In the new Islands of the Pacific, we behold a constant succession of new worlds emerging from the deep by means of the same process which, in the pre-Adamite world, formed and elevated the islands and continents of the northern hemisphere. Minute polypi are secreting from the waters, and fixing on the summits of submarine volcanoes the solid and durable limestone which now forms their protection from the waves, and which will hereafter form the foundations on which accumulated detritus will heap up fertile soils and habitable lands.[53] Earthquakes are continually pushing up these horizontal surfaces, and breaking them up into mountains which, arresting the clouds in their progress, draw down into the valleys and plains the fertilizing rain. This smooths down the asperities of the earthquake-broken surface, and softens and harmonizes into that sweet variety which gives birth to “The pleasure situate in hill and dale.” To people these new lands, Nature has branched off from the old stock, new races of men of various degrees of physical development and mental endowments. While those nearest the old continent of Asia, and therefore nearest to the old blood, are of the lowest possible mental and physical organization, little elevated above the low-class animals—the kangaroo and the ornithorynchus[54]—of the Australian plains, those at a greater distance—the New Zealander and the Otaheitan—exhibit a development which may vie with that of the Caucasian nations: and which has proved its equality by not sinking before them, but maintaining against Saxon invaders equal rights and equal privileges. We have a striking instance of this before us at the present time. The British Legislature having, in ignorance of the determined character and clever good sense of the New Zealanders, endeavoured to force upon them a Constitution which deprived them of legislative privileges equal with those of the colonists, and which gave to the latter the power of taxing the former without their consent, the natives have resisted the injustice so firmly, but hitherto peaceably, that the Governor, Sir George Grey, has been compelled to suspend this so-called Constitution, lest it should foment a war of the most deadly character. It is worthy of observation that the injustice attempted to be done this shrewd and spirited people, is not one of an evident physical character, such as any savage can appreciate, but one of a purely theoretical and political nature, the importance of which is even yet hardly sufficiently understood and appreciated in any country besides England. Sir George Grey writes to the Home Government as follows: