OUR FUTURE POLICY.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 5, Issue 268, 22 May 1865, Page 3

OUR FUTURE POLICY.

E2TEACT PBOM LETTEIiS ON NEW ZEALAND, BY C. HUESTHOUSE, ESQ. (From the New Zealander.) There is, I think, no instance on record, either in ancient or modern times, among any sort or condition of men, where the original or semi-bar-barous inhabitants of a country to which a superior race has come, have ever bowed to the institutions of such superior race until they have felt its supremacy in arms; and most assuredly the arrogant, pugnacious Maori is the very last of aboriginal races who would suffer himself to form an exception to any such historical rule. If, In despatching Governor Hobson to create New Zealand a British Colony in 1840, Lord J. Russell had backed him tip with 5000 bayonets, the Maori would have been engaged in making laws instead of breaking them. The Colonial Office, in its secret chambers, has long known that to effect the civilization of a race like the New Zealanders, the soldier with his Enfield, was as necessary an instrument as the settler with his plough, or the missionary with his bell. But, daunted probably by your peace and cotton party the Colonial Office has kept this knowledge to itself; and by such a policy and by such a bearing towards the Maori as we have seen it has maintained, has sought, for twenty years, to put off an evil, but a necessary and inevitable, day. The whole history of the Maori race, in common with the history of all aboriginal races, the whole of our five and twenty years’ intercourse with them show that they reverence physical power, and esteem it the only qualification for command. For ten years we attempted to live with them without the presence of soldier; we trusted to prayers, to mild jpersuasion, to missionaries, to missionary-governors. The dirt they made us cat during this humiliating period is revolting to think of—they committed twenty murders, rose in two rebellions, and sacked a settlement. Troops appeared, and for the next ten years the native hid his arms and turned to the plough, and the colony twice quadrupled her wealth and population. Half the troops were withdrawn—Colonial Office economy threatened to withdraw the other half—the land league was formed —and at once, the colony was in a blaze again, and thousands are brought to the verge of ruin. Redoubled missionary efforts —cargoes of pictorial bibles, with moving pictures of the prodigal son in ragged breeches and cocked hat; redoubled legislative efforts —admission to local parliament, admission to general parliament, native councils, native magistrates, native policemen, native hospitals, will each and all prove useless in our efforts to civilise and save the native, if we do not at first prove to him that while %ve are a just and merciful race, we are a strong and warlike race—a race, if need be, as well able to fight as to work, or trade or talk, or write. Here and there among the natives some man of intellect may be found who, owing to long intimacy with a colonist’s family, who would converse with him on other subjects than his own merits, or salvation, or adult baptism, and the like, has formed a reasonable idea of tho strength of the white man ; and here and there a native has visited England,, and seen and measured for himself Portsmouth, Woolwich, and the Guards—yet only to be called a liar on bis return. But, except in a burlesque smattering of scriptural knowledge, tho New Zealanders, intelligent, astute as they are in many things, are really, even now, little other in many important essentials than they were in the days of Tasman and of Cook, and no clearer an idea of the real power and resources of that far-off country which would rule them than savages of Dahomy or barbarians of Bhootan. The Church missionaries, who, in consideration of the great sums lavished on them by the public, might have been expected to attempt to do some good in New Zealand by imparting to their con. verts a little elementary knowledge of things practical, have been too much engrossed in expatiating to the native on the mysteries of Trinity, on the errors of Rome, on the heresies of Wesley, on la haute politique, to have had sufficient time or inclination to teach the native anything that would be terrestrially useful to him ; and when missionary teaching has stooped to things mandaue, or things homely, it has sought chiefly to make the black man distrust the white. One marked characteristic of the Maori race is their stupid, Chinese-like contempt for any other race. They sneer at Frenchmen as wee-wees, make mock of Englishmen as a people who can work like beaver rats, bnt who can run away like rats, and esteem dark-skinned races so little that I have heard them figuratively boast that they could eat an Australian aboriginal for breakfast, and dispose of a negro for supper. Physical force, the might of tho strong arm, they respect—this, they think, comes and goes with the soldier. Moral force, industry, the wealth of the working arm, they covertly despise—this, they think, and this alone, is the poor possession of the colonist. We are the busy beavers, they the warlike cats —and they will be ruled by none of our beaver laws till we show that we can enforce them with the lion’s teeth and claws. Indeed, whether we be moved by a righteous desire to punish the rebel tribes* for this, the third Maori revolt —-or by a desire to effect the regeneration of the Maori by preparing him for the fruitful reception of British institutions, or by a desire not to excite the mirth of Europe and

America by retreating, under the cloud of a sham peace, from a war with a few thousand aggressive savages—or by a desire to redress the wrongs of the colonists and to preserve our national property in New Zealand for the use of the nation—whether our course of action be determined by one, or by other, or by all, of these motives—our first, our only curative step, now that the sword is drawn, is to use it mercifully, but firmly and effectually. No idle suspension of arms patched up by Missionary and Aborigines’ Protection Societies aided by Utopian philo-Maori men in the colony, and disguised under the name of peace, could prove, in effect, other than a delusion and a snare. The only peace that could prove a lasting peace—the only peace that could prove a foundation on which might be built up that policy towards tha Maori which alone could now save his race, would be a peace achieving and comprising thre“ thing—the disarming of the rebel tribes—the confiscation to the Crown of a large portion, say half, of their unused wild lands—the hanging of the brutal murderers of our women and children. But here and in New Zealand public opinion has decided that the first and the last of these measures are alike righteous and necessary—but by that section of the eommunity represented by the honorable member for Maidstone, and by a few of our hollow peace men in the colony, the necessity of the second measure has been called in question. (To he continued.)