The New Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 661, 14 August 1852, Page 2

The New Zealander.

Be just and fear nut : Let all tne ends thou aim'st at, toe thy Country's, Thy God's, and Truth's.

AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1852.

The Van Dicmen's Land papers lately come to hand contain copious details respecting some matters of interest, both political and ecclesiastical, the substance of which we shall endeavour to condense within a small space. Our readers are already informed of the movement in the Legislative Council to punish Sir William Denidon for the terms which he had employed, in proroguing the last session, with reference to the strong wording of the Anti-Transportation lie3Olutions of the Council. His Excellency's language was construed as imputing disloyalty to the Council, and it was proposed to' address the Queen, respecting the misdeeds of the Lieutenant-Governor, ami praying Her Majesty's protection against a repetition of similar imputations. This was met by a motion that His Excellency

should himself bo requested to explain his meaning 1 , and to relieve the Council from the imputation. After a debate, in which the warmth of some of the speakers hurried them into expressions little in accordance with the dignified and deliberative tone which a Legislative Assembly should maintain, the latter more moderate proposal was carried by a majority of 12 to 9. Sir William Denison replied by disclaiming the meaning attached to his words, and supporting- his disclaimer by reading his Despatch to the Secretary of State on forwarding the Resolutions, in which he distinctly exonerated the Council from the doubt which some of their expressions might give rise to, and devhred a belief that the Council, as woll as the majority of the colonists, were loyal and faithful subjects. An effort was mado to procure the printing of this Despatch with the votes ; but it wps over-ruled on the ground that it was an Instruction from Home that no Despatches should be laid upon the table until their receipt had been acknowledged. Thus ended a matter to which we cannot but think an undue and injudicious importance was given. The Courier, in a sensible article on the subject, argues that, if the members felt aggrieved by His Excellency's remarks, they should not have allowed three months to elapse without remonstrating- or seeking an explanation, — then to frame an indictment in which they intermingled the ingredients of a five year's administration, — particularly as it could not be denied that the tenor of the Resolutions did plainly indicato that the continuance of Transportation would be fatal to British supremacy in the Australian Colonies. Our contemporary hints that there is in the Tasmanian Council " a clique" striving with " a strange want of delicacy and characteristic cunning to entrap men of moderate views and opinions, and to alarm them with hideous shadows of their own manufacture ;" — and proceeds to suggest that, if such courses be persisted in to the impediment of public business of practical utility, it will be soon high time to "call upon the Lieutenant-Governor to dissolve the Council and appeal to the People." For our own part, we yield to none in earnest attachment to tlie AntiTransportation cause; but it requires all our faith in the immutable justice of that cause to preserve us from an anxious apprehension that its triumph may be indefinitely postponed by the violent — not to say treasonable — language in which some of its advocates in the Australian Colonies are now in the habit of indulging. The British Parliament and People can be moved by appeals to reason, conscience, and humanity : they will have greatly changed when they are moved by threats. Amongst the measures brought before the Council were the Customs Duties Bill, all the details of which still remained to be settled ; — a Bill having- for its object to admit as Practitioners in the Supreme Court of Van Diemen's Land any Barrister or other Member of the Legal Profession who has already been admitted to practice in any of the Supreme Courts of the Australian Colonies ; — and a Bill to establish Municipal Councils in Hobart Town and Launceston, the leading feature of which was a proposal that the management shall be vested in three paid Commissioners in each Corporation, instead of in the usual body of Mayor, Aldermen, and Councillors. The Colonial Secretary (late Judge Chapman) declared his intention of opposing the Legal Practitioners' Bill, so long as a reciprocal system was not agreed to in the j other colonies ; he was not willing that Van Diemen's Land should be made " a re- , ceptaclc for the destitute," to which gentle- j men 'who had failed in other colonies might come to try their further chance.... The Municipal Bill had been referred to a Committee, — the Colonial. Secretary promising to show when it came under discussion that the ordinary form of Corporation at home (Mayor, Aldermen, &c t ) had not so worked in these colonies as to command approbation. ' We wonder whether, while ho is " speaking on this hint," he will point his "moral by an illustration taken' from the history of the latest municipal abortion in Australasia — the Auckland Corporation of 1851—52! An additional and portentous step had been taken by the Laity of the Church of England in Tasmania, We have already mentioned that the Bishop had convened a meeting of lay delegates to express an opinion on the Petition praying for a Church Constitution in the several Australasian Dioceses. On the 23rd of June the representatives of twenty-nine parishes in various parts of the colony assembled, and coutinued their session over the following day, Mr. Legge acting us Chairman. At their request, the Bishop opened the proceedings, but thenceforward the Meeting took a course of decided opposition and remonstrance against his Lordship's episcopal conduct. The motion " That the Petition forwarded home by the Bishop and Clergy of the diocese of Tasmania be adopted by this Meeting" was negatived by a majority of 19 to 8. Resolutions were then carried avowing unalterable attachment to the principles of the Church of England and Ireland, .but declaring that " the Church in this diocese is not in that condition of efficiency calculated to further the great objeefs of her Divine Mission/ and repudiating the form of constitution proposed by the Bishop, "as tending to substitute the Supremacy of the local ecclesiastical heads of the Church for that of the Sovereign." They ask that the legislative power may be confided to a convention of the Bishop, Clergy, and Laity, deliberating in one assembly, and deciding every question by a majority of votes; and especially that a right of appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury (not to the Bishop of Sydney only) may be preserved. A Petition to the Queen embod>ing these views were adopted; — also an Address to the Archbishop of. Canterbury, which we subjoin as a striking " sign of the times." Address to Tiis Grace the Archbishop of, Canterbury, from the Assembly of La}' Jti'pivscntalives, duly elected by the Members of the Church of England, in compliance -with the . Requisition of the Lord Bishop of the Diocese. Mat it i>jjs.ase Your Ghace, — The L:iy Representatives of the Members of he Church of England in the several parishes of

Van Diemcn's Land bog to convey to Your Grace ouv gratitude for pioposing to receive from the Members of the Church in "his Colony such a scheme and such suggestion 1 especting the form of Church Government as may remedy the evils under which we labour. I It is with the deepest pain that we arc compelled to announce to Your Grace our solemn conviction of the alarming condition to which the Church in this Colony is reduced by such evils, among the most prominent of which the following | may be .specified. The Bishop of this Diocese, in his Charge to the Clergy delivered 22nd May,' lBsl, thus speaks :—: — " I must disclaim, then, all want of dutiful respect to the law-, of my nathe land, if I protest against the decision given by the Privy Council, as being the law of the Church ; and if I decline to recognize their inteipretation of her formularies as bdingbinding upon the conscience of any one of her children. " The opinion of five Laymen must not be confounded with, or taken fox, the judgment of the Church, even though it should happen to be fortified by the concurrence of two of her Prelates. " I am the more disposed to enter somewhat at length into this unhappy subject, from the persuasion that neither the real character and necessary results of the decision itself, nor yet the true nature of Mr. Gorham's heresy (as I venture to regard if) have been adequately considered by many, who so cordially rejoice at the increase latitude of opinion now conceded to the Clergy of the Church of England." The Isibhop has on frequent occasions declared his 1 evolution not to ordain, or to admit into the diocese, any minister holding what lie terms the " Gorham heresy," or not believing in the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. We believe that this repudiation of the judgment and authority of the Privy Council, is — Ist. A rejection ofihe Queen's supremacy, as head of the Church of England— 2nd. That it virtually separates the Church in the Colony from the Mother Church in England — 3rd. That by the exclusion of Ministers holding what is designated Evangelical doctrine respecting Baptism, the terms of communion are narrowed in violation of the law of the Church of England.—That the remedy provided by law in the Church of England against a Bishop refusing institution to a clergyman for not holding "baptismal regeneration does not exist in this colony, from which there is no appeal to the Piivy Council or Couits of Law; and, therefore, that it is in the power of the Bishop, as the Church is at present constituted, to carry out his declared inteution of excluding Evangelical Ministers. sth. — That the principle on which the Bishop of Tasmania assumes the right of repudiating the authority of tlie Privy Council, and requiring all Ministers to coincide with his opinron respecting Baptism, is one Avhich would render the clergy and church entirely subject to his individual opinions and domination, "We receive the judgment of the Pray Council, and of Your Grace and of the Archbishop of York, in the case of Mr. Gorham, as a wise and just decision, in accordance with the principles of the Church of England, and as averting a great calamity, by rendering abortive an attempt to exclude from her Communion a large body of Evangelical Ministers. Impelled by the sacred obligation of maintain ing the truths of the Gospel, and preserving the liberties, the legal constitution, and principles of the Church of England, we beg to present to Your Grace our remonstrance against this proceeding of the Bishop of this Diocese ; and to communicate our determination to resist his repudiation of the judgment of the Privy Council, and to adopt such measures as may appear to us most effectual foy preventing the exclusion of Evangelical Ministers, and for procuring their admission into the Diocese. It is with deep thankfulness that, in a period of. much difficulty and danger, .we are enable to address in the Primate of our Church, not only a Prelate zealous for the maintenance of Evangelical truth, but one whom we believe to be directed by Divine Grace, as the instrument of the Lord, in opposing Romish error, and in promoting the salvation of the people by rendering the Church more effective in its administration, and more evangelical and zealous in its spiritual offices.— (Carried.) The Delegates finally constituted themselves into a Standing Committee/ "to communicate with the Laity* on occasions of importance to the interests of the Church until other Delegates are appointed." Indications of th 6 existence of gold still presented themselves, a few grains being frequently dug up in the Fingal district. But the excited reports given at first have now dwindled down to a statement that " the prospect of obtaining gold is somewhat encouraging" Still, the precious metal haviug undoubtedly been found, though in small quantities, there is very reasonable ground for anticipating that larger quantities arc not far distant. A subscription was in progress in aid of the funds for the search after Sir John Franklin ; and several handsome sums had been contributed. Tho amount was to be forwarded to Lady Franklin, who, there is every reason to believe, had reduced herself from affluence to comparative poverty in the efforts prompted by her devoted affection for her long absent husband.

The following 1 series of questions was prepared by a few of the. electors of the City, and intended to be proposed to one of the candidates whose interests those electors were inclined to support, but whose views on some leading- subjects they were desirous to ascertain as definitely as might be. Circumstances hayo induced an alteration of their intention so far as any particular candidate is concerned ; but wo have no hesitation in complying with a wish that we should insert them in our columns as topics to which the attention of all the candidates should be directed. Questions similar to these have already been answered by some of those gentlemen through channels, accessible to the public ; but the whole of the inquiries relate to points on which the candidates themselves, or the canvassers on their behalf, should be prepared to give explicit replies to those whose votes they solicit; and the questions may furnish hints to electors who even yet have one vQte or more disengaged (and there are very many such), on which they maymake inquiries calculated to guide them in the further exercise of their electoral privilege :—- 1. Would you maintain the inviolability of the Treaty of Waitangi as respects the Crown's right of pre-emption in the case of Native lands * Or, in other words, is it your opinion that the Executive Government, acting on behalf of the Crown, should he the only direct purchaser from tho Natives? 2. Do you regard Cheap Land as of primary importance to the prosperity of Now Ulster, and would you u&c your influence to promote a plan by which the Waste Lands of the Crown (acquired, as under the peculiar circumstances of New Zealand they, generally speaking, are a

through purchase from the Natives by means of our Colonial Funds)— would be brought into the market at an upset price which would merely cover the oiiginal amount paid to the Native owneis, the cost of surveying, and the other necessary expenses.,— and by v liicli the surplus arising from the difference between such an upset price and the price which may be obtained from fair competition, should be expended in further purchases of Native lands, in needful surreys, and in the construction of roads, bridges, and similar works of practical utility ? 3. It is, of course, borne in irind that the Provincial Councils Ordinance prohibits the enactment by the Council of any law " for affecting Crown Lands or Lands belonging to the Aboriginal Native owners." In some of these questions therefore reference is necessarily made onlj^to such influence, (undeniably an important influence, however), as the Council may exercise by Petitions to Her Majesty and the Home Authorities. Would you employ such influence as the Council may possess to promote in every legitimate way "the accomplishment of tli3 above named objects'? 4. Viewing the question of Provincial Separation as being complicated (as it obviously i&) with difficulties arising out of the intere&ts and claims of the Aboriginal tribes in the Northern and Southern Provinces, — between which a defined boundary line can scarcely be drawn in these relations, — and viewing, on the other hand, the facilities for an uniform administration of the Waste Lands afforded by the recently altered position of the New Zealand Company's affairs, in consequence of the Company's territory having passed into the hands of the Crown : — Do you think that the requirements of the case might be met by an uniform low upset price of Crown Lands throughout the whole of New Zealand, and the establishment of regular and. quick communication between the Northern and Southern Settlements 1 Or, would you press for complete and immediate Separation \ 5. On the vitally important subject of Education, — Do you hold as an essential and immutable principle that the foundation of knowledge should be laid in the truths of Revealed Religion? Do you generally approve of the existing Ordinance, — which recognises that principle, and, as the most suitable mode of giving it operation m this colony, apportions the grant for the education of aboriginal, half-caste, and destitute young persons in aid of the Schools in connexion with the several Christian Missionary Bodies, by whose efforts the Natives have been brought out of their former darkness into the measure of light in which the present colonists have found them I Would, you accordingly sustain that Ordinance, requiring, however, that the clause which provides for a regular Inspection of the Schools shall be faithfully carried out by competent and. responsible Inspectors, appointed as provided by the Ordinance ? j (5. Would you support, to the fullest extent compatible with the efficiency of the public service, economy and retrenchment both in the number of salaried Officials, and in the amounts of the salaries paid to them ? J. Would you oppose the charging upon the R • venue of the Province the outlay for the location of the Pensioners, or any more of the expenditure connected with their introduction than the cost of their passage as ordinary emigrants \ 8. Would you deem it a matter deserving early attention and liberal support to open up good lines of communication between Auckland and New Plymouth on the South, and the Bay of Islands on the North, thus not only facilitating permanent and profitable intercourse between the different parts of the Province, but (a minor but not an unimportant consideration) enabling persons newly arrived to form a more correct estimate of the capabilities of New Ulster than they at -present have means of acquiring 1 9. Woujd you approve of a Grant to the proposed Company for the establishment of steamcommunication from England by the Panama route, so as to induce the steamers to call at Auckland on the way to Sydney ? 10. To what extent do you think that the franchise for the election of Members to the Municipal and the Provincial Councils should be carried \

Axthougu more than a fortnight still remains to prepare for the Provincial Council Election, yet as probably some may be disposed to take time by the forelock in the matter by having all their arrangements made at an early date, it will not be amiss to call attention to the regulations for | voting, as laid down in the Governor-in-Chief's Proclamation, — a disregard of which may lead not only to inconvenience but to a loss of the electoral privilege. The following are the terms of the law as to the mode of voting ; — ! . " Every elector of the district may vote for any number of persons not exceeding the number of pei*sons then to be chosen, by delivering to the Returning Officer or his Deputy a voting paper containing the Christian names and surnames of the persons for whom he votes, together with their place of abode and description, and signed with the name of the elector so voting, and setting forth his own place of abode and description." An attentive perusal of this regulation will clearly show that it is indispensable that the names, &c, of all the candidates for whom any elector intends to vote shall be given in at once, and given in on the same voting paper. We apprehend that mistaken notions are abroad on these points. It is supposed by some that the elector may record one vote at one period of the day, and another at another period ,• or, again, that the names of the Several candidates may be entered on se}>arate papers, provided these papers are all given in to- I gether. Such a plan would probably, in many ! cases, be convenient, especially to the managing committees of the opposing candidates ; and, were its adoption within the discretion of the Returning Officer, we have little doubt that Mr. Beckham would not be deterred by the additional trouble it might lay upon himself or the polling clerks lrom making any arrangement which was deemed conducive to the general accommodation of the parties. But it appears plain that he has no jurisdiction in the matter, the provision of the law being distinct and imperative. It follows, therefore, that if any electors have already signed voting papers for an individual candidate, where (as in the City for instance) there are more members than one to be returned, it will be necessary for them to cancel those papers, or at least to add to them the names, &c, of the other persons for whom they wish to vote, — unless indeed it be their intention to waive their right of voting for the whole number of members, and to concentrate their elective privilege in support of a single candidate. It is scarcely necessary to say that the limitation as to voting at one time to which we have referred, applies only to voting for each Electoral District respectively. Thus, an elector who is on the Roll for the Suburbs, or for the Northern Division, as well as for the City, is not obliged to exercise' all his privileges at once, but may vote for one District at one hour of the day, and lor another at a subsequent hour, up to four o'clock, after which no vote can be received. This is so plain that we shcmld not have adverted to it, but that we have heard of misapprehensions even upon what seems so obvious. The supposition on which the Regulation has been formed evidently is, that every elector before lie comes to the polling-place will have made up bis mind so fully as to the respective merits of the several candidates for any District, as to be ready at once to exercise the entire of his privilege in that District. It may be added that the Electoral Rolls for the City and Suburbs may be regarded as now complete, — the last day forgiving notice of objections having passed without an objection to any person on the publicly-posted Lists for those Districts having been sent in to the Resident Magistrate's Court. The Pensioners' Settlements District constitutes an exception, however j-notices

of objections to a number of claims (we believe about thirty) having been lodged. But with such exceptions as the dctci munition of those objections may produce, there can be no further change, as it will not be competent for the Meeting of Magistrates (to be held on Wednesday next) to add the names of any who hate neglected to send in their claims within the appointed time— the month of July. The business of that Meeting will simply be to hear and decide upon duly recorded objections, and having disposed of those to declare the Electoral Rolls formed.