Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1863.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 151, 4 December 1863, Page 3

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1863.

We have at last the pleasure to record a decisive victory gained over the disaffected natives, bought dearly by a sacrifice of many noble lives, but still, for all that, to be accounted a great step taken in the direction of an ultimate and continued peace. The question of what to do with the prisoners appears to give a great deal of trouble to the authorities. How to get rid of the incubus of some 200 captive Maories, would seem to be a very knotty point indeed. To us, however, the solution of the difficulty is very simple. Those interesting captives, trophies of Cameron’s Generalship, and the rightful spoils of the gallant commander’s bow and spear, should be instantly provided with spades and picks, and proceed at once to work upon the roads. Three or four hundred natives set to work upon the great trunk road, or upon any road for that matter, would very soon make a perceptible impression upon that important undertaking. The effect that this condemnation to hard labor would have upon the great hereditary chiefs captured in battle, would be very salutary. To them all labor, except that of their own choosing, is a degradation not easily tolerated. By those sensitive members of the tattooed aristocracy, compulsory labor is looked upon with horror, as they not only lose caste, but are for ever stamped as slaves. Under the old Maori regime a man captured alive in battle and reduced to a state of slavery was ever after looked upon, even by his own tribe, as a lost man, one who had better far have died a thousand horrible deaths, than live in a state of bondage. We suppose that a remnant of this fine feeling is yet left in the Maori mind, notwithstanding the praiseworthy efforts of the missionaries to eradicate every vestige of the original feelings and sentiments of the people. If, after having captured a crowd of these atrocious murderers composing the Waikato forces, they are again let loose to carry on their game of murder and rapine, the war will continue till the “oldest inhabitant” will have forgotten when it began. Therefore, we hope that no difficulty will be raised against the immediate employment of all prisoners of war, regardless of their rank or their influence, upon the public works. It may be said by some, in argument against this arrangement, that the Maories thus set to work against their will and without pay, would decline the arduous undertaking and resolutely refuse to comply with this requisition made upon their strength. To this we reply—Erect a gallows on the spot where the works are progressing, and intimate to the refractory parties that they have the alternative of either working or hanging. If

this simple method was adopted to induce a feeling of delight in their daily toils, it would be perfectly astonishing what a vast interest those attractive captives would take in the progress of the works. Charming idea to be sure, and we devoutly trust that it will be carried out.

We are by no means surprised to find that the celebrated Wm. Thompson, of scriptureloving memory, should have bolted at an early stage of that bloody day’s proceedings, when the brave Mercer and the heroic Phelps met their deaths. That atrocious hypocrite always excited our extreme and unutterable disgust by the free use be made of Scriptural texts and quotations. The devil, we are told by good authority, quotes Scripture upon occasions pretty abundantly, but we never heard it asserted that that ohnoxious party was particularly brave.

We have hitherto carefully avoided any criticism upon the doings of General Cameron. We neither join with our respectable contemporary the Herald in hearty admiration for the author of that choice epistolary fragment which appeared in his columns a short time ago—the redoubtable G. S. Whitmore, nor in condemnation of the doings of his General before Meremere and elsewhere. We have felt pretty sure that that cautious son of Scotland was making preparation to strike a fatal blow if he struck at all, and that surmise has proved correct. Nothing could prove more disastrously fatal to the welfare of this colony than a speedy conclusion of the war. Since blood has beeu so freely shed—since so many of our countrymen’s valuable lives have beeu sacrificed in the cause, it is to be fervently hoped that the bloodthirsty disturbers of our peace will be thoroughly beaten into an unconditional surrender and totally disarmedIf we stop short of that, we shall have, after a very brief interval, to go over the same sanguinary ground again, bathing each weary step with more precious blood.

We cannot join in the admiration expressed of tne courage shown by the natives in defence of their position. They fought as long as they could do so with any hope of ultimately making good their retreat. Their motto would seem to be—“ He who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day.”