MR. CARDWELL’S DESPATCH.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 5, Issue 271, 29 May 1865, Page 3

MR. CARDWELL’S DESPATCH.

(From the New Zealander.) “It must be clearly understood that her Majesty’s Government do not acknowledge the obligation to cany on the war at the expense of the country till the natives are so broken and disheartened as to render further war impossible. Nor, again, do they think it indispensable to require that any specific conditions should be made respecting the universal recognition of European law in which we have not, as yet, the power practically to ensure to the natives the benefit of European institutions.” This negative programme of Mr Cardwell’s is very ‘clear and intelligible. Its meaning is that the securing the colony against future Maori wars forms no part of the policy of the Imperial Government. It immediately occurs to an ordinary reader to ask—What was the object proposed in sending a British army to those shores ? Was it that the British tax-payer might have a temporary outlet for his spare coin, and that the British army might add to its former laurels those gained by the slaughter of a few wretched savages, and the storming of a few pas and rifle-pits, and then to be recalled, leaving things, on the whole, rather worse than it found them ? Because, if this is the view entertained by the Home Government, it is certainly a great pity that we were not told as much at the outset, and before we had crippled our resources, and entailed upon ourselves an embarrassing debt in an enterprise which we fondly believed had for its object the future security of the country. The colony might then have reserved its own resources until after the British army had completed its mission of glory and although the recall of the troops would have left the native difficulty in a worse condition than ever, still we should have been better able to deal with it ourselves thaa now, when we have so seriously crippled ourselves, in the faith that the Imperial Government would assist us to the end. Mr Cardwell’s statement has the effect of stultifying the whole policy of the British Government towards New Zealand for .the last four years. For it may reasonably be asked, whether the sentence which we have quoted at the bead of this article is not virtually a condemnation of the policy which sent our troops to support Governor Gore Browne in the affair of Waitara. Were not those troops sent out for the purpose of “ breaking down and disheartening” the natives who entertained practical objections to the “recognition of European (British) lawF” Or is it supposed in . England that the Maori will give up the amusement

of killing and eating pakebas before be is “ broken down and disheartened ?” We confess ourselves utterly unable to see why British troops were wanted here in 1858 and not in 1865. If it is said that our population has grown m the interval we reply that so has the native difficulty, and that out of all proportion to the growth of the population. In 1863 the murder of some British soldiers was judged a sufficient reason for the active interference of the British Government. It remains to be seen whether a murder of a much more horrible and revolting character will be deemed compatible with the withdrawal of that interference in 1865.