“MAORI WAR SCARE” IN ENGLAND.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume I, Issue 11, 21 October 1879, Page 4

“MAORI WAR SCARE” IN ENGLAND.

The London correspondent of the Otago “ Daily Times,” under date 14th August, writes :—The threatened war in the colony excites considerable alarm amongst many good people, with the Zulu scare and the remembrai cj of former sanguinary struggles wi -h the Maoris upon them. It is next to impossible to persuade these people that the summary extinguishing of Te Whiti and his Parihaka follower’s would affect the rest of the colony, and especially the South Island, as little as an outbreak among the convicti at Dartmoor would affect the inhabitants of London. The fixed idea of the average Englishman, much more the average Englishwoman, who has never been to the colonies, and has no relatives therein to send enlightening letters, is, that New Zealand is a little place where everybody knows everybody else, where a war means imminent danger of being killed and eaten by overwhelming hordes of “Maoris,” from which the only escape is by fleeing over the mountains to Tasmania, or Brisbane, or Sydney or some other place contigious to the main land * * * * * The cablegrams anc’ letters of correspondents in New Zealand have, however, threatened a Taranaki outbreak as more than possible, and a few days ago Mr J. P. Smyth asked the Secretary of State if lie could give any information, and “ If it was true that preparations were being made ‘ to settle at once and for ever the native difficulty,’ in accordance with the ideas of the settlers.’ ” SirM. Hicks-Beach said:—“l have received no communication on the subject. From that I infer that in the opinion of the New Zealand Government there was nothing very serious in the state of affairs, nor any apprehensions of disturbances.” Colonists at Home, who had received letters and newspapers early in the week by the San Francisco mail, were considerably surprised at the Colonial Secretary’s reply, as it was manifest that the New Zealand Government mu think the matter serious, and that there were apprehensions of disturbances. The general belief is that Sir George Grey wished further to mark his sense of independence of the Imperial Government, and that he has not thought it worth while to trouble the Secretary with details or even cursory mention of so trivial a matter as a Maori outbreak. It is not so easily intelligible, however, why Sir Hercules liobinson has not apparently advised his official chief in despatches. If Sir George Grey really did not wish the Government to be officially informed, and the Marquis of Norman by had still been Governor, we may be pretty sure there would have been a despatch.