AN ORIGINAL IDEA.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 89, 13 February 1863, Page 4

AN ORIGINAL IDEA.

[Prom the Daily Sottlfiern Cross, February C.]

The Marlborough Press has an article in its issue of the 24th January, on the successful recruiting expeditionof Wiremu Kingi, of.Waitara, to Queen Charlotte Sound, and urging that no excuse can be pleaded by the Government'for “ compounding treason” in the Middle Island, seeing the natives are neither very numerous nor generally disalfected. It adds .

“ Neither can the Government plead ignorance of the use made of their connexions in this Island by the Natives of the North. Their alliance is no hole and corner compact; when help is need.ed by the insurgents, they openly, almost ostentatiously require the services of their kinsmen or vassals, who forthwith devote themselves to the sacred duty of plunder, in the name of nationality.”

But the passage which struck our fancy as peculiarly original, was the following, and on account of which we forgive our contemporary attributing our reports of the artillery practice at Point Chevalier to an imaginary publication he names, the Daily Southern News :— “ TV ell may journalists at a distance fail to com prohend the situation of Now Zealand affairs, when such anomalies characterize the contest. Who could imagine a colony of rabbits carefully protecting in their midst a community of halftamed weazels, just awaking to a full sense of the value of fur ? But some such idea must bo realized before the helplessness of the European community here, which is the result of the system of native protection by the Government, can be comprehended.”