"THE CASE OP THE COLONY."

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 14, Issue 696, 1 July 1869, Page 3

"THE CASE OP THE COLONY."

(To the Editor of the New Zealand Herald.) Sir, —Under the above heading Mr J. C. Firth, I observe, has published in your issue of Friday last a letter which lie had addressed (through His Excellency the Governor) to Earl Granville, Secretary of State for the Colonies, bearing date 15 th March, 1869. The publication of the letter in question gives cause for feelings of mingled pleasure and regret. No one will, in this case, question the rectitude of Mr Firth's motives, but many will question, and fairly, the wisdom of his conduct. Half the mischief committed in Mew Zealand politics—half the difficulty occasioned in governing the natives —has arisen from private persons assuming functions which of right belong to the Goverament of the country, both of a diplomatic and administrative character. In the present case, a private citizen has written to the Secretary of State in a private way, with the modest ambition, Ist, of giving Earl Granville " a bit of his mind;" 2nd, of more clearly defining for that noble- ! man's edification and growth in knowledge, the duties devolving upon the mother country, and the relations which should ever subsist between Great Britain and her Colonial Empire ! A most notable feature in this instance is, that it is about the first "private communication" to that august official, which is not a libellous slander upon, but a defence of, the Mew Zealand colonists. It is a doubtful advantage, however—a possible .food bringing in its train a known evil. Other men, with different modves, and animated by a different spirit, will, under cover of Mr Firth's example, also write to Earl Granvile,. and possibly through the same medium; Who shall say nay ? And for every letter (like Mr Firth's) vindicating the colonists, there will be ten forwarded jf a wholly different character ; what has happened before may occur again* It is bad enough to have private individuals pottering between insurgents and the Government, with whom these insurgents must at last make their peace; but that" unofficial" mediators should step in as "daysmen" between the Crown and its dependency is sim« ply an intolerable nuisance. If every :evv Secretary of State, on his assumption of office, is to be " coached " iute a knowledge of the duties of his office, and of Colonial politics, by every private individual who " takes a deep and abiding interest" in the welfare of the • Umpire, then Earl Granville bids fair to have a refreshing time of it. The unofficial memorandum just published suggests some veryawkward inferences. it'it is written to give the Secretary of State a knowledge of the condition of ihe country, which it is believed he loes not possess, and to furnish to him information touching events of which, it is believed he is iu ignorance, then iiis Excellency the Governor must be either very remiss, or incapable of performing the duties of hi 3 office. The Queen's representative is sent here to perform the very duty which Mr Firth, has undertaken, viz , to keep his chief' thoroughly posted up in every matter within his government affecting Imperial ivterests, and also to furnish such comments thereon as will enable the Imperial authorities to master the details and make the proper dispositions accordingly. Even the extraneous incidents which Mr Firth refers to,— Mr Wylie's conduct, —the arrival of refugees from Turanga, —and Judge Richmond's charge,—must all have been referred to by His Excellency in his home despatches, if he has paid the. slightest regard to the terms of the Letter of li >yal Instructions, and to tiie rules prescribed for guidance of members of the Imperial Civil Service. There is not a single new fact or new argument adduced by Mr Firth in the whole of his fair, manly, and temperate statement. All that he has well said has been already said. What reas »n theie is to hope that the views of a private person —speaking as a colonist on behalf of colonists, and by rlmt very fact under the baa of suspicion by the Colonial Office—will receive greater attention, or carry more weight than Earl Granville has been pleased to accord to those of Sir George Bowen and Mr Stafford, I am utterly at a loss to conceive. If the authorities in Downing-street will not listen to their qwu servaat—the Queen's re*

jpresentative—or the Premier of the Colony, who are known to them, then the writer of the memorandum may jest assured that but scant measure will be accorded to the views of those who are not known to them : however, the gratification of havimg one's me morandum labelled and docketeel by an Imperial "Tite Barnacle," and duly placed in the pigeon holes of the Colonial Oifi-'e, is a weakness so harmless that it need not excite the ire of anybody. When for the fiftieth time an .appeal is made to the official conscience ;in Downing street (which if it exists ■at all must have its locale in the gallbladder), one is tempted to exclaim, " If they bear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." We have tried the sentimental dodge, and got the " wives, daughters, and si3ters" of colonists to ply the Secretary of State with most deadly weapons—woman's tears. What came of it ? ask the ladies of Wangauui, who were weak enough to believe that the cry of Englishwomen might yet strike a chord in England's breast. We have threatened extermination ; Earl Granville knows, from the past, we do not mean it. We have appealed to his fears ; but like the Irish absentee landlord, his only answer is, if the Maoris think to frighten him by shooting us, they are egregiously mistaken. The latest assault is the historical dodge. Mr Firth, after using all the well-worn weapons of a well-stocked armoury, takes down his Gibbon's " Decline and Fall," and flings it full tilt at Earl Granville's head. But the attempt is vain. The appeal from "Philip drunk" at Ngaruawahia to "Philip sober" at Downing-street, will be as •unsatisfactory in the one case as the other. Further than the pleasurable sensation, which, being on corresponding terms with " a real live lord " is so well calculated to produce, the writer of the memorandum will take nothing by his motion. The earlier historical portion of the memorandum embraces ground which has already been gone over in a series of exhaustive State pa pers from the gifted pen of the Hon. C. W, Richmond —papers, which for their logical precision, descriptive power, and eloquence wrung a reluctant tribute from English statesmen, and in which " the case of the colony " was put as it has never been, before or since. The intermediate period has received ample justice at the hands of Mr Stafford —so that with the excep tion of the current incidents of the war, which Earl Granville can read in his morning's Times, Mr Firth was in the position of the indefatigable knifegrinder, •" story I have none to tell, sir." AH the facts, papers, and despatches Above referred to are at Earl Granville's command, and an order to his Under Secretary could place them at his disposal in quarter of an hour. The truth is the English Government do not want to know anything respecting us. They have washed their hands of us; and if we were not cowed by ten years of disaster —half of it of our own making, to tell the truth—we would return the compliment, and wash our hands of them. Why colonists should go on from month to month, and year to year, begging, wheedling, and threatening a Power which is as deaf to their cries and " sacrifices " as Baal was to those of the idolators of old, is one of those things which 1 have never been able to understand. Has it put a single pound in the exchequer, or a single soldier in the field ? Should we have had a pound the less in the treasury, or a man the less in the field if we had saved our paper and the postage money ? It's no U3e, friends, we have got hold of the wrong sow by rthe wrong ear i The Colony may say jts " Last Prayer " as soon as it likes, for we have nothing to hope from Imperial affection, and nothing to dread from Jmperial hate. Can we go to the Home authorities with clean hands ? Is it not a fact that while we*are complaining of England abandoning her child, our own people are abandoning each other ? Has anything more heartless and contemptible ever been uttered by a Sepretary of State, than has appeared in Southern journals, or spoken by Southern men in the Colonial Legislature ? sr—the worst slanders of English states men retailed, bereft of the plea which Ignorance may prefer. While we ask

for help, can we truthfully say that we have vigorously prosecuted the war, and honestly endeavored to put down murder, treason, and rebellion ? Is it not true that we send out men under the Defence Office to punish the natives, and then send another lot under the Native Office to see that as little injury is done as can decently be managed. In fact, the Constabulary fight with ropes round their necks—the enemy of yesterday being the " friendly native" of to-day, and the " friendly" of to-day the foe of tomorrow, while in the background is the dim outline of another Pokaikai Commission ( Is it not that rebels, taken in arms, are better tended than the wounded of our own forces; and that when red-handed murderers are captured, the Government are at their wits' end what to do with them ? until some fine morning the criminals condescend in mercy to skedaddle, and thus relieve the authorities of their charge and their embarrassment! Dare any officer now attempt to do what Captain Laye performed over 20 years ago—try Maori murderers by drum-head court-martial, run them up co the first tree, and afterwards send their death warrants to the Governor tor signature ? Did not everybody expect to see Mr Wylie put on his trial for shooting the murderer of bis boy (after vainly appealing to the proper authorities) j and was not such an act of political idiocy believed to be within the verge of possibility by a New Zealand Government, if they had felt any certainty of getting a jury to convict ? Has not " vigorous prosecution " come to be regarded as a term of mockery—-a phrase denoting anything which is the caricature of war ? —what an abyss of ignominy does such a significant incident disclose I When the Secretary of State reads in his despatches about " vigorous prosecu tion," he is under the delusion that it means what is said —vigorous prosecution. But the colonists know a great deal better; they know that it is simply used to preface an application for another loan —an empty rhetorical flourish generally used to round a period before an hon. Minister " gets oft his legs," and there the matter ends. When Earl Granville notices £IOOO rewards for leading rebels, and £5 for men and boys, he instinctively recalls the terrible scenes of the Indian mutiny, and has horrid visions on his bed of Governor Eyre. But rewards are shorn of their terrors to us; so well is the Government policy understood that the announcement was received with bursts of laughter, and Col. Haultain's political anagram, " as you like it," was unanimously pronounced to be the best joke of the season. If any man can claim these rewards outside the conditions with which they are fenced round by Government, he will be a very clever fellow, and had better try his haul at the JSSOQO for the discovery of the Thames Gold-field. Let us ponder these things. Heaven helps those who help themselves ; and it is about time that we helped ourselves. The useless spending of treasure, and the useless sacrifice of men's lives, un der the auspices of Messrs. Parris, Booth and Co., is not helping ourselves, I can remember when £7OOO a year was sufficient "hush money" to keep the Maoris " sweet," and I have lived to see seven times seven in the same laudable way without its being managed, A few more scenes like that lately enacted in Waikato, aud seventy times seven will not do it. Who is to blame but ourselves ? Earl Granville does not force us to bribe and debauch natives; he never wrung the Maori murderer from the hangman's grip; he never put a Native Commissioner in every camp; he never prevented troops marching to assist their comrades. All these things the colonists have done by their own servants, and they must accept the bitter cup they have commended to their own lips. Mr Firth's letter discloses a grave discrepancy, which, for the sake of his own reputation, he would do well to rectify. Either he has changed his mind since the 15th of March—on the question of amnesty —or, on the other hand, he has deemed it politic, having regard to the weighty stake for which he is playing in Waikato, to use language at Orahiri which his better judgment disavows. He may rest assured that if " the eyes of the empire" are not upon him, those of his fellow-

settlers are ; let us hope in all charity that when he " bowed himself in the house of Rimmon," at Orahiri, he did not fail to put up the ancient plea ! Mr Firth, on the 15th March, in his memorandum to Earl Granville, says : ! -—" I have pointed out to them (the King party) that the massacre of women and children are crimes which the colonists can never eorget, and WHICH THEY WILL NEVER FORGIVE. I have pointed to them that the Maori King is rapidly becoming a vain shadow, under cover of which only evil deeds are done /" Further on, he re-, fers to the proceedings of the rebels as a " hideous reign of terror and of blood." On the 2nd June, at Orahiri, Mr Firth said with regard to the very same point—an amnesty to the murderers : —•* If that were the only obstacle to the establishment of a permanent peace throughout the whole of this country, dark as the hearts of the Pakehas are about these things, I he lieve a free pardon would be granted to aii r The grand stake which is on the j" hazard of the die " is worthy of some nice play; it is "Lombard-street to a China orange." But is pitiable to see a man of Mr Firth's standing and ability driven to such wretched shifts even for such a prize. The mischief does not end there ; there are plenty of Europeans who will point the matter out to the natives, and tell them 4hat " Hohaia has a forked tongue ;" and thus whatever influence he might have possessed with a section of the natives, in the cause of peace and good government will be wholly nullified. —I am, <&c, June 19, 1869. X.