MR M'LEAN AND THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 13, Issue 669, 1 April 1869, Page 3

MR M'LEAN AND THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT.

(From the New Zealand Advertiser, 22nd .March.) We have already adverted shortl; to ' the proceedings of Mr M'Lean, Superintendent of Hawke's Bay, and at the >ime agent for the General Govern ment on the East Coast, with reference to certain men of the Ngatiporou tribe, who had been enlisted and sworn in, i.f the Ami til Constabulary. Mr M'Lean, in the teeth of the earnest remonstrances of the Government, advised the leading chief of the party to ■ eiurn with the men to their settlements. The Gazette of Friday(?) contains the announcement that the authority exercised by Mr M'Leaii, as 1 Government Agent, has been with • drawn. This action is certain to be ' the signal for a torrent of abuse against 1 the Government, and it is worth while 1 again to consider the nature of the » proceedings which have doubtless led 1 to this withdrawal of authority. The conduct of Mr M'Lean we have > already characterised as an insaue ex-.. - liibition of the selfish spirit of ultraprovincialism. We should rather > nave described it as a compound of'the selfishness of fear and narrow localism

and fatal, if tolerated, to all government whatever in this North Island. jit is, however, far more and worse than this. It is at once treason, sel- ; fishness, and monstrous impolicy. Mr I M'Lean, during a long career as an " officer of Government among the na- ; lives, has acquire 1 an honorable stand 1 ing with the race as a whole, which i lew, if any men in the country possess. ? He is known everywhere, and in his : ; own district where his intercourse i with them is recent, he has a consider- I able personal influence. His position t for four or five years past as agent for 1 the Government, has, of course given i additional strength to that influence. ; The patronage of the Government ha? ! been exercised, their gifts conferred, I their aid in war afforded —in short t their whole action has till lately been t taken through his agenc}. Mr I M'Lean was a sort of Prajfect oi 1 Hawke's Bay, and he has unconsciously imitated very common and verj bad : examples in the same office in days ol t old, when Home feebly controlled her i distant and conquered provinces b\ i .such officers. It w.;s pretty evident ■. last session, from the imperious tone I of Mr M'Lean himself, and yet more ' from that of Mr Ormond, his reputed i chief adviser, that he was too large a i subject to be trusted as an agent oi t the Government. The position ofSu- ■ perintendent, which he holds, mad< ■ the improbability of satisfactory co- ' operation greater. He has abused hi; s influence and powers, to over-rule , those from whom he gained part ol t the one, and all of the other, lie has i. created the ugliest precedent that lias 1 yet been seen in our ugly war history, i Disloyalty, there has no doubt been, c here aud there, among officers of Go- i verment, but flat insubordination an! [ rebellion on the part of so high an of < iicer has not been seen before. Had - Mr M'Lean not been well advised, oi < taken counsel only of his own sense oi ■ propriety, instantly upon deciding that : an imminent peril, him to f thwart the Government, he would i have tendered his resignation of his .■ powers as agent. But, uo, he adhered i to the authority he had enjoyed to the ; nulling down of all authority, and one I can half imagine him heading his Nga- ■ tiporou and other adherents, if any could be found foolish enough to fob ! low him, and after deposing and re ; placing the other officers in his pro- i vince, marching upon head-quarters to assume the reins. Happily, if the bonds of discipline are slack in New Zealand, the counter spirit of anarch) < is not active among our European po- i pulation ; and Mr M'Lean himself has rather the spirit of Macbeth than oi < his lady. "We will proceed no fur ther in this business!" Perhaps with out some promptings like hers, he would hardly have gone so far towards casting away the "goldenopinions" that he has hitherto enjoyed among all sorts of people. But the Government could hardly tolerate what has been done without inviting similar abuses elsewhere. Mi M'Leaus influence is not important enough to be purchased by sacrificing principles sj vital as those he has •rumpled upon. We have pointed out before the sel iishness of the course we are comment ing on, and we recur to this point. I; native allies are the proper safeguard ;f a settlement, no place in New Zealand lias so much of this element of security as Hawke's Bay. Not to repeat the details that we have already given, it is sufficient to point again to the 2,200 riiies issued along the East Coast, the bulk of them we believe in the hands of trustworthy men of whom a large force can be gathered imme- • diately, and quite an army in four or . live days, It it be true that Kooti has been, and is thinking of Hawke's Bay, i his f.rce is but a handful. Major Mair reported it as under 300, when ) lie attacked the Ngatipuko at Whaka- > lane. He lust a considerable number . —probably not less than 50 men hors de combat, He may have been rein- » forced by rebel aud trimming YVbakat tokea and others, but after a live or * six days' march, threatened by ene 3 mies on both sides it would indeed be 1 surprising if be could muster more than 300 in any part of the Province. d Meantime, the Ngatituwharetoa, ol .„ Taupo, about 250 of whom are loyal ' and well armed, are only too eager tor r the word to fail on, and Major Mair, y with Opotiki settlers and Arawa, art 2 probably on his rear already, Qm

hundred of the Armed Constabulary from Poverty Bay and Wairoa are promptly available, and the Militia of the Province cannot certainly be fewer than 800 men. In short, Hawke's Bay is, of all places in the Colony at all liable to attack, by far the best protected, whether we reckon Europeans or natives, and is, moreover, a country much more easily defensible, and ofilicted with a smaller number of rlauhau and King naiives on its borders than either Wanganui, Taraoaki, Waikato, or the Bay of Plenty. Kooti, who has been driven out of a chosen bush stronghold with great loss, and repelled at Wbakatane by a handful of the loyal Ngatipukeko, is not likely if he can avoid it, to encounter the fifteen hundred well-provided Europeans and natives who might be brought to converge upon him in the Hawke's Buy settlement. What we ire saying of Hawke's Bay applies substantially, though, with less force, to the settlements, Maori and European, on the East Coast. It has been proved again and again that an over-

whelming body of men can be quickly brought to boar by ihe Government at Waiapu, Turanga, and Wairoa. Wo do not ih-uy that all parts of this island are in more or less danger, but few are less exposed or better defended i ban the East Coast. Look at the other side of the picture. Colonel Whit more, on the West Coast, is pursuing a foe much more circumspect and hitherto much more successful than Kooti, in a forest where none tut bushmen can hope to overtake him. It' he escapes, lie remains a constant menace to two settlements, which he. can secretly approach under cover of iiis forest. The constables enlisted [on the East Coast], and now practically disbanded, were good bushmea —some ot the best in the country — veterans in and accustomed to work with our men and their commander. We need pursue the contrast no further to justify the assertion that the best excuse that can be suggested for Mr IV Lean's behaviour is that he was beside himself with anxiety for his own district, and so for the time forget his duty to everyone else. Bad as the features of the case must be allowed to be, there is another aspect of Me M'Lean's action ia which it appears more mischievous. Mr M'Lean, an adviser and friend of a nice whose curse and destruction are their lawlessness and self-will, —who can only le saved, if at all, by coming under external Government, advises a body of them, who had voluntarily encased, and sworn to serve the CoCO 7 lony, to throw overboard their engagements, and violate their oaths, because he thinks the East Coast safer whilst they are present there. Mr M'Lean's greatest admirers have never given him credit for statesmanlike irasp of the Maori question. He has nut pretended to it, and his proposals have all been of the nature of palliaiives, and not calculated to cure the evils of anarchy, or train the race to order. But no oue would have expected from him such thoughtlessness, or such indiiference, to every idea or hope of establishing discipline and faith to engagements to every consideration of >A future loyalty. What wrong can Maoris possibly find in faithlessness, who are advised to it by such an authority ? What conception of the nature of Government can they entertain who see a high officer and agent using his powers to thwart the Government no undertakes to help? One word to those nervous people who may fancy that a great danger attends the removal of Mr M'Lean. . there are generally alarmists of this . There never was yet a man bora 5 into the world who was indispen- ' sable. Sickness, death, private considerations may at any moment deprive 1 ihe Colony of its best men, and it will '. go on notwithstanding; the quelling of the native insurrection nowhere depends on one man. We ought not to conclude these re- , marks without avowing the belief that l * Mr M'Lean is at bottom too sincerely \ patriotic to do further mischief where " lie can do no good. In applying the expression selfishness to his action, we J hardly need say that we do not intend ', to impute him any iow or pt*rsoui '. feeling, but only that narrowness of * sympathy which acts with intensity ' only on behalf of those close at hand, I aud, under his owu special charge.