Lower Theiss and the Danube-the granary of Hungary-was devastated by war. The Banats of Baczka and Baranga insisted upon being united into a Raizish, or Slavonian province (Waywodeschaft), and the waywode to be elected of the Raizish, or Slavonian nation. The nation also demanded the right to appoint a patriarch, and that the religious language of the Raizes should be guaranteed to them. The Croatians were at the same time making every preparation to assist their countrymen within the Hungarian territory. On the 15th inst. the Hungarian ministry issued a proclamation declaring that the danger of an invasion was daily increasing, that the Ban of Croatia was concentrating his troops on the frontier, and recommending a corps of well-armed militia to be formed in the district between the Danube and the Drave. The ban's united forces were said to amount to some 60,000 or 80,000 men-a terrible force with which to operate in favour of the Slavonians already in arms, and in open rebellion in the interior of Hungary. In answer to the application made by the Hungarian diet to the Central congress at Frankfort, the congress considering that Hungary had made a decided demonstration in favour of the German Empire, and that Germany is interested in seeing Hungary strong and united, it resolved to petition the Central power to negotiate with the Austrian government in favour of Hungary, and to grant the Hungarians advice and effective assistance against the Croates. The government commissioner, Baron Szentkikraly, who brought the ill-omened news from the Hungarian camp of the defeat at St. Thomas, was grievously insulted, and the intelligence was received by a display of acrimonious jealousy and charges of treachery of a character quite unworthy of a noble or a highly civilised people. A corps of 6000 Servians were said to have crossed the Danube at the beginning of August at Orshova. This, if confirmed, would at once prove that the Slavonians of the Turkish empire are also, as has been before surmised, engaged in the forthcoming struggle for nationality. On the 22nd of August a royal letter was read at the sitting of the diet, informing the assembly that the emperor's health having improved, it was his intention to retake the reins of government, and that by these presents the Archduke Palatine was bereft of his plenipotentiary powers. On the 28th of August a commission of the Banat of Croatia, accompanied by a notary, arrived at Fiume, with the notification that the governor of that place and all public officers must instantly quit their posts and be anwerable that the moneys in the public banks should remain in Fiume, and not be delivered to the Hungarian ministry. Thus this important port on the Adriatic has actually passed under the sovereignty of the Ban of Croatia. The people do not seem to have offered the slightest resistance but rather to be gratified with the new order of things. The progress of events in the neighbouring principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia has not been so favourable to the cause of national regeneration. On the 26th of June, Prince Bibesco, the ruling Hospodar of Wallachia, finding that no other alternative remained to him, formed a committee, composed of eight liberal members, to frame a new national constitution. Having, however, shortly afterwards, rendered himself suspected of intri guing with Russia, he was deposed, and, attempting to make his escape, was fired at by some of the boyards, but luckily without effect. The patriots then made the best preparations in their power to resist the inevitable interference of Russia. They called upon their countrymen to rally round the national flag, composed of three colours, blue, red, and yellow, with a miserable imitation of French political philosophy, in an inscription to Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, but it was soon made evident by the communications made to the resident European consular authorities, that their hopes lay solely in sympathy and aid from without. Prince Stourdza, reigning Hospodar of Moldavia, had, from his greater proximity to Russian influences, been enabled to weather the storm for a longer time than his brother of Wallachia. The Russians advanced at once to the frontiers, and when, at length, Prince Stourdza was obliged to take flight before the progress of insurrection, General Duhamel did not hesitate to cross the Pruth and occupy the Moldavian territory, while, on the other hand, a body of Turkish troops, composed of a few thousand infantry and cavalry, crossed the Danube at Galatz. The cholera raged with so much violence in both principalities, as to keep both political and military movements for the time being in abeyance. Previous to Prince Stourdza's flight from Jassy, several boyards had been made prisoners and sent to Constantinople, others had since taken flight voluntarily. The provincial government and the small body of national guards had, however, succeeded in obtaining the confidence of the people. Finding themselves so critically placed, they addressed notes to the consuls of France, Austria, and Prussia, soliciting the intervention of those powers in case the juvenile republics should be attacked. Nor were the movements of Russia without interest to the rest of Europe. At the meeting of the confederated German assembly, when presided over by the Regent, John of Austria, on the 15th of July, Von Auerswald declared that the state of Europe had changed owing to events on the Lower Danube; and at the meeting of the French Chambers of July 17th, a discussion took place in which every sympathy was manifested for Wallachia and Moldavia on their attempt to recover their former constitutions and nationality. These countries were declared to be independent and sovereign states, and it was argued that the treaty of Adrianople did not authorise Russia to exercise what that power designated a protectorate. It is evident, however, that the insurrections of Wallachia and Moldavia must terminate in a transaction. No European power has a right to interfere in the case of provinces acknowledgedly under the control of Turkey and Russia, unless they can establish their right to independent sovereignty, and are prepared to enforce that independence by force of arms, and there is no European power so Quixotic at the present moment as to engage in war with Russia and Turkey for these two principalities of the Danube. The pasha, Suliman, commissioned on the part of the Sublime Porte, in company with the dragoman, Emir Effendi, to investigate into the political disturbances of the Danubian principalities, commenced his labours by a protest against the occupation of Moldavia by Russian troops, and an energetic remonstrance against their advance into Wallachia. This protest, at least in its latter part, was backed by the consuls of England, France, Prussia, and Austria. The Ottoman Porte made at the same time the semblance of recognising the new Wallachian constitution. The St. Petersburgh journal of the 1st of August published nearly at the same time a long exposé, by the emperor, of his motives for intervention in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. The emperor declared that the said intervention had taken place with the consent and concurrence of the Ottoman Porte, and that the Russian troops would act only in accord with those of the sultan. These troops, it appears, are destined to take up their winter-quarters in Jassy. Suliman Pasha made his entry into Bucharest on the 6th of August, in great state, and as a friend. Instead, however, of ratifying the new constitution, the Turkish commander consented only to confirm three of the members of the new government in their places. But as far as universal suffrage, popular armament, and liberty of the press are concerned, he has peremptorily refused to give the sanction of the Porte to any such demands of the Wallachians. The situation of affairs in the Danubian principalities occasioned, however, a ministerial revolution at Constantinople, and on the 15th of August the enlightened and liberalminded Reshid Pasha was restored to the post of grand vizier, one of the first results of which was the recall of the expatriated Boyards. Still a less promising position of two provinces as mere bones of contention between Russia and Turkey, and their own populations panting for independence and nationality, can scarcely be imagined. THE NEW ZEALAND QUESTION. THERE are certain questions, which, although they are difficult of definition in an abstract point of view, are, nevertheless, often universally admitted and practised upon as a matter of course. It certainly appears very absurd, looking at the matter philosophically, that one nation should send out ships of discovery which should claim the lands belonging to another people as a right resulting from their successful researches. To put this question in an extravagant point of view, suppose a Chinese junk on a voyage of discovery to fall in with and claim possession in consequence of Great Britain; it is very doubtful if the Aborigines would admit either the fact of the discovery, although the Chinese might not have been acquainted with the existence of such islands previously, or still less the claim founded upon the said discovery. So it was with the so-called discovery of New Zealand, a discovery in its antipodal relation to Great Britain, but not at all a discovery with regard to the Aborigines, who even in the time of Juan Fernandez are described as a race of white people, well made, and dressed in a kind of woven cloth. According to Vattel, the first authority on the Law of Nations, Navigators going on the discovery, provided with a commission from their sovereign and falling in with desert islands, or other desert lands, have taken possession of them in the name of their nation and commonly this title has been respected, provided that thereupon a real possession have closely followed. But the fact is that between : the two existing cases of discovery, only so called from the ignorance or limited knowledge of the nation discovering, and the obtaining possession of a barren island, there are many degrees of difference, all difficult to define, but being practically acted upon, by which, for example, when a newlydiscovered territory is found to be tenanted by savages who refuse to hold intercourse with their fellow creatures, who do not till the ground or dwell in towns, who have no forms of government, and who mutually destroy and even eat one another, it is uniformly admitted that taking possession, by introducing the arts and civilisation, religion and peace, is not only beneficial to the people but appears as a link wove in the chain of providential intentions. 66 The practical fact having then been long admitted and acted upon, the various degrees of difference between possession of a barren island, and a permitted and authorised possession and colonisation, as at Sarawak in Borneo, are regulated by the rules of common sense and equity. These rules were violated by the French, when they took possession of islands in the South Seas, which, being ruled by a queen, formed together a sovereign state," and to which civilised nations had already sent their missionaries and their representatives. Such was not the case with New Zealand at the time of its discovery by the English; and however much we may be inclined to go along with the Aborigines Protection Society, as far as regards the kindly treatment, the education, and respect due to the rights of natives, it would require that a very novel and unforeseen light should be thrown upon the progress of past events, and the history of land and maritime discovery and colonisation, to satisfy the mind, that advantages of the most extraordinary character have not resulted to general humanity by the spread of civilised nations, even when such has been accompanied by the extirpation of races whom one cannot but pity and sympathise with, and for whom, with an enlightened policy, much more might be done than has hitherto been the case, to protect. * The relation of the British and of the New Zealanders has unfortunately been more fertile of disputes, misunderstandings, and false sentiment of any, perhaps, hitherto on record. The relations of Great Britain with the islands of New Zealand are unprecedented in the annals of colonisation, inasmuch as her acquisition of the country was peculiar and specific; and this fact renders the position of settlers there, and of emigrants proceeding thither, both complicated and singular, they being brought into contact with an intelligent, enlightened, and ambitious. native race, who, standing dispossessed of the sovereignty of their own country, claim extensive and exclusive proprietary rights of which they are extremely jealous, and which they are in a situation to enforce; whilst, on the other hand, the local government asserts, on behalf of the crown, another kind of right, by virtue of which all free exercise of the natives' natural proprietary rights is averred to be extinguished, and the emigrant becomes dependent, not alone upon the disposition of the native owner to sell his land, but on that of the local government to permit the purchase of the same by any third party, save through its medium, and contingent upon its own inclination to acquire such land so offered for sale, at a price regulated by circumstances, and virtually irrespective of native valuation. In the origin, that is, before New Zealand was annexed to the British empire, The New Zealand Question and the Rights of the Aborigines. By Louis Alexis Chamerovzow. large, and in some instances, nominal purchases of land, extending over many thousands of acres, were effected by various individuals, many of which purchases have since been declared invalid by the local government, being repudiated by the native owners, on the plea of inadequate compensation, ambiguous contract, ill and undefined boundary, wilful double-dealing, or actual fraud. The settlement of these claims has proved a fruitful source of contention, producing sanguinary collisions between the Aborigines and the settlers, engendering extreme disaffection towards the local government on the part of both, and effectually embarrassing it, by placing it in the difficult and delicate position of arbitrator between the crown and so many and such various contending interests; nevertheless, the whole of these difficulties might have been avoided at the outset, or resolved long ago, had the government only acted with consistency, and speculators and settlers with the ordinary degree of mercantile justice which usually characterises every transaction in which capitalists engage, save-as it would seem-the mania for land-jobbing. The foregoing facts taken collectedly, have, at the same time, invested the New Zealand Question with peculiar interest; an interest which, from the extent, importance, and rapid progress of the colony, is daily increasing. Mr. Secretary Chamerovzow, as the organ we suppose of the Aborigines Protection Society, not only objects to Captain Cook's right to take possession of New Zealand in the name and for the use of his Majesty King George the Third, but he also argues that, conceding the point for argument's sake, Great Britain forfeited the rights which discovery is assumed to have conferred upon her, by her non-occupation of the country. Occupation having, however, taken place to a certain extent since 1815, this discussion appears to be now singularly inopportune. It could, at the best, only apply to difficulties, that might have arisen from the joint occupation of the country in the interim, by other civilised nations. Mr. Chamerovzow even objects to the early settlements being considered as colonial occupation of the country, because the crown did not identify itself with them. But, although in law a colony cannot be formed without the license of the crown, it is a matter of notoriety, that in practice such has, till within late times, been the early history of the majority of our colonial settlements. At all events, in this particular case, the argument is peculiarly useless, as the tenor of land and sovereignty in New Zealand is held by treaty and cession, and, granting the futility of the claim founded on discovery, it is obvious that Great Britain cannot be said, in point of fact, to have forfeited that which she never possessed. Three several times before the epoch of the treaty of Waitangi in 1840, did Great Britain recognise New Zealand as an independent country, but under the protection of Great Britain; a protectorate which was further cemented on the occasion of the present of a national flag by Captain Lambert of the Alligator. The Rev. S. Hinds, D.D., in his evidence given before the committee of the House of Lords in 1838, testified to the fact, that the very assumption on the part of Great Britain of a right to give that flag, supposed the New Zealanders not to be altogether a sovereign power; an argument which Mr. Chamerovzow says is refuted by Captain Fitzroy who, in his evidence, declared that the giving of the flag was a distinct recognition of the independence of the chiefs. Independence of the * Vide evidence before Select Committee of the House of Commons. New Zealand. |