Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1863.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 91, 20 February 1863, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1863.

In reference to the auxilliary force of Fifty Mounted Police which are to be furnished to this Province, and to which circumstance, and to the fact of that force having been granted at the special request of Messrs. McLean, Gollan, Williams, and others, Justices of the Peace, we called the attention of our readers a short time hack, we will now devote a few lines to the consideration of this important step in all its hearings. If it is fair to judge which way the wind blows by the direction in which straws fly, it is equally fair to conclude from the significant fact of the embodiment of a corps of Mounted Police, that Sir George Grey’s idea of an ultimate settlement on a satisfactoiy basis of our relations with the Maories, and the assertion of the majesty of the law by nothing but bribery and talk, is undergoing a great and manifest change. We have always, from the very earliest date of our publication, maintained that to settle the question of mastership with a people elated with the result of a successful resistance to that mastership by merely talking to and coaxing them, and endeavoring by presents and cajolery to entice them back into the fold, would be found to fail, and that, too, signally and and disastrously, involving the projectors and supporters of the scheme in universal contempt and opprobrium. We are not, therefore, in the least surprised to find that the Government discover, at the eleventh hour, that if they wish to establish this Colony on a secure foundation, and to settle the native question, it must be done by action, and not by talk. But as regards that moiety of the action likely to be taken by the Governor and which has fallen to our share, viz., the Fifty Troopers, we shall be glad to see them ; and hope that they will be well and strongly mounted, and in£a state of efficiency, so that if their sendees are required they may be in a position to do their duty with effect. At the same time, we warn the authorities that if these men are only coming down here to add to the general confusion of ideas which at present exist in the Native mind as to what authority really is, and are only to be used upon occasions as a scarecrow, and not a real/.terror.] to evildoers, we shall find that that arm of strength will prove a source of weakness, and em-

.broil us with the Natives of this Province, for they are, as we know to our cost, a most abominably bounceable people, and will not be checked in their career by the mere show of power, but they must be made to feel it, sharply too, before they will acknowledge it. Therefore, if the Civil Commissioner has occasion to call out the force in question, and having done so contents himself with merely making a demonstration with it, then we say that it would be better by far for this Province that the whole troop, with the Civil Commissioner at the head of them, take one fatal plunge into the Hon Pot, and thus rid us of what will prove, if badly managed, anything but a cause for congratulation. We have heard it observed by a gentleman competent to give an opinion upon the subject, that one hundred well mounted and well armed and resolute men would be an amply sufficient force to protect this Province from internal commotion or external invasion, and we perfectly agree with that opinion; but we must say that we would much rather that a troop of horse, as troop of horse there is at last to be, should be formed out of volunteers amongst our own settlers, rather than composed of hired men. Were this the case, we apprehend that we should rise proportionately in the estimation of our Maori friends, and they, being certain that such a body of men was not got together without a purpose, would be far less likely to give occasion for their interference.

We notice with some complacency that that peculiar specimen of the Native race, Te Hapuku, has been actively engaged in this little matter, and also that that respectable individual went to Auckland in company with his old friend McLean. Well! well! we won’t be hard upon the old gentleman, but his having anything to do with an affair of this kind renders it impossible for us to resist giving vent to the trite saying “ Set a thief to catch a thief.” It would seem that Mr. McLean’s diplomatic skill has been actively engaged in recovering this lost but black sheep, which had escaped from his watchful care, and we make no doubt but that the Chief Commissioner has in his own quiet way made it convenient to remember a certain little £: turn up” he had with some of our Pawhakaairo friends, in which that redoubtable chieftain got the worst of it; all of which goes to prove exactly what that profound prophet the Herald forewarned us would be the case, —that Mr. McLean was the “ right man in the right place.” We, however, deprecate this sort of diplomatising, and foresee no good to come of it. It has failed heretofore, in every instance, and has only reacted to the discomfiture of the promoters, for it must be remembered that those people who are in reality conscious of their weakness, although they will not readily acknowledge it, are most profound and skilful diplomatists, of which wc have a sufficiently strong proof in the entire failure of Sir George Grey, that prince of diplomatists, in all his doings in that line with the Maories. These natives, in all matters of mere cunning and deceit, will be found to out-Herod Herod.