OUR PRESENT POSITION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 15, Issue 770, 17 March 1870, Page 3

OUR PRESENT POSITION.

[Evening Post, 9th March.] At the risk of being blamed for tedious repetition, >Ve must again call attention to lite sad and serious state of affairs that the Colony is now in, and does not seem to know how to get out of. We hard 1 ? even know what that state of affairs is. In our journalistic capacity we have no wish to interfere with the present Government, or that which preceded it, in any action which could e unfortunate New Zealand from its difficulties and troubles, but we cannot help feeling that, whatever; may be the cause, we are sinking deeper and deeper into the mud, instead of getting out of it. We learn almost simultaneously that, there is a split in the Cabinet founded on a difference between Mr M'Lean, the Native and Defence Minister, and the Premier, on the subject of the best policy to be adopted towards both hostile and friendly natives; and that a most decided change has been inaugurated in regard to the question —such change being apparently a greater blunder than any that has ever been made by the once recognised experts on the subject, that is, the so-called < friendly natives are no longer to be ' emploj ed on the system of daily pay and rations, but on that put forward : by the Premier on first assuming office, by paying them by piece-work. It is said that they have been offered £-5000 "for the job" of: catching Te Kooti, dead or alive. < We have a rumor that some of ourj< dark-colored allies have refused to < have anything to do with this offer; ' and another that a party of them have started in pursuit of the mur- < dering marauder, quile determined " to catch him without assistance. > We are much inclined '. o believe ' that whatever rumor may say, the < Maori, a* a rule, will not even pretend to fight, for us without his < daily provender ; and that the other ' arrangement will end in the same dispersion of our mercenaries as took place in the old country among the undisciplined Highland levies of the last century whenever the excite ment of a battle or the hope of plunder was over. Then we hear that our two late commanders —M'Donnell and Fraser— have deserted the front, (to which both together have never contributed any great glory from superior deeds of arms), because M'Donnell has though t proper to place Fraser under arrest! What for, we must wait to hear; but the fight seems now to be left en tirely to a band of savage mercenaries, of whom, at any rate, a large portion are unwilling to accept our terms for ridding us of our foes of their own race; while the white commanders, so long unable to effect a permanent success, either by com bining their intellects or quarreling over some mysterious incidents connected with the disgraceful campaign leave their inglorious field of battle to have their dispute decided by the very authorities who have no more than their predecessors bean able to devise the means of getting rid of the incumbrance which has weighed New Zealand down for so many years. -The rumor of a split in the Cabinet on the subject of the native war to be founded on worse failures than ever of a scarcely doubtful nature; and, though Mr Vogel's paper, the Southern Cross, denies the split, we cannot help believing that in this case "the wish is father to the thought," rather than that their ill-success has confounded and puzzled a Ministry which might, if more united, have done good for the country. O, that some leaders could be found among the bold and stalwart colonists of New Zealand who would unite together, rally round them the united resources of the whole Colony, and without the delusive help of " friendly natives " without issuing them a ration, or of fering them a shilling—take away from so promising and and able a community the reproach of being foiled over and over again by a mere handful of uncivilized banditti?