Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, MARCH 9, 1863.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 96, 9 March 1863, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, MARCH 9, 1863.

In reference to the Herald's version of the story about Mr. McLean and the riotous native, which fact we recorded to our sorrow in our last issue, we have to say that version

is not borne out by the ascertained and indisputable facts of the case. If Mr. McLean interfered at all in the matter he should have done so in an effectual manner in support of the police ; for so long as men in high places countenance and encourage the Natives in resistance to the just execution of the law, so long may we expect to look for a repetition of these disgraceful and to us humiliating scenes. It is most evident that if when we have occasion to enforce the law as upon the body of a Native, we dare not do so for fear of involving ourselves in a “ collision between the two races,” the less we see of the fifty Mounted Police the better, because that irresistible force will, if merely introduced here for the purpose of keeping up the delusion that we can enforce the laws, give greater cause to the Natives to be more refractory than ever. So long as we yield to the Maories in the way we do, so long will they attribute that yielding to our fears ; and so long as we seek in every way to conciliate them, and to gloss over all cause of dispute, so long will these people look upon us with the contempt we richly deserve. Until we have made an example of some one or other of these “ bloody-minded” chiefs, we need expect little chauce of being exempted from a repetition of their violence and insolence.

We, however, upon the whole attribute the exaggerated account given by the Herald of the affair of which we treat to our respectable contemporary’s weak and nervous state of mind, and to the consequent excited state of his fancy, which has multiplied the dangers threatened, as was the case once upon a time with his mighty prototype the redoubtable Falstaff, who said upon one occasion—

“ I am a rogue if I were not at half-sword’s point with a dozen of them two hours together, t have ’scap’d by miracle. lam eight times thrust through the doublet; four through the hose ; my buckler cut through and through; my sword hack’d like a hand-saw, ecce signum. I never dealt better since I was a man ; all would not do. A plague of all cowards ; —Let them speak ; if they speak more or less than truth, they are villains, and the sons of darkness.”