THE CONTINUED NEW ZEALAND WAR.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 7, Issue 357, 12 March 1866, Page 1

THE CONTINUED NEW ZEALAND WAR.

(From the Morning Post, 14th December.) It would seem that our self-congratulation on the termination of the war in New Zealand was rather premature. The war is not only not an end, but it is scarcely well begun, if we are to credit the intelligence brought by the present mail. The peace proclamation lately issued by the Governor is laughed at by the natives, the messenger employed in distributing copies of it has been murdered, and brisk preparations are being made by the hostile tribes to recapture the Waikato country, with the conquest of which we fondly imagined we had finally and effectually crushed the rebellion. It is certainly very dipsiriting to bo told now that what we regarded as an entire war was simply a single campaign, and that more pas must be taken, more tribes reduced to subjection, and more blood spilt before we can with justice say that British authority- has been vindicated throughout the length aod breadth of the colony. But it is not merely a sense of disappointment which we experienced on receiving this unwelcome news. It is annoying to be told that the Colonial Government are still engaged in a petty war with their own sub jects, which was supposed to have been concluded, but the sense of annoyance gives place to a stronger feeling when we seek to realise the fact that a highly intelligent race of men, such as the Maoris unquestionably are, should prefer waging a hopeless war to submitting themselves to the established Government. In all wars, whether civil or otherwise, there is a right and a wrong side, although it may be no easy matter to determine which is which; and advocates have been found who respectively denounced the New Zealand colonists as rapacious tyrants and the insurgent natives as gratuitous and inexcusable violators of the public peace. Without professing to decide on whom the blame of having occasioned the present war should rest, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that some very powerful motive indeed must actuate the Maoris in prolonging a most unequal strife, # % # We have had frequent occasion to comment on the peculiar form of government which exists in New Zealand, and have candidly expressed our doubts of the policy of establishing in the colony that quasi-constitutional Government which for some years past it has, incongruously enough, been said to enjoy. In New Zealand the representative system exists; all the inhabitants, irrespective of race, are supposed to participate more or less directly in the government of the colony. Ou paper nothing could be more excellent, but iu practice it unfortunately happens that it is just the reverse. The natives complain of being oppressed. They say that they are compelled, whether they will it or not, to transfer their lands to the colonists under the form of fictitious sales, in which little or no money passes from the vendee to the vendor, They assert that notwithstanding their boasted rights, they are forcibly evicted from their property—in a word, they charge their fellow-subjects with pursuing towards them a silent, steady, but certain policy of extermination. Whether these charges are weli founded 6r not, opinions may differ ; but no one will pretend to doubt that under some form or another the constant unceasing war between civilization and barbarism is being carried on in New Zealand. * • *

Mr Roebuck, who has the credit of saying bluntly those disagreeable things -which other people content themselves with simply thinking, declared in Parliament that it was the duty, and unquestionably was the intention, of the colonists of Nev? Zealand to dispossess

the aborigines of their entire territory, and hinted that the sooner they were enabled to effect this desirable result the better it would be. The savage must succumb in presence of the civilised man, and the member for Sheffied gave it very plainly to be understood that, in his opinion, any policy which tended to postpone the inevitable consummation was pernicious. Our present Colonial Secretary on same the occasion upheld the cause of the Maoris, and adduced instances of their intelligence, chivalry, and .valour, to show that they deserved a better fate than extermination, Mid expressed the hope that, under a judicious system of management, the two races might be induced to coalesce. Now, whatever diversity of opinion may exist in respect to the merits of these different lines of policy, it will be admitted that no course could ha more unworthy or unjust than to make the semblance of adopting the latter whilst, in truth, the former was being pursued. But that is precisely the course which, so far as we have had opportunities of judging, the Colonial Government have hitherto followed. They pretend that the Maori and the Englishman stand on the same footing, whilst at the same time they manifest such utter contempt for the plainest rights of the former .as to drive him into hopeless revolt. The resumption of hostilities by those whom we supposed to be vanquished manifests a distrust of English justice and English mercy for which we would gladly discover a satisfactory explanation.