OUR FORCES.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 130, 10 July 1863, Page 5 (Supplement)

OUR FORCES.

(From the (Canterbury) PrmJJune 19.)

What are all the troops doing at Auckland ? Not fighting; not even defending the town, which ought not to require defence. There are, besides those engaged at Taranaki, some 4000 men we believe, in Auckland, who have only to be admired and paid for. In the mean time all the settlers are leaving Eaglan. A whole British settlement is being abandoned, whilst there are thousands of troops living in easy quarters doing nothing. Auckland we suppose has 20,000 inhabitants; there must be 4000 men capable of bearing arms in the town alone. Can they not defend themselves if attacked ? Must every Auckland townsman have a soldier to take care of him ? And are we to bow our heads and call this the wisdom of the Great Pro-consul. Then, again, what shall we say of this idea of bringing down Sikh regiments ? Docs it not occur to Sir G. Grey that this step will bring discredit and disgrace on us in the eyes of the Natives ? It is obvious to every fool that the Natives will say —“ you could not beat us yourselves—you English; you were compelled to call in a dark race to help you, and protect you from us ?” Are these Sikhs always to stay here ? If not, what is to happen when they go ? They will leave us with our prestige far weaker than before, and with every temptation to the Natives to regard their removal as the removal of our only safety, and to break out again. Sad indeed and strange it is, that the one thing to which we do not look, is to our own hands, our own resources, our own laws. We are ever turning to every point of the compass, and whining for some external aid. Eirst it is troops and men of war from England, Australia, Tasmania; next it is German military emigrants : next it is Sikh regiments from India : anything and everything but —ourselves alone.

It is not the mere winning of a battle here or there wo look to ; it is not the success of this or that particular policy we care about; but we are concerned with the growth of a spirit of cowardly dependance on any one but ourselves, which the late and present Governor have equally evoked and fostered. Had Governor Browne had the greatness and pluck to put Colonel Gold and his troops into a steamer and send them to Sydney, and to have called on the whole population of these Islands to aid him—even assuming the war policy to have been justifiable—less lives on. the whole would have been lost, and the Natives would have admitted that we were the 'superior race. Every step we now take, even a victory such as the last, gives them occasion to congratulate themselves on their own superiority, and so postpone the period when these Islands can be reduced to a pacific state.