NEW ZEALAND AND THE COMPANY. [From the Daily News, November 3.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 273, 11 March 1848, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND AND THE COMPANY. [From the Daily News, November 3.]

The recent brief and inglorious campaign at \Vanganu>, with the atroiities preceding it, bas brought back public attention to New Zealand. Along with the public, we had hoped that grave' differences and catastrophes might cease to be the periodical news of that colony. The settlers, to be sure, had still their righ s and grievances to urge against the Company. But these, we are told, were in way of adjustment ; and that whatever claims for redress to private losses might be evoked from the past, the future at least gave promise of harmony, prosperity, and peace. Such at least must have been the conviction of the gentVmen of this Company, in announcing the formation of a " free Church settlement" at Otakou, in the Southern island. Their prospec us, besides the usual worldlyminded inducements held out to emigrants, was couched in the language of piety, which not only spoke well for their own state of mind, but was eminently calculated to secure its object. It was addressed to the fervid enthusiasm aiH the most concentrated local prejudices of the people of Scotland. The staff of an immigration had been provided at the expense of the Company, and it is not impossible that a small numbur of persons, of peculiarly strong faith, might have become bond fide adventurers in the scheme, had it not been for one of those untoward events which the Company, repea'ing the language they have used in the recent publication referred To, will, no doubt, ascribe to the " perplexities ol an adverse providence." Unfortunately, however, at the vety time when these pamphletprospectuses were circulating in Scotland — when the pulpit, the press, and even the General Assembly ot the Free Church, were engaged in the recruiting • ervice of the New Zealand Company-— the news arrived of a fresh and sanguinary outbreak of the aborigines ; and we learn from facts which cannot be disguised, that nothing less appears to await the iettlers than a war of extermination against the barbarians which surround them. Our limits preclude us from giving all the particulars of these recent disasters ; but we shall state summarily what we have collected from private letters, and it is, in the main, confirmatory of the reports published last week. [Here follows an abstract of the proceedings at Wanganui, in the middle of last year.] Our limits preclude us to-day from giving utterance to such reflections as naturally suggest themselves, on reading the foregoing particulars. Theyn ay, perhaps, be too obvious to require any expression of ours. We think it right, however, to state, for the information of those who have friends in the older and larger settlements, such as Wellington, Nelson, and Auckland, that no apprehension of danger was felt in those places. The impression was, that the natives had sullenly acquiesced in the maintenance of the existing locations, but were determined to prevent the extension of the colony, and were proceeding systematically to cut off the outposts, in order to drive the Europeans within the pale of the settled^territory. Within those imits we believe the colonists will be as safe, and much more prosperous, than in any part of the United Kingdom ; but beyond them «hey must live in constant preparation for these murderous attacks, unless some better security can be provided than heretofore for the quiet prosecution of agricultural pursuits. There are two questions we will venture to

conclude with. It is possible that, after the receipt of this intelligence, the New Zealand Company can, we had almost 3aid, can be allowed to, go on advertising the sale of land in some other far off corner of the wilderness, in the very jaws of the Anthropophagi ; so far from the nearest residence of white men, that the cannibal feast of the victorious savage may have been consummated, and the very bones of the settlers may have been picked, before the first rumour of the invasion shall have reached their neighbours 1 And the second is : in what manner, and at what time, do the New Zealand Company propose to indemnify those unfortunate persons who, confiding in their representations and their honour, have ventured, and have lost, their all ?