THE COLONIAL CHURCH CHRONICLE, AND Missionary Journal. 1861. No one "Christianity is to be considered as a trust deposited with us in behalf LONDON: RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE; J. H. & JAS. PARKER, OXFORD; DEIGHTON, BELL & CO., CAMBRIDGE; THE COLONIAL CHURCH CHRONICLE AND Missionary Journal. JANUARY, 1861. NEW ZEALAND. A CLOUD has arisen over one of the fairest and most hopeful of the colonies of the British Crown. Hitherto, we have been able to point to New Zealand as a most remarkable instance of the conversion of a heathen nation to Christianity; and as having been singularly fortunate in its Colonial Governors. The names of Bishop Selwyn and Sir George Grey have passed among men almost as a proverb, for excellence of rule in the matters of Church and State; while the colony was not less felicitous in the possession of men like Chief-Justice Martin, the late Attorney-General Mr. Swainson, Archdeacon Hadfield, and Archdeacon (now Bishop) Abraham. Few new countries ever had so many able and devoted men for the founding of institutions, and for the moulding of the character of a people. Yet, for the last year, we have heard little from that country but of the "Maori War," the "Native War in New Zealand,' -of panic, of bloodshed, of mutual recrimination between those in high places, of the fear of a general rising among the natives, and of the probable ruin of the settlers in Taranaki or New Plymouth. It is generally difficult for us in England to understand the exact relations of the colonists and the aborigines; the extreme tenacity to the lordship of the soil on the one side, and the assumed rights from superior civilization on the other. But in the present instance, this difficulty is increased a hundred fold, by the entirely opposite accounts which reach us, both of the facts of the case, and of the questions of right involved therein. |