Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1863.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 141, 25 September 1863, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1863.

The result of the appeal made to the neighboring colonies is, that numbers of men are arriving as Volunteers to join the army in New Zealand, therein showing that the present Ministry, after allowing a great length of valuable time to be lost in inaction and puerile squabbles amongst themselves, are at last roused to a state of activity and semblance of energy. It is to be hoped that at the forthcoming meeting of the General Assembly the subject of the manner in which these new levies are to be paid will be seriously considered. Where on earth the tremendous sums of money which are proposed to be expended in this matter are to come from is a prolific source of speculation, for if it requires £•16,000 a year to maintain a force of one hundred men, it would at that rate require a sum of £160,000 a year to maintain a force of 1000 men 1 ! A most appalling sum, truly, considering the extreme disproportion between the number of pounds sterling and the probable necessity of raising some thousands of men at this high figure Without at present entering into the discussion of the merits or demerits of that section of the Colonial l)efence Corps which has fallen to our lot, we cannot but look upon that troop as by no means likely to fulfil the expectations of those who have ever turned believing eyes upon it, and we consider it a clear and unmistakeable manifestation of the panic which seized the Ministry at the first blast of the trump of war ; or, if it is not exactly that,.then it is an overpowering instance of the result of our eagerness to share in the general scramble. We have ever looked upon this kind of very extravagantly ovufin«ivu trnmw HQ nntlnno* mnrp tlimi n rro- ~ Q I

vernnient job, finding employment for a number of young men as officers or wbat not, ami whom it was impossible to get rid of satisfactorily in any other way, and at the same time secure a good word from men of influence. But, setting aside for a moment all these minor considerations, when we come to consider that the cost of 100 men, according to the present estimates for raising troops in this colony, would have proved, if properly applied, amply sufficient to raise a regiment five or six hundred strong of veteran aud picked men, officered by high standing gen-

tlemeu, who had seen much service and learned in many a hardly won battle the terrible art of war. it is really astonishing that the idea of making this arrangement never occurred to those whose duty it is to take measures for the defence of the settlements by the raising of troops. The war which is now devastating one of our finest settlements, and has already laid in ruins another once flourishing Province, is a war which was as inevitable and as certain as the rising or setting of tbe sun ; and we have had plenty of warning of it, and have in fact bad plenty of time and opportunities of providing against it. All these advantages have been entirely lost sight of during our mean and untimely

struggles with the Home Government as to who should pay, and the time which might have been so well and advantageously made use of in preparing for the day of difficulty has passed away, and those necessary steps which should have been taken deliberately and with caution are now hurried over with

indiscriminate and undignified haste, and by ' 1 consequence all goes wrong. 1 s In this Province, the very natural conse- j quence of the hasty manner in which the j ! Colonial Defence Corps has been got together is manifest at the first glance, and in many ; 1 ways. It is manifested in the sort of men j selected, and it is further manifested in the j horses upon which those men are mounted. j Of the men we will at present say little, but j in passing we would suggest to Major Whit- j more that all those amongst them who are | at all troublesome should he drafted out at j once and sent to the front, where, in the j fiery ordeal of a brush with the Maories ! amongst other good things, they would learn j good manners and better behaviour, and the ! . , i difference between lighting in practice and | fighting in theory. But on tho horses we must at once pronounce a verdict of had, had, I i had; nine out of ten of those supplied are | very little better than worthless, —poor, soft, i sony brutes hardly able to stand the two hours exercise of every-day drill, much less able to carry their appointed weight a good smart day's journey. Mere colts, hardly yet weaned, with their sucking teeth unshed, expected to live ami thrive on hard corn and | no hay or grass. Here, in the most vital part of the eliiciency of the troop in question, we find a fatal deficiency. Of all things I which ought to have received serious attention that of the horses was most important. This failure is to he attributed to the small sum offered per horse, and to the extreme scarcity of the right sort for the purpose. We believe that the officer in command has not spared any exertion to get his men mounted, but has failed, according to our view of the case, because, under the circumstances of want of time and money, the required animals both in quantity and quality are not to he got in this part. It will, therefore, be extremely urgent upon our representatives not to allow the subject of the Defence Corps to pass muster at the next meeting of the Assembly unchallenged. The expense is enormous, and would be, to any other people than we of New Zealand, perfectly incredible. The expenditure for one year only under this heading, hacked by the accompanying promise of land to each man joining, would secure a continued stream of valuable immigration into the island, to be numbered by thousands, fur many, many years, and the grand question of the settlement of the way to fill the country with able-bodied men would be thus satisfactorily and finally an. swered. We must guard, if possible, any acquisition of land from the Natives in the ' present war against too heavy a claim upon it at the outset, for it is pretty clear that if out of that land we have to give away so many thousands of acres to volunteers and their officers, and out of what is left to pay them their hire, there will be small lasting benefit derived by the colony by way of compensation for the present direful state of matters, which has supervened from the , doings of a succession of imbecile ministries and irresponsible advisers.

The news from the scat oT war published in our last is very unsatisfactory. What the officers in command are about to allow such a stale of things to exist as will admit of the

Natives capturing so large a quantity as forty tons of stoies is truly astonishing. It was only the other day that we heard of our cunning foes carrying oft - twenty-three stand of arms, lleally, these is something wrong. We fear our gallant General is so occupied with the front that he cannot spare a thought for the rear. Why, these small matters successful attacks on escorts and what not, accompanied as those attacks are by the securing of trophies of their success, act as in os', powerful stimulants to the Maories. These to us little affairs are to them very great affairs, and have a corresponding effect upon them. The only way to save the lives of our men is to send a good dog along with every escort; that one animal would be worth a hundred men, and save the lives of as many more. An ambuscade would be

detected at a great distance by the keen scent of a dog, and its object defeated. The consequence of a stubborn adherence to the usages of civilized war while engaged

with a wily, savage foe are proving every day more patent. Really, if the Natives can carry on a system of successful raids in the very midst of a large armed force, are very much afraid that they could more readily, and with less risk to themselves, make a very serious descent upon places not quite so well prepared as the neighborhood of Auckland for their reception. May we bear of a successful brush with the enemy soon, and thus inflict punishment upon them for their audacity. We cannot help a feeling of admiration of the daring skill with which the Maories conceive and execute their nefarious designs. It is evident they have us at a disadvantage in bush fighting at present, notwithstanding General Cameron’s exploit of driving them from a position in the open at the point of the bayonet.