WHO IS TO PAY FOR THE WAR ?

Press, Volume III, Issue 95, 27 December 1862, Page 3

WHO IS TO PAY FOR THE WAR ?

No doubt there is a general impression abroad in this Island that we are on the eve of another Maori war; and this impression is still stronger in the Northern Island. Whence comes it? Is there any real ground for it ? or is the wish on both sides father to the thought? When the General Assembly met at Wellington in July last, there was every prcspect of continued peace, and of gradually improving relations between the Maori and the English. The Governor had just succeeded in bringing to a happy termination two very difficult Native questions, one at Kaipara, the other at the Coromandel gold diggings. The feud at Kaipara between two parties of Natives he had induced them to refer to legal arbitration. In his address to them he said - Let it go down to posterity that yours was the last quarrel about land in which blood was shed, and the first which was referred to a mixed Jury of English and Maoris.' The suggestion was readily accepted. At Coromandel too he bad persuaded thorn to lease the diggings to tbe Government', and tbe King Natives who had obstinately stood out against the suggestions of other Englishmen, yielded to the request of the Governor acting in person. So the Governor came to meet the Assembly with the prestige of a double success. Again, the Fox ministry was in high favour with the Natives. Mr. Fox himself had ridden through the heart of the disaffected country, and had boon well received,. The seeds were being sown broadcast through the length and breadth of the land. There was no harvest of course. It is only mushrooms and toadstool* that grow up in a night. No reasonable man could have expected to reap a crop the same day that he sowed. Least of all was Sir George Grey likely to show such an ignorance of nature, whether inanimate or human. Still there were unmistakable signs of a break-up of the King party. At that very time a considerable portion of a Tribe on the West Coast near Otaki had formally seceded from the King, and had renewed their (so to speak) oath of alligiance to the Queen. What with the anarchy described by Mr. Gorst in his official report as prevailing in Waikato, and the perplexity and fear of famine staring them in the face in the centre of the country; what with the positive steps taken in the North to introduce the new institutions of the Governor's Policy, and the cordon of Magistrates and Commissioners that was being drawn round tbe whole country, there was a great opportunity offered to the General Assembly to clench the nail, and hold out the hand of brotherhood and equal justice to a people who were declared by persons capable of judging, like Mr. Gorst, to be as competent to deal with political questions as any of our countrymen. It was at that moment Mr. FitzGerald proposed to the House of Representatives to recognize the Natives as completely and fully British subjects as ourselves. It was well known that the Governor was quite prepared to carry out those resolutions if passed. But the House rejected them, or at least the practical portion of them. Simultaneously with the rejection of Mr. I .tzGerald's proposition, the Fox ministry retired because they were unlike to carry through the Housp principle the House itself had been affirming ever

.ince its existence, that the management of Native affairs should be in the hands of tbe Responsible Ministry of the country. In the place of the Fox party who had gained the confidence of the Natives, a new Ministry Was installed, led by two of the strongest supporters of the late war and of Governor Browne's policy, namely, Messrs. Domett and Dillon Bell. Moreover, at that very time the salamanders of

the House were uttering voracious cries for fire-arms powder and shot, for "less concession and an earlier crisis," and these cries, bo it remembered, came the loudest from the members of the Southern Island, Messrs. Richardson, Cracroft Wilson, and Jollie. Now what has been the effect of all these simultaneous movements, running counter to the previous policy of law, and political equality? Why, no doubt the result has been the general impression, existing in both islands and among both races that we are on the eve of another war. Everything has gone back since then to tho old state of suspicion and distrust. The Governor has been anything but successful on the West Coast. Wi Tako, as we saw in one of our former issues, is both alarmed and angry. The account of his interview with the Governor, which we quoted from the Wellington papers, was a one-sided one of course, but it showed his animus. Instead of the Governor threatening him with soldiers as ho would make it appear, we now know that the only soldier the Governor meant to send up was an officer of tho 14th Regiment as Resident Magistrate ; and that what the Governor really did say was that if Wi Tako was sumraonod before the Queeu's Courts and refused to attend ho would be treated and proclaimed as an outlaw, and so his property would no longer be protected by the Queen. But then, worst of all, the Natives knew, just as well as the English did, that Sir George Grey had received very curt and what is ordinarily called "snubbing" letters policy from the Duke of Newcastle. They knew that the Home Government had not supported him in his peace policy, like as they had supported Colonel Gore Browne in his war policy. Tho result of all these causes combined as beon a thorough distrust of one another between the English and the Natives; and the tribe that seceded from the King the beginning of the year has seceded from the Queen at the end of it.

Now who is to blame for all this? and who is to pay the cost of this new war that we are all talking about ? Why, primarily the Duke of Newcastle is to blame for sending a man like Sir G. Grey here, and then snubbing him for trying to save the Homo Government some millions of a war expenditure. Next the House of Representatives is to blame for refusing to Ministerial Responsibility in Native affairs, for turning out the Fox Ministry, and accepting the war party oDomett and Dillon Bell, and finally for refusing Mr FitzGerald's propositions to give the Natives a full share in the government of the country. Mr. and the leaders of that party are speciall \ to blame for refusing to throw aside their party opinion and coalesce with Mr. Fox for the public welfare when there was a graceful opportunity for doing so. Lastly the Southern Members are to blame who hounded on the war party, and encouraged the appetite for blood that fear aud passion is sure to produce. The consequence is that if we are to have a new war, the Home Government and the Southern Island will have to pay for it with their taxes, and treasure and the Northern Island with their property and their lives.

Prize for Schoolboys.—A prize of five shilling's worth of lollipops will be offered for competition on the Ist April next, to all boys educated in any Government school, or to any Government officer who may desire to compete for the same; the prize to be awarded to the boy, or official, who will best construe, parse, and translate into iih, the following sentence from a living classical autt or A copy of this number of the "Press" will,be given to any boy, or official, who will read the whole sentence off, minding his stops, without taking breath. Tbe following question must also be answere i by , candidates—What Government Bill is this sentence most like ? P.S. The Vrovincial Solicitor will not be allowed to compete for this prize, as there are rumors that he is tbe author of the sentence alluded to : — "At a time when the whole pagan world was sunk hk the grossest idolatry, and the minds of men were wrapped in all

the darkness which always accompanies superstition, and ignorance of the very principles of morality—_nd, still more, the perversion of intellect—at a time when men, wearied of searching by means of the light of nature to satisfy the cravings of merely human desire for an insight into the mysteries of their future destiny, were beginning to find their efforts mocked by the insuperable barrier which opposed their progress, and to discover that they were but acting the part of the poor silly bird which dashes its soft plumage against the bars of its cage, in frantic but futile efforts to escape from imprisonment, and resolved to make their prisonage house a choir, and sing out bondage freely, and, rejecting every incentive to a higher course of action—abandoning every ennobling emotion which might have raised them above the grovelling trifles and frivolities of earth—chose to wallow in the mire of sensuous and sensual gratification, and adopted as the leading-star of their existence, and as the embodiment of their creed, the fatal sentiment enunciated by Epicurus, condemned by Horace (himself a voluptuous disciple of the garden) as a frantic philosophy, and immortalized through its ironical quotation by the Apostle— too often taken seriously—" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," life and immortality were brought to light, and the apparently simple expedient of Christianity, like the fabled lever: of Archimedes, moved tho universe, sweeping into itß orignal nothingness the graceful, fabric of classic mythology, and will in due time purify the darkest places of earth from the abominations and pollutions of heathenism." We are delighted to hear that our contemporary is about to be published twice a-week, as it will take two papers a-week at least, if not more, to print sentences of such magnitude and density.