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The Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, 26TH MAY, 1865.

A correspondent having directed our attention to a leading article in the New Zealand Herald on the subject of the withdrawal of the troops from the colony by the Home Government at the present crisis in our affairs, we have at his suggestion given a portion of it a place in our columns, not that we agree entirely with the sentiments expressed in it, but more because it states prominently what we believe to be the truth in the main points of the argument, which we will briefly state. After, by means of a false compromising policy, which has failed most completely in inducing the rebellious tribes to submit, but has rather allowed the wavering to drift into rebellion, and convinced the aboriginal inhabitants of our weakness and inability to subdue them, the mother country is about to add to this the other false step of a withdrawal of one-halj of the display of force she has in the colony, which will be instantly interpreted by the Maori as a sure sign of our defeat. This conviction will re-act on the minds of the wavering tribes, and induce them to join the rebels, and, we may add, will cause the hypocritical portion to throw off the mask hey have assumed, and appear as they are at heart; the consequence of which will be that the rebellion will appear as it really is, and this at a time when the colony is thrown almost entirely upon its own resources for the coping with a difficulty of greater, magnitude than has ever yet beset its path.

This is doubtless a fair statement of the case as it at present stands; and it is right that the whole colony should know and feel that it is so with us. We have again and again put the matter in this light, and we trust the whole of the colony is prepared to find it so.

We are not disposed to join with our contemporary in a wail for the loss of the troops we say let them go. We know and have long known that a death struggle must come to pass between the two races in New Zealand before the mother country can be brought to understand anything about the affairs of the colony. It is quite certain that things cannot longer be permitted to go on as they have done. The millstone of the colonial debt' is as much as we can bear; oar tariff (as ministers own) is as high as it can be made; and but little more can by any possibility be extracted from the pockets of the colony by new contrivances of more direct taxation. We cannot continue to pay over £60,000 a month merely to support ah army in playing at soldiers, instead of fighting or subduing the enemy. From sheer exhaustion we cannot do so; and there is not yet and never has bees any sign of action either on the part of the Governor or the Home authorities such as would be calculated to bring this state of things to an end.

If then we cannot continue to prosecute the present pretence of a war—if there exist no, reason to suppose that more active and stringent measures would be permitted whilst the military is retained amongst us- —if a a general rising of the natives is necessary to convince our friends at home of the necessity of conquering the rebels, and this rising will be the first fruits of the Withdrawal of the troops; it will be well for the colony that they go, .though its immediate result will be such a time of fiery trial for the European settler as but few have foreseen. We have been constrained to omit from the Herald's article one paragraph. It is, as might be supposed, another variation of the cry now for so many months, repeated day by day, about the great Auekland grievance, the loss of the Seat of Government. It argues that the desire of the Weld Ministry to crush the Auckland province was its motive in recommending the withdrawal of the troops, without which recommendation ihe order for their withdrawal would not have been made.

This is very childish on the part of the Herald. We have before had occasion to notice something very similar. We believe that no such desire to crush the province ever existed; we further believe that our contemporary knows it as well as ourselves, and whatever excuse there might have been at first for the use of such puerile language* time has long since removed. We do trust that reflection will convince our contemporary of the folly of its use, and that it is time it should cease.

We say nothing in defence of the Weld Ministry. We were sorry to find that a Ministry could be formed to work with a Governor who repudiated his own policy. We believe it would have been better to have shown him and the Home Government, too, the opionion held by the colony on the subjects in disputn between him and hi s Ministry. He has been justified as we knew he would be, and the colony is now some .£500,000 the worse. - So far as the payment of the war bill is concerned the policy of confiscation is abandoned, though it is certain that it might have been maintained by a Ministry with less pro-Maori proclivities than they, and their employment of Her Majesty’s troops for defensive operations alone, was a piece of sheer insanity, , whether on the West Coast or elsewhere, while there were a body of armed rebels in the island to be subdued; but as to jealousy of Auckland, and a desire to crush it, we altogether acquit them of that.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HBT18650526.2.4

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 5, Issue 270, 26 May 1865, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
972

The Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, 26TH MAY, 1865. Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 5, Issue 270, 26 May 1865, Page 2

The Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, 26TH MAY, 1865. Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 5, Issue 270, 26 May 1865, Page 2

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