A VIGOROUS POLICY.

Marlborough Express, Volume IV, Issue 166, 27 March 1869, Page 6

A VIGOROUS POLICY.

What are we to do ? How chock the evil ? By making the enemy incapable of committing the evil. It is not the savages who were killed at Ngatapa who have murdered Mr. Pitcairn. They will give us no further trouble. It is those who are alive who kill our brethren ; and we at once see then how to stop these murders —how to be able to go about the country, none making us afraid, instead of living at the mercy of a horde of murdering savages. It must he our object, therefore, to take the only effectual means of preventing our people being murdered. We must no more parley with the murderers than we would quietly sit by and talk mildly to a party of ruffians who were killing our wives and our relatives in the street. The penalty of death must be paid as it was paid in the Sepoy rebellion. The rebels, and those who consort with them, no matter of what age or sex, must have, stern justice and nothing more. We cannot keep hyenas in our dwellings, tigers in our paths, through a foolish and mistaken clemency and mawkish sentimentality. It is come to this: either the white or the brown must perish—that is what the rebels distinctly state. They have proved it over and over again. Seeing, then, that there is stern work to be done, and that we cannot possibly carry on war for a number of years as we are now doing, there come the practical measures to be adopted for the purpose. The sooner the work is done the better. For that purpose timid counsels must be cast on one side. There ought, first, to be a ballot of the militia —if no other means can be adopted - through the whole colony; overpowering forces should overrun the rebel territory. Native forces in large minihers should be enlisted. A reward offered for every rebel killed ; for Tito, Te Kooti, Kereopa, Wetere, and other leaders, a large reward should be offered; and the sooner the heads were brought the greater should he the reward. The whole of the lands of every tribe in rebellion should be confiscated and given at once to any Europeans or natives who would occupy them. Broad belts should be cleared of underwood in parallel lines, so that rebel territory could be traversed. Every cultivation should be sought out and destroyed, every animal driven away or destroyed, and, so far as possible, all communication between the rebels and others entirely cut off, so that their supplies should be diminished to the greatest possible extent. The Northern Natives, as we foimerly advised, should be enlisted and given lands to occupy. If the King means to live at peace he should explicitly declare his intention to do so, and his followers who are inclined for war should cease to have communication with him. If he still keep communicating with these men, such conduct should be considered as aiding and abetting them—as, iri fact, joining them. A thousand Ngapuhis atKawhia or Baglan, placed on Government land, and ready to be placed on the land of Kewi and other Ngatimaniapoto, would have no small effect there. We must use every loyal man in the good cause, no matter whether he be European or Haori; and if any white men can be proved to be fraternising with the rebels, or inciting Hauhaus against ns, they must have their deserts meted out to them.

’ Of com se this is a “ vigorous policyit '“means the slaughter of a small number of murderers—it means clearing the jungle of

tigers—it means protecting our own lives, even if we slay the men who would fain take those lives away. And a three or six months’ campaign, with ten or twelve thousand men “ hanging” the rebels in the way we have suggested, and sparing none, would he very much less costly, while it would be very much more effectual than the present highly civilised, highly expensive, and comparatively fruitless way in which we are proceeding. It is time we had done with all this bowing and posturing with the rebels. It is time we looked at the work before us as men, and not as Exeter Hull hypocrites look at it, and that we got indoctrinated with some of that kind of spirit which is spoken of so copioudy in that portion of the Divine oracles which tells us how battles were won and enemies prevented doing harm in the future. The book of Judges and Joshua would seem to be those which Exeter Hull might now ask us to study; and to act much after the manner there recorded for our example, and which appears to have been wonderfully successful in its dav.— N. Z. Herald.