WHY IS THERE NO REBELLION IN ENGLAND? [From the Times, March 21.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 322, 30 August 1848, Page 4

WHY IS THERE NO REBELLION IN ENGLAND? [From the Times, March 21.]

If we ask w. y this country nas scarcely felt the shock under which all Europe now reels, it is not from a selfish security or a premature pride. We are too close knit with the Brotherhood of Christian and civilized realms to leel in this instance that pleasure which the Roman poet ascrihes to the safe spectator of a' sailor's mortal peril. There is danger iv the security inspired by such flattering comparisons. We may, however, ask, and indeed it is our bounden duty and our soundest philosophy to ascertain, why we are still riding out the storm when so many a noble craft is prostrate on the beach— rwhy do our companions one by one part their cables or miss stays, while we, amid the war of the elements, amid the hurricane and the swell, still preserve the equipments of leisure, and the immunities of a calm. By the favour of Heaven, we will still practise the arts and ■cherish the means which have prospered us fio far. We will profit by the calamities we see and deplore, and commend to less prudent or less fortunate neighbours the constitutional lessons which their fate now helps us to prove. The first and most obvious answer is, that this nation is already reaping the fruits of a harvest which continental Europe is only beginning to sow. We possess those things which other nations are everywhere demanding at the gates of the Palace or the door of the Legislature. We have a free press. We have a representative system which enables every client in the empne to point to his patron ia the Senate, and which pnts r at least in the power of every working-man to acquire, if he thinks it worth while, an actual suffrage. There is no monopoly in this country, except what is just sufficient to stimulate the ambition of those who are without the favoured pale, and to define the duties and concentrate the energies ot those who are within. It is known and felt by all the labourers and trlizans in these, islands, that oftentimes one of their class, with little more deliverance than his own hands have wrought, has ascended from the common rank of poverty to competence, to privilege, to splendour, and to power. There is no helotry amongst' us, excepting that which ages may have moulded, and which, w iih every possible appliance, ages are necessary to undo. The commonalty does not bow down to a noblesse, or cower to a soldiery. We do not exhibit four hundred thousand armed men, and less than two thousand political constituents. Every mode of social agitstion is permitted amongst us which does not actually break the public peace, outrage pioperty or feelings, or exert a tyranny stronger than the law. If we have not a National Guard, neither do we desire one. Our courts are open and fair. The facts of our social condition are, indeed, far from being such as the theory seems to undertake, but the soberminded inhabitants of these islands are aware that such is the lot of humanity ; and they are satisfied that these painful discrepancies between the promises and the fulfilments of British constitution and law are iv the course of continual abatement. We are aware, however, as we have just intimated, that no theory will satisfy those who suffer a stern reality of degradation and denial. The needy millions want something more than the cold^eye of justire, or the illusive smiles of freedom. They want house, food, and clothing. They want work and wages. They want time to live and time to die, and foi these purposes the assistance of that state to which they contribute so much, and which undertakes to protect them from a foreign foe, and should also render aid aga nst domestic ills. The state is wise and good, and great in ihe eyes of humble men. They fear it, they worship it, they love it. What childlike confidence does the honest labourer repose in " the gentlemen" who rule the destinies of his little sphere! The British labourer is taught fmm his childhood to loik up for counsel and aid. For our part, we have continually urged that it is the duty of the Stare to fulfil such expectations. We have rejected and denounced the system of leaving things to takt their course, and the poor roan to shift for himself, as utterly inapplicable to our social state. Amid much obloquy we have impressed upon the State the duty of supplying work to the willing and relief to the destitute ; of protecting the more helpless sex or age ; of enacting by law the dictates of humanity and common sense ; of adapting legislation to the facts of the case ; of laying the chief pressure of our fiscal burdens on thoie who are moit able to bear ; of

helping industry by timely exempiions. Wp cannot better denote the spirit of our advice than by referring to the chief stigma we have to endure. Not a month has passed for man) a long year without a repetition ot the charge that we were falling into the errors of Communism. The smallest interference with wages, time, circumstance of employment, was compared to the frantic demands of a rustic demagogue. That was our offence. We aimed too much at a domestic, a paternal, a protecting legislation. Now, we do not hesitate to say that much of our present peace and security arises from the extent to which the nation has complied with these principles, imperfect and partial as that compliance has confessedly been. The population of these islands knoAsaud confesses with more or less readiness '.hat it is under a kind and thoughtiul government, anxious to assist the weak and to relieve the poor. Every child of poverty knows that there are laws and institutions of charity, wiih a powerful section in the press and the senate labouring to give them more efficacy and scope. The vast population of the factory and the mill feels that its rulers watch over its strength, its health, its education, and its comfort. The State thus rises up before the national mind as reasonable and tender. In point of fact, under very great hindrances and drawbacks, the dream of the Communist and Socialist receives its nearest possible lulfilmeut. The Sate becomes a society for the common good, giving to all its members a rateable share in the common benefit and stock, providing fo' the sick and aged from the lunds of health and strength, and securing the weak from excessive competition. The British empire is a great friendly society. We have often described it in that character, and i!one our best that it should act up to the responsibilities implied. Hence it is that we alone stand when every realm is shaken, and revolution, lik<s the beacon fire, glances from throne to throne. In one month the whole of Central Europe has not only quailed, but succumbed. Why need we count up twenty states ? Austria has capitulated ! That speaks for the rest. Austria, with her untold army, with her hundred and fifty thousand men to spare for Italy, with her gigantic ally, with her undisputed ascendancy, with her Metternich, has submitted to the common fate. Surely the fallen despots will say, " Art thou aUo become weak as we ? Art thou become like unto us V There is scarcely aught left for revolution. But its course is from the west. What next? UVienua had its Hungary, its Poland, its Venice, and Milan, has not St. Petersburgh also its Moscow, its rebellious' Poles, its Teutonic tributaries, its Siberian tribes, its Circassian toes ? Nay, the capital itself is built on new territory. Meanwhile, thus far, England purges the even tenour of her course. Revolution shrinks from a metropolis where it cannot find one respectable malignant. It sinks at once into a vulgar burlesque. What a hundred thousand armed men could not do in Paris, has been effected in London by a lew pocket truncheons. In ihe sister island two mouthing fanatics have been howling treasou for a twelvemonth, and have done their l>est to make Dublin a subuib of Paris. The bloody desigu proved as hollow as a maniac's dream. So fares revolution in this United Kingdom ; and so it will fare as loug as the legislature anticiDates its demands.

New Zealand Zoology. — As large hoofed quadrupeds (the elephant, giraffe, rhinoceros, hippopotamus^ form the most striking feature of the zoology of the Old World, as long-clawed edentate quadrupeds do in the case of the New World, or at least of its southern division, and as marsupial quadrupeds prevail in the Australasian world, so wingless birds might be said to form ihe leading characteristic of the actual zoology of New Zeahnd. And hence the question became exrremely interesting as to what forms of animal life, if any, the deposits contemporaneous with the newer tertiary iormaiion in Australia, South America, and Europe might reveal. The answer which the explorations of the Rev. Messrs. Williams, Cotton, and Colenso, Colonel Wakefield, and Mr. Earle have enabled Professor Owen to rtturn, is complete. New Zealand was pi pulated at the pleisiocene period, by forms of animal life no higher in the scale than wingless birds and birds most nearly allied to the Kiwi (Apteryx) forming the remnant and representative of the family, and now fast disappearing by the exterminating spread of the colonists. But the ancient uingless birds of New Zealand wore as gigantic in proportion to the Kiwi as the diprotodon of Australia iris to the kangaioo. When different specie- of elephants, rhinoceroses, aud hippopotamuses exioted in Europe, while as many species of gigantic sloths aud armadillos peopled the foiefets of South America, and when the diprotodons, uotoiheriu, huge wombats, and dasyures repri-senied the marsupial order as gigantically in Australia — at the same remote period the dinornis and palapteryx formed a wingless but feathered biped population of the New Zealand iilas*

comprehending many species, some four feet, some seven feel, some nine feet, sortie eleven feet in height. Linr.asns apostrophized the ostrich as avium maxiitia I How shrunk are its proportions when viewed by the side of the Dinornis giganteus Which towers above the .skeleton ol the giant O' Byrne in the museum of the College of Surgeons ! What adds to the strangeness of this recent discovery and most striking testoration of lost animals, is the fact, that, the number of already ascertained species of struthious or short-winged birds incapable of flight, which once inhabited New Zealand, is nearly three times tha 1 of the same order of birds at present known to exist in the rest of the world. Here, therefore, is one of the problems which Zoology offers to the inquiring mind ; to explain a generalisation based upon a series of carefully ascertained facts, the conformity, namely, of the geog.aphical distribution of certain groups of the higher organized forms of animal life, at a period antecedent to history, prior apparently to man's existence, wiih the actual distribution of the same peculiar groups as determined by observations of the living species. — Quarterly Review.

Treatment op Slaves in Cuba. — When brought by the slaver, they are either landed on the coast near the plantation, for which ti e living cargoes are purchased in advance, or are sent overland Jo the Havana, where they are divided into their different tribes, the value of which differs according to their physical and mental capatiiies. Thus, the Lucomees. are fine athletic men, and, when not worried by their overseers, excellent labourers, surpassing iv intelligence all the other negroes. They are, however, bold and stubborn if injudiciously treated, and having been in their country at the head of the warlike tribes, if already arrived at manhood when brought from the coast, are most disposed to resist undue oppression horn their masters. They are very prone to commit snicide, believing, with all Africans, that after death they shall be re-transported to their na ive country. One of my friends, who had purchased eight newly arrived from the coast, iouud occasion socn after to chastise slightly one of them. The punishment of the whip is applied to the delinquent lying on his face ; and when he was ordered to place himselt in that position the other seven lay down with him, and insisted on being also punished. I continue the narrative in the words of my friend, although / cannot give his graphic description of the scene thut ersued. " The boy w?s punished," he said, " before breakfast, and I had not long been seated to that meal when the contra-mayoral (a negro overseer) came to the door and advised me to go to the negroes, for they were greatly excited, and were siuging and dancing. I immediately seized my pistols, and, getting my horse, rode with him to the spot. The eight negroes, each one with a rope round his neck, on seeing us, scattered in different directions iv search of trees on which to hang themselves. Assisted by the other slaves, we made all haste to secure them, but two succeeded in killing themselves ; the rest, having been cut down before life was extinct, recovered. The Captain of Partido was summoned to hold his inquest over the dead bodies, which he examined minutely to see if the marks of the whip could I be discovered, but, fortunately for me, there was not a single one, or I should have to j ay a heavy bill. The rest refused to work ; and 1 a ked the captain, if I punished them, and they committed suicide, would 1 be chargeable ? He answered that I certainly would be if he found the smallest sign of injury on the bodies. My neighbours then offered to take each one home, but they would not consent to be separated, and I was quite at a loss what to do, when 1 determined to run the risk pf the law, and punished all the six. They 'tent to work immediately ; they are now tn the gang, and are the best behaved of all my negroes. — Notes on Cuba, by an American Physician.