THE INTERMINABLE LITTLE WAIL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 5, Issue 270, 28 November 1861, Page 4

THE INTERMINABLE LITTLE WAIL

(From the Saturday Review, Aug, 24) ’ The news that hug arrived from New Zealand does not enter sufficiently into detail to enable us to form a very'distinct idea either of the objects of the Governor, or the extent of the danger to which he is exposed. But it conveys to us the melancholy uncertainty that we are bn the threshold of another New Zealand war. The motives of the real aetors appear tolerably clear. With that highhanded disregard of the rights of other races to which democracies are sometimes prone, the Colonial Ministry has sought to retrieve waning popularity, or possibly to gratify a genuine 'resentment, by urging the Governor to take up a cause of war which has been left unnoticed for many years, and to provoke the Maories to a death-struggle. Those of the ministers who act from calculation no doubt expect a large arrival of British troops, and the rich harvest of a lavish commissariat. Those of them who simply feel, look forward to a war which shall cut for ever the knotty problems that beset the conflicting claims of the two races, and place the Maori’s neck finally and irretrievably under the settler’s foot. The Governor appears to have yielded with the perplexed facility that has marked his conduct from the first, and lias made him the tool of stronger aud more farsighted men. It is manifest that, to an unscrupulous New Zealand statesman, no policy could be more attractive than that of setting the thorny native question in a colonist’s sense, and at the same time settling it at England’s cost. He would know that if he waited till native affairs were directly handed over to the colonists to manage, the Colony must pay for all wax*s that it provoked, that a war of extermination, however desirable, was a oostly process. On the other hand it was oertain that England, if consulted, would never consent to any encroachments on the native . rights. The only chance of attaining the desired end was to seize some happy occasion when England was represented by a feeble Governor, who might be frightened or over-persuaded into pledging England’s power to a prosecution of a policy she abhors. The golden opportunity has arrived,.? and has not been neglected. It is to be regretted for the honour of this country, that the Governor’s advisers did not apply some of their ingennity in discovering a better cause of war. The King movement is too flimsy a pretext to be respectable. The history of it is this. Very soon after the departure of Sir George Grey, the Maoris began to discover that, under the constitutional system which had been newly .introduced, the advantages of 'the treaty of Waitangi were likely to be confined entirely to one side. Their land was being gradually diminished by the purchase of the stranger, and their relative power lessened Their independence even seemed to be threatened by the rapid progress of a race the organs of whose opinions lost no opportunity of expressing towards them a feeling of contemptuous ill-will, and predicting the approach of their national extinction. But the blessings of civilization, which werejto have been a set-off to these inevitable evils, were not forthcoming. The English Government under the successor to Sir George Grey, existed only for the English. The stranger’s claims to sovereignty had disorganised the' rude old Maori chieftanship, but it had supplied nothing in its place. Instead of the watchful administration of Government which was fostering so rapidly the prosperity of their rivals, the Maoris were suffering under the worst evils of anai'chy. No attempt was made by the Governor to perform towards them a Governor’s duties. He knew little of the Maoris, scarcely ever went amongst them, and took no steps to extend to them the security of life and property guaranteed to them by the English laws to which they were nominally subject. The consequence was that crime of every kind increased, and with it increased the more terrible curse of blood feuds. Under these circumstances, some of the leading tribes resolved to do for themselves what no one would do for them, and they set up to the best of their ability a rude native government, wliiqh should at least satisfy the first needs of human society. No exception was taken to the movement. The Auckland Government suffered it to progress for several years without a word to challenge its legality. The Maoris have protested again and again that they mean no impeachment to the supreme authority of the Queen. To the unprejudiced'eye, it seemed that they were exercising only the common right which, all the world over, the lashstes of the ruler confers upon the governed. And this view was so far shared by the Auckland Government, that, until a collateral dispute had brought a largo English force into the island, they did not dream of stopping it. But, now that they are wed prepai-ed, at the cost of the English taxpayer, they think it would be a thousand pities not to finish for ever with the race upon whose lands they desire to enter. For such a purpose any pretext was sufficient ; but at least it should have been something that they had not aquiesced in • for years. Merely for decency s sake, it would have been worth the wolf s while to go a little further clown the stream. If the Governor has really thrown down the gauntlet, as,the latest reports appear to imply, there can, unhappily s be no doubt that it . will be readily taken mp. The recent measures adopted against William King have left the deepest irrita-

tjoli in the Native mind. They feel that whether William King was right oi Wrong, the seizure of the land lie claimed Without the. form of trial, or the pretence of public investigation, Was an assumption of arbitrary power'l and to that afbitfafy power, whose Weight has fallen on Wni. King to-day, aiiy one of. them-may have to submit to-morrow. They look upon this as the inauguration of a new system under which their lands, which the white man cdvets, are to bo wrested from them by the Governor’s simple order, in spite of law or treaty. It is now nearly a year since we pointed . out that this was the fteling likely to be engendered by a new system of real-property law which gave a local land agent the absolute discretion of deciding without trial between rival claimants. One man’s incapacity has been able to pledge the English Treasury and all future Governors to sustain a war which our enemies seem to contemplate without fear, even though it should result in their own extermination, which cau bring us no conceivable benefit, and which casts a serious reflection on our good faith. Much sympathy is felt this moment for the Hungarians in the conflict they are maintaining for the privileges they claim. They allege that the right to rule them was. given to the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine only on the condition, solemnly undertaken, that their institutions should be held sacred. The New Zealanders are precisely in the same position. They have but one institution—> the tenure of their land. But that institution, as we have seen, they value beyond life, and will fight for it, even witli the certain prospect that the warfare must issue in the extirpation of tlieir race. -They gave to the Queen of England the right to rule over them, only on the condition, most solemnly and expressly undertaken, that this institution should be held sacred. The way we fulfil that pledge is to seize their lands without the pretence of a legal trial. And when they resist, we are not satisfied with, a bloody retribution, but we put under the ban of treason even the institutions which they had erected for the maintenance oi internal order. How does the’ pledge given at the-trcpty~;of Waitangi differ A the court of conscience and honor from that of the Pragmatic Sanction, excepi that it ‘ was given twenty years ago instead of a century and a half, and tliai no intervening-revolution has lessened its force? Unhappily, there is' every appearance that the evil counsellors to whom the Governor of New. Zealand has surrendered .himself are prepared to pursue still further his; dishonouring career, The only hope left is, that Sir George Grey may arrive to change it before it is too late to recede. For one of the mosi embarrassing and humiliating features oi these complications is that England’s faith is plighted beyond recal, by some pretty distant representative, to some atrocious aggression, months before she lias, a chance of vindicating her own good faith for herself.