MORE ATROCIOUS MURDERS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 297, 14 August 1865, Page 1

MORE ATROCIOUS MURDERS.

[From the New Zealand Herald, August 7th.] The, neglect of the Government to seek out and punish the perpetrators of the cruel murder of the Eev. Mr Volkner has borue its fruit, Another, and as brutal a tragedy, has been enacted upon the East Coast, and by the very Maoris who professed to feel such pious horror at the thought of the Opot.ilH butchery of March last. The cutter .Kate,-putting in to Whakatane, was boarded by a canoe; the natives were hospitably invited to partake of the meal being then eaten by the Europeans on board. They accepted the offer, and while all were at breakfast together, a signal was given, and the bloodthirsty and treacherous savages turned upon the guests and slew them, Mr White, the supercargo of the vessel, alone escaping instant death through the devotedness of his sou. He still, however, remains a prisoner in their hands Mr Fulloon, of the Native Office, being unwell, was below in his berth, and him they brutally murdered as be lay there. These are the signs of the times which induce a Governor and a Ministry, the leading point of whose policy is the ruin and prostration of Auckland, to' declare that the moment has now arrived when the colony can dispense witli the services of one-half the troops with the almost immediate prospect in view of the departure of the remainder. The return of the elated rebels to the Waikato and Tauranga, the destruction of our more immediate country settlements, and a butchering in Queenstreet, would indeed render the retention of the troops altogether unnecessary. Is it by rendering the Northern Island no longer habitable to Europeans that the Weld Ministry and their Middle Island supporters intend to overcome the native difficulty ? It would seem so, indeed, for in every direction have they laid them elves open to the suspicion. Murder remains umpunished. Our native allies of the East Coast are left to the mercy of an enemy superior iu arms and watching for the moment of revenge. Our chief military post on the East Coast; —Tauranga itself —is so weakened as to be scarcely in a position to defend itself if attacked by a strong force. The Waikato lies at the mercy of the enemy—its only defence the mask of fren iliuess, or rather indisposition to fight, which the more prudent of the rebels wear and will continue to wear till the soldiers are gone. Then will come the struggle for the mas'ery of the two racs—the war of extermination into which we are fast driving, and the blame, the disgrace, the guilt of those days of horror will lie at the door of Sir George Grey and the Weld administration.

From the moment that the Weld Ministry came into power they have recommended the withdrawal of the troops —the more immediate the day of their removal, the more pleased would the Ministry, it seems, have been. But have they provided a substitute for the power which held the enemy in check? Have any steps been taken except on paper, and those of the most imbecile character and utterly inadequate in extent, to meet the dangers that must be faced by the colony when the Imperial assistance is withdrawn ? None whatever. Even those very inadequate plans for self-defence ministers unwillingly admit must now, though practicable some months ago, be modified, as being beyond the remaining means of the Colony. The 350 men for the occupation of Waikato, for instance, must be reduced to a smaller force! and yet in the face of this confession the Ministry declare that we do not require and will not accept the services of the troops, Bat if the Government has done nothing to raise a cvdonial force in the place of that which it is ready to dispense with, it cannot be said that it has uot been idle in destroying that which it once possessed, Under its miserable bjighting influence, its numeroui injustices and breaches of faith, the Waikato regiments, nearly four thousand strong when the Weld administration came into office, have dwindled to a little more than half that number. The citizens of Auckland and the country settlers of this Province have become so justly disaffected towards

the Government of the Colony that one other cause only, than the necessity of protecting their own property from danger of Maori attack, would induce them to take up arras. The Ministry talk in their 'Memorandum No. 1 of a policy . self defence, which from the period of the assuming office they have steadily pursued, and now see no reason for receding from it. Where is their policy ? Where—when—how has it been applied? The only fruits of any policy that we have seen have been the unchecked spread of a blood-thirsty determination and league to destroy the Europeans, veiled under the disguise of a religious fanaticism—the repetition of murder after murder—the threatened destruction by rebel natives of those of their own race who remain faithful to our cause — the cool, insolent, cautious action taken up by Thompson, Eewi, and other chiefs and their followers, who sit defiantly and securely biding their time till the soldiers are gone . These, then, must be the fruits of that policy to which Ministers allude. This in fact is the state to which they have brought the Colony, * # * # * * # We would draw the attention of our English readers to the present conditions of this unfortunate portion of New Zealand, aj represented even by the intelligence contained in this single issue of our journal. War and slaughter of our troops at Taranaki—attacks upon our positions at Wanganui—butchery on the East Coast—and all this, while an imbecile do-nothing Ministry, and a Governor, intent only on working out his own ambitions ends, are crying Peace! Peace ! where there is no peace.