proportion to their freehold purchasers. It is to be understood tnat the rights of transfer and nomination secured to purchasers by the present terms of purchase will be io no degree diminifhed with iegard to exchanges or second purchases in the manner above set forth."] The arrangements gave "entire satisfaction" to the meeting. In the course of the proceedings, the Rev. B. Wynter read the draft of a despatch to Bishop Selwyn, stating the ecclesiastical arrangements for the Colony as contemplated by the Association. We are not informed what these arrangements were ; but Mr. Adjierley read extracts from a letter from Bishop Selwyn in which his Lordship said " that he was preparing a plan of church government by which he hoped to be released from the position of a church despot, a position which was as contrary to his inclinations as to his principles.".... Lord Lyttflton took occasion to advert to the anticipation that Canterbury would obtain a representative constitution as a distinct Province, declaring that it would be the business of the Association, and of himself in particular, to press that subject on the attention of the Colonial Secretary, and of the Government as soon as possible." Altogether the " Canterbury Pilgrimage" seems to have lost none of its attractiveness amongst the class of High Church intending emigrants for whom its originators probably almost exclusively designed it.

The diversified agitations prevailing more or less extensively at present in various colonial dependencies of the British Crown, important though some of them are, sink almost into insignificance when compared with the distracted and perilous condition of the Cape of Good Hope, Political excitement, our readers are aware, had already risen to an ominous height there. Scarcely had the colonists succeeded in their vehement and triumphant struggle against convictism, when their disappointment on finding that the Constitution sent out to them from Downing Street was only a mockery of their hopes — pretending to give them representative institutions, but really securing a certain majority of Grovernment nominees in the Legislature — recalled their forces again to the political battle-field, and led to the framing for themselves of " the articles or heads of a constitution," which two of their most able and trusted men (Sir Andries Stockenstrom and Mr. Fairbairn) were commissioned personally to bear to the

foot of the Throne, and—" for which," say the people in an accompanying .Address, ""we numbly pray your Majesty's allowance, and that nothing may be admitted into the subordinate arrangements in any sense opposite to or inconsistent wiih their true meaning and intention." By our late English files we perceive that the arrival of the deputation was anticipated with grave interest. The Spectator^ gives it prominence, in a rather friendly article beginning with the significant remark, — " Our Colonies are resolved Hot to leave Ministers in peace ; they will not hold their tongues while Lord Grey legislates for them, out of his own head, all for their benefit ;" and the Times (December 4) makes it the subject of a long leader, seriously discussing the question f f — Which of the rival constitutions should be adopted — that formed by the power which is to administer it, or that proposed by the people who are to live under it — " the protected article of the Colonial Office, or the contraband goods manufactured at the Capet" The writer's conclusion, if conclusion it may be called, is — •• We are placed in an unenviable di'emma. If we forrr 'he constitution on an unwilling people, we turn what was. intende-I to be a boon into a cause of rankling discontent ; if we accept the comtitution proffered in exchange, we succumb a tecond time most ignomirnoufly, and admit in the face of the whole world our and vacillation." This movement, however, charged though it obviously is with interests deeply affecting the future status of the colony, all but recedes from observation amidst such disastrous scenes as the accounts of the Kaffir outbreak (which we recently summed up) spread before our I view. Making full allowance for the cxi aggeration of tone into which writers on the spot may naturally have lapsed under such [ circumstances, the undoubted facts exhibit not only the treachery and cruelty, but the effi * cient force of the rebels, in a very formidable aspect. That they are treacherous appears sufficiently from their professions of .loyalty, while they were plotting the d*ed£wtiiehr they ' have since perpetrated, and especially 'fiom ! the conduct of the Native Police, who inveigled Colonel Mackinnon and his troops into an ambuscade where two British officers and eleven privates were killed and several severely wounded, and who immediately after deserted to the enemy ; and by the deceitful manner in which the Kaffirs mingled amongst the inhabitants of the military village of Auckland on Christmas day, under pretence of joining in their festivities, until at a preconcerted signal they fell upon them in murderous force. Their cruelly was appallingly exhibited there, in the indiscriminate butchering of the unsuspecting of that and other villages ; in their waylaying, and defenceless people ; as well as in the burnipg and cutting the throats of fourteen men of the 45th regiment al the Debe Flats ; and in other, equally horrible acts. And their power was painfully evidenced in their attack and defeat of the troops under Colonel Somerset at Chumie Hock. All the G-aikas were in the field, and they were rapidly receiving such accessions of strength, and were so well supplied with arms and ammunition, as to afford but too much ground for apprehending " a long and bloody war." It is now no time to discuss the past policy of Sir Harry Smith. His courage and decision in the present emergency were unequivocally proved. His forcing his passage from Fort Cox through the Debe Neck to William's Town in I the midst of a heavy fire was a brave and hazardous exploit. His measures — such as declaring the Albany and other districts under nJarfial a law, his calling out for service all the," matf&< inhabitants of those districts between the ages of 18 and 50, and his plans to assume Uie offensive as soon as he could muster the Burghers and Hottentot levies whom he was expecting-^-showed his determination to meet manfully, and, if possible, suppress promptly and cruihingly, this treacherous and daring rebellion. But in the meantime, hordes of Kaffirs were overrunning the country^ burning the farms and villages, massacreing the colonists, and driving off the cattle ; and it is fearful to think of the number of lives th>t might be lost, and the ruin that might be brought upon the 'settlers before peace could be restored. * The following is the latest Official Annoucement in the papers before us :—: — >•