BRITISH POLICY IN NEW ZEALAND.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 292, 27 July 1865, Page 1

BRITISH POLICY IN NEW ZEALAND.

[From tiie New Zealand Examiner, April 13.]

It is on all hands admitted that the present position of affairs in New Zealand is a most critical one. We have arrived at a period when it is necessary to take a decided course of action. The British rule in the colony must either be maintained in reality or we must abandon the colony to its inhabitants, and leave the colonists and natives to settle their quarrels in the best way they can. The latter alternative the Home Government is wisely not disposed to adopt, though Her Majesty’s advisers, in consequence of the pressure put upon them, are not quite prepared to put forth their full force in order to bring the recalcitrant Maoris to submission. In the discussion of a question of this nature there is sure to be great diversity of opinion expressed. There are some who consider that, the natives have beeu hardly dealt with, and that due regard has not been pai I to their claims and interests. We are at a loss, however, to discover in what respect they have just grounds for complaint. There have beeu blunders committed, but we are not aware of a single instance of real hardship or oppression. In our opinion, the fault has rather been on the side of excessive leniency towards the Maoris than otherwise. In New Zealand the humanitarian mode of colonisation has had full sway. The Maoris have not in reality been brought under British rule. They have been allowed to have their own sham king, chief or chiefs, and we have endeavoured to act towards them as if they had been a distinct and independent nation. Under such a state of things misunderstandings were to be anticipated. According to the tacit or expressed arrangement the Maoris were not to interfere in any way with the British mode of Government, nor we with theirs. Though nominally all the inhabitants of the colony are British subjects, still, in fact, the government of the Maoris and the colonists has been as distinct throughout as the races themselves. On a large scale we have tried how the “ happy family principle would work iu New Zealand: and now to our cost we find that it is as impossible in practice as it-is absurd in theory. With the best intentions on both sides, it is quite impossible it could he otherwise. The Maoris were in possession of a rich country in posse, though in their hands it was in esse a barren wilderness. When by necessity a portion of the British race were placed on these shores of the Southern Pacific, it was at once discovered to be a desirable field for cultivation. We settled there some 25 years ago, and during that period we have virtually taken possession of the land. The conquest has not beeu by the sword, but by the more powerful weapons of industry and handicraft. We have taught the natives so well that they now look upon us with feelings of jealousy. We are the more powerful race, and this is the nead and front of our offending. V* e have no desire to tyrannise over our inferiors, and are quite ready to grant them all reasonable rights ; but we are not prepared to acknowledge that we have gained our footing on this rich soil by unfair means. We have all along respected the laws and customs of the natives; have never got anything from them without giving them more than an equivalent; and we should be cowards were we to abandon our position. This, in plain language, is the actual state of affairs The British nation has sanctioned it, and surely it would be something worse than cowardice were we to withhold that symphtby and aid which the colonists, iu the critical position we have placed them, require at the present moment. Let us manfully say, “We shall statul-by you. By our sanction and advice you left England for your own and your country’s good, and in the hoar of need we will not desert you.” This, according to our interpretation, i the construction which must be given to the statements made in the House of Commons by the present Secretary of State for the

Colonies, the Bight Hon. Mr Cardwell. Of course he must, in the position he occupies, pay due regard to thedelicacy of the diplomatic duties he has to discharge. 'He must, in answering captious questions put to him, endeavour to satisfy all parties; hut he, of all Colonial Secretaries, is not the one to misrepresent facts, or to pander to popular prejudices. In reply to Sir J. Trelawny, on the 16th ultimo, lie manfully stated that he would be no party to the violation of any treaty made by the natives, bo it that of Waitangi or any other. It would not be true Governor Browne and the Government had been guilty of any deliberate infraction of that treaty. “On the contrary,” he said, ■“ Governor Browne, than whom no more honorable man existed, fully believed that he was entitled under the treaty to do what he did; otherwise, he was convinced he would never have been a party to anything of that kind. For himself, he had been from first to last a firm supporter of the treaty of Waitangi, in its true meaning and real conception.” There is not one who knows anything of Mr Cardwell who will call in question this deliberate statement ; and we are bold to aver, that it is in perfect accord with the spirit of the entire British policy pursued in New Zealand.