The Evening Star. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1869.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 2073, 28 December 1869, Page 2

The Evening Star. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1869.

Although we hear little of the Native movements now, it appears from the reports that reach ns from time to time that the remnant of the Chatham Island escapees are still inarms, threatening the King Natives, or at least held at bay. According to rumor, Te Kooti, with his followers, is in a desperate plight —hemmed in on all sides, his enemies gradually closing upon him, or prepared to repel him, should he try the experiment of a dash. Tinder these desperate circumstances, he has been joined by another worthy, Te Kereopa, who is supposed also to have some few men under his command.

Were ifc not ‘that Native matters cannot be judged by the rules of common sense, the prediction might be safely ventured upon that, with so little temptation to continue fighting, those turbulent leaders would be glad to retire into the bosom of their families, and exchange war for the potato plot. In fact, these slumbering embers of a great fire, only require watching in order to keep them in check. We suppose the movements of those savage leaders would scarcely be considered worth recording by the Northern Press, were it not that it is necessary to keep an eye even upon a sleeping wolf. If it be true that Ie Kooti and the other Te are actually in arms, their followers cannot be very numerous, nor their arms veiy formidable. They have not now the carelessness of a Stafford to deal with, nor the unpreparedness of a Haultaik. No matter whether taking a lesson from the past or not, a different system has been introduced. The Colony is not left without well-trained and disciplined defenders, and as the advantage of preparation becomes manifest, so will the difference of cost between preparedness and want of preparation force itself upon us. In no single instance is the difference between the Stafford and Fox administration so evident, as in the relative position of the Natives and settlers in the North Island. Even the Ministry themselves must feel surprised. We do not know that any principle has been sacrificed to obtain this advantage. We are not even aware that any large tracts of land have been abandoned to secure the boon of peace. On the contrary, those necessary modes of communication which were looked upon with such timid apprehension by former Ministries, have been carried out with a firm determination that proves how necessary it is to avoid a vacillating and temporising policy in dealing with barbarians. Although setting themselves against the extension of telegraphic communication in the first instance, when the Natives found that opposition was useless, they were as willing as any European laborers could be to make money by the work, and actually labored for hire in effecting that plan which, with savage ferocity, they had declared they would not consent to. We have been accustomed for years to imagine that certain persons were essential to the welfare and safety of the North Island, just as when Sir Robert Peel was cut off in Great Britain, it was thought no one could follow in his footsteps. Thus Dr. Featheustone was considered indispensible : but he has gone away, and yet there is an increasing tendency to peace. Mr M‘Lean still remains, and in all probability it is to his just and conciliating arrangements that the present lull is owing. In times past we have had too much fear and trembling expressed whenever a few hundred dark-skinned malcontents got up a marauding expedition. The Government had to consider what steps were necessary, and to contrive the means to carry them out. Living for months on the verge of a crater, the smoke rising to their very nostrils, and the rumblings of the earthquake sounding in their ears, they still slumbered at their posts, and when the eruption burst forth, they woke from their sluggard doze, and wondered what they were to do. The present condition of affairs is a matter for study, and will present the formulae for the solution of future difficulties. It is not the mission of Mr F. D, Bell and Dr Featherstone that has brought about these results. In fact, they are traceable to precisely the opposite policy ; for if the British Government would have carried on the wax’, the troubles of the North Island would not yet have been ovei’, We pity those gentlemen, and wonder how they will be able to face the Colonial Secretary when it is apparent that so far as the Colony is acquainted with their instructions, they x’elate to cix’cumstances that neither have nor ever had existence. They can be but laughed at when they unfold, their budget of troubles, and have, in the same breath, to acknowledge that they existed only in the imagination of a few frightened politicians. We pity the Colony that has so far committed itself as to send Commissioners on such a cowardly errand. With a regiment of observation present, not a man of which fired a shot, or moved a step to the rescue, the Colony, although caught unprepared, has achieved what may fairly be termed a peace ; and yet we send men to England to plead for help to conquer what? Heaven only knows, for we do not.