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New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 734, 27 April 1853, Page 2

Mr. William Brown and his champions in his own newspaper get so many blows, in our other columns and from other pensblows which they must deeply feel both from their inherent force and on account of the arms from which some of them proceedthat we almost feel emotions of pity for the fallen clique sufficient to restrain us, for at least this day, from shooting at them many of those arrows with which their multitudinous political misdeeds have filled our quiver. Not that they have not —even in yesterday's Southern Cross —presented many temptingly exposed places. There is, for instance, the new born decorum with which they speak of the Governor, who was the "arch traitor," the "satrap," the house-burner of a few days or weeks ago, And there is the irresistibly ludicrous affectation of a desire to "elevate" the press, and to keep "our pages" free from the " defilement" of "low invective." This from the Southern Cross! Why,- were our mood as sombre as that of the melancholy Jacques, this would be enough to make "our lungs begin to crow like chanticleer," and almost to keep us laughing "sans intermission an hour by the dial!" And there is the sanctimonious aspect of pieiy with which they mourn over the secular spirit which they think they detect in the Ministers cf religion who have signed the Requisition to Colonel Wynyard. We only wish that those Ministers may be induced to meet this attack as the signing Members of the Provincial Council have done, —by a plain statement of the reasons by which they are influenced. Should they do so, they will be well able to show that the principles of their Christianity—so far from forbidding them to add their weight to the movement for the exclusion of Mr. Brown from the Superinlendency—are the very mainspring and vital power of their opposition to his pretensions. But while we refrain from enlarging on these and other inviting themes, we must say a word or two on the renewed attacks on Colonel Wynyard with regard to his relation and conduct towards the Pensioners, especially in the matter of the "Sunday parades." This we do—not for ihe purpose of giving any information to the Pensioners themselves:— they do not require that iceshould instruct them on questions which they understand for themselves 100 well to be misled by the Cross and its correspondents. We allude to the subject only that the general reader may not be led astray by all this gross and reiterated misrepresentation. The gentleman who "does" the leading article in yesterday's Southern Cross talks with (crocodile?) tears in his editorial eyes of pensioners "summarily ejected from their cottages and acres, and turned with their wives and families without compunction on the world." He does not dare to assert in direct terms that Colonel Wynyard has done such things, but he evidently means to imply it,—else what have such allusions to do with the course of his argument, or what link unites them with the passages with which they stand connected ? The pensioners well know that the Commander of the Troops in the colony has no power to oppress them in this way, even if he wished to do so. His authority over them is restricted to the periods in which they are "under arms;" and at all other times—that is, all the year round with the exceptions of their Sunday parades* and the twelve days of exercise,—they arc in no sense under his control,—unless indeed a sudden emergency, such as that of the apprehended "Maori disturbances, spme time since, should warrant him in or-.

dering them to be placed "under arms" for the special occasion. It may safely be left to the pensioners individually and collectively to decide for themselves whether Colonel Wynyard has ever manifested a disposition to "usurp authority over them, or to interpose his influence in their civil concerns,—unless indeed, in the best as well as the only way in which his influence could affect them, by his employing it for their advancement in comfort and prosperity. Rut the ''Sunday Parades" arc a pet topic with the Southern Cross and its correspondents, and here fortunately it is especially easy to convict I hem of the most wholesale misrepresentation. To notice a single instance. In a letter in yesterday's Cross signed " An Elector," the writer, taking to task the Ministers who signed the requisition, says These preachers were all crying out lately in their pulpits against Sabbath profanation, and yet it is well known that their Candidate Colonel SVynyard, compels the pensioners to parade on the Lord's day, for which many of them have to walk from twelve to twenty mites. The upholder of such Sabbath profanation, except he can plead the excuse of imperious and urgent necessity, ought not surely to be recommended to us as our Ruler by those who made their pulpets and chapels ring with the acclamation —"Hemember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,"— the echo of which has scarcely yet died away. Now mark how a plain tale will put down this dogmatical condemnation of others. Colonel Wynyard never onlcred a Sunday parade, and has no more power than his censorious assailant to stop the parades on that day. The arrangements under which they are held have been fixed by the Military Authorities at home, and a part of the agreement with the Secretary of War under which the Enrolled Pensioners have come out is that they shall attend Parade on Sunday. Their own Commanding Officer cannot alter this,*--the Officer in Command of the Troops cannot alter it; the Governor cannot niter it; in short there is no power in the Colony which can say that it shall be otherwise. And yet Mr. Brown's supporters have ihc hardihood to affirm that '* it is well known that Colonel Wynyard compels the Pensioners to parade on the Lord's Day," and to call the Colonel "the upholder of such Sabbath Profanation." Alas for the cause that can only be sustained by such means as these ! And alas for the spirit of the man who, in a letter surcharged with expressions of piety, can make assertions so palpably opposed to facts, which—if he does not know them—he should at least have inquired into before he came forward as Mr. Brown's tool to attack at once Colonel Wynyard and the Ministers who signed the Requisition to him, and against Mr. Brown, —whom perhaps "An Elector" regards as a model of Sabbath Sanctification ! As respects the Inspection, of which the Cross has tried to make so much, the fads, as we have heard and believe, arc equally conclusive. Colonel Wynyard is required to inspect the Pensioners twice during the year, and the days on which he is to do so are arranged with their own officers. The day fixed for the last Inspection of the Battalion at Onehunga was the last available clay for the year ending 31 si March, 1853. On that clay the rain fell in such torrents that the men could not be assembled, and the course which seemed most obvious was that the Colonel should call them together for one day of the year commencing April Ist. This, however, would have caused loss and much inconvenience to the men : and the Colonel, —with a kind consideration which the Pensioners will be likely to appreciate the more highly when they find how much abuse and misrepresentation it has brought upon himself—proposed to meet the case by attending one of their necessary and previously fired Sunday Parades, and causing his seeing them then to suffice for the half-yearly Inspection. No special order on the subject was given, and indeed no particular day was at all fixed for the pur-pose. We leave these plain statements to speak for themselves. We earnestly wish that the Sunday Parade could be discontinued,, and perhaps we would go as far in the advocacy of Sabbath Observance as the writers on ; whose effusions we are commenting. But it is absolutely sickening to see the use which it is attempted to make of the matter by Mr. Brown and his friends. Let us glance before we conclude, at a j less grave topic. We may probably now expect a frequent infusion of Shaksperian blood into the columns of Ihc Southern Cross, — possibly, however, only in the way of supplying ideas which the " old hands" will ' (leal with after their own fashion. Thus we had yesterday a gem headed "The Auckland Coriolanus," in which we are said to have likened Colonel Wynyard to the Roman ! General. We instituted no comparison of the kind; our reference was not to Colonel Wynyard, but to the Requisition which (using a well-known expression by way of illustration) wesaid " fluttered the Volscians' of Mr. Brown's camp. And so it did. We might as wed, set up a comparison between Coriolanus and Mr, Brown on one point,—(markedly dissimilar as the characters are in many features),-—if a current rumour has any foundation in truth. It is reported that Mr. Brown has declared—and that some of his canvassers have held the threat in terrorem over electors—that if he is not elected to the Superintendency, he will withdraw from all connection with the offices under the New Constitution, and will not accept a scat in the Provincial Council or the Representative Chamber. That is, he threatens the people that, Coriolanus like, he will " banish t/icm." Auckland has survived as great disasters and reverses. But laughter-loving reader, only picture to yourself Mr. Coriolanus Brown on the hustings after his rejection, in his turn rejecting the people, and declaiming "I Danish you!!!" The delivery of those celebrated words has always been a Irving point on the stage. Old play-goers say that even John Philip Kemble could not invest them with a character that did not border on the ludicrous, for even Coriolanus seemed com- j paratjvcly contemptible when he individually spoke of banishing a people. Mr. ! Brown must have greatly improved in elocu- j lion]if he can speak the speech as well as Kemble; and we rather apprehend that if he should deliver il, Hazliil's criticism on

Edmund Keau in the part may not be wholly inapplicable : " The intolerable airs," wrote that prince of dramatic critics, —the intolerable airs and aristocratical pretensions of which he is the slave, and to which he falls a victim, did not seem legitimate in him but upstart, turbulent, and vulgar. Thus his haughty answer to the mob who banish him —'[ banish you'—was given with all the virulence of execration and rage of important despair."