THE NATIVE QUESTION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 15, Issue 782, 28 April 1870, Page 4

THE NATIVE QUESTION.

£F?om fctiG Syeaiug Post, 2J.st April.] With the departure of Kemp and |.)is men on Tuesday for their homes, the curtain falls upon another act of the drama or force which we call the native war,. If seems only yester tlay, though several months have meanwhile elapsed, since Mr Eox made his triumphal progress up the Wanganui River, and partly by eloquence and more by presents of rifles and other articles, succeeded in rousing the martial ardor of Topia's men, and in sending them forth on the track to Taupo, burning with valor and brimming over with loyalty, determined nitbin a brief space to catch Te Kooti alive, or eke to an nihilate him and his band. The glad tidings were trumpeted abroad, throughout the length and breadth <of the land, and pceans were sung in honor, of the skilful diplomatist who had won over to our cause a doubtful neutral, and, moreover, sent him •forth- to do battle on our behalf. Mr McLean, equally successful in the Waikato, had obtained the pledge of the King natives to put down all insurrection within their territory. We Lad McDonnell's and Kemp's forces forming with the King natives two sides M of a triangle of which the third sid e would be furnished by Topia, and which enclosed the arch rebel Te Kooti, for whose blood all were thirsting, nothing could save him, he would be crushed like a fly. The Colony stood on the tiptoe of expectation; but days passed until they grew into weeks, weeks into months, yet the final blow was never struck; Kooti never was crushed. We had ■skirmishes of course, indecisive as usual, and were always told had so and so not been the case, such and such had been done. Notwithstanding all the rifles loaded to kill him, JKLooti moA ed about where he pleased marauding and murdering as of old ; and by way of graceful wind-up to the mock campaign, before retiring into winter quarters, our "army. 1 ' with the assistance of another contingent, captures a body of prisoners, of whom seven-eighths turn out to be friendlies previously captured by the enemy, and the remaining eighth, whom they bring along in triumph, with one or two exceptions,miserable old wretches, whom Kooti did not want to feed. Some cheers, a wardance, a distribution of pay, and the gallant army departs to be disbanded —retaining its arms—in two steamers chartered by the Government. The campaign is over, and the heroes repose on their laurels, while we have the happiness of keeping watch and ward over 31 worn out old men, and the Judge the extreme felicity of a State trial, leaving Kooti where they found him—in the field—and by the last accounts claiming and obtaining protection from the King, under the shadow of whose wing he will recrui* dining the winter, to issue forth in the spring on a new taua. What the expenses of these operations may be—the value of the flour, the blankets, the ammunition, the hundred and one other things so jequisite to enable Maori experts to do their business—will, in all pro bability, never be known, until the time arrives when all secrets are dis closed. Such is the situation, and pan any one say that we are one whit nearer the solution of the "native difficulty" than we have been lor some years past 1