The Press. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1863. MR. DILLON BELL AT MELBOURNE.

Press, Volume III, Issue 286, 30 September 1863, Page 2

The Press. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1863. MR. DILLON BELL AT MELBOURNE.

It has over been tho wont of Ministers during the recess to tako any favorable opportunity which may present itself for keeping their views upon the current political questions of the day before tho mind of the public. The Lord Mayor's dinner is an occasion which is frequently taken advantage of for that purpose, and agricultural feasts, volunteer meetings, the laying of foundation stones, and presentation of the freedom of towns, aro all made subservient by greater or lesser men to tho purpose of relieving the dulness of tho recess by incidental orations, nominally to the burghers or rustics, but really to the.** country at large. Mr. Dillon Bell, who, having made a complete fiasco of Native affairs, has been entrusted with the more ignoble occupation of recruiting soldiers to conquer tho Maori whom ho had exhibited his incapacity to govern, has made a speech to a body of Volunteers on their departure from Melbourne for the seat of war. We published it on Monday: it is a curious address to have been made to soldiers, for it is both historical and political. The principles he enunciates are distinct. It is true they are precisely j

those which Mr. Bell has often repudiated with virtuous contempt ; precisely those which we have been accused by our enemies in England of holding, and which we have again and again repudiated. Tell the war party that the Waitara quarrel was a land quarrel, that it had anything to do with, or was in the slightest degree influenced by, a selfish desire to obtain Maori laud, and the whole of them turn on you like a pack of hounds to repudiate the base assertion. That is the tone in New Zealand, but in Melbourne it is, we suppose, unnecessary to keep up the farce. The general tone of public feeling there would render an appeal to a bolder policy anything but unpopular. So the Native Minister takes the popular side. He explains to the Volunteers that the New Zealand Government has not got the land which it is going to give to them. "The land is still in the hands of rebel Natives, and we trust to you and your military comrades to hold by the force of your arms that territory which will hereafter be allotted to you by the Government. This is the land which tee have long tried to obtain by peaceable means." There is the plain story plainly told. We havo tried to obtain this land by peaceable means ; and having failed to accomplish that disinterested object, you, gentlemen, are to take it now by force of arms. Why did not Mr. Bell, if he entered on the question at all, state what those peaceable means were ? Why not state the whole truth ? Gentlemen, having now for many years tried to pursuade the Native tribes to sell to the Government land for a penny or so an acre, which was worth in the market from ten shillings to twenty shillings, and having prevented the Natives from dealing with private persons, and getting the market value of their property, and having kept the monopoly of purchasing in the hands of the Crown, so as to secure the maximum of value for the minimum of price,—these, gentlemen, being the peaceable means which we havo now for twenty years used for obtaining Native lands, and tho Natives having taken the most unreasonable objections to having their property thus dealt with, of course the only thing left is to take the land'by force of arms.

This is Mr. Bell's latest view of the land question. But to come to history. "We should never have thought of taking this land by force if they had not made war with us, and did not constantly threaten the lives of the women and children of our peaceful settlers." Docs Mr. Bell believe that we had a right to the Waitara or not? He argued for years that we had. He then with a fickleness of purpose and a treachery to his party which has no example turned round and said we had no right to it. If he now believes we had no right to it, how can he venture to say the Natives made war upon us ? If he believes we had no right to Waitara, then he must admit that the Natives were but defending their own estates, and that we made on them a war of spoliation and robbery. We do not say others of bis party can be accused of that conclusion. They, at all events, hold to the legality of the deed from Tcira, and the rectitude of defending the purchase by force. But Mr. Bell does not think so, or did not last May when he issued the proclamation abandoning the Waitara—for what he may think by this time Heaven only knows. There is 'something painfully ungenerous in thus charging upon the Natives the commencement of a war, when he j himself only the other day declared by a forma act of State that we made a most iniquitous war upon them. " Nothing," says Mr. Bell, " will secure peace in the country of New Zealand but the establishment of strong military settlements in the interior of the country." It is very possible : when the pitcher is broken by reckless and unskilful hands, perchance nothing will ever make it hold water again. Up to the Waitara business it is not true —it is absolutely false —that the Natives ever made war on us, or threatened the lives of the women and children of the settlers. The Natives were in many districts lawless, because law had not been introduced, and no attempt was made to introduce it. The Government sat idly and stupidly by, content with seeing the lingering traits of savage life break out in the frequent tana and occasional murder, so long as the English were unmolested. And they were unmolested ; for the most part to a most extraordinary extent, considering that the Government persisted in acting as though the highest policy were to remain inactive and indifferent. Then came Waitara ; and the word went through the island —The Pakeha is going to take our lands by force. Even then, did they mako an indiscriminate attack on us? The Maori kills every one in a district wliich is in a state of war. That is his ride. Hhe kills peaceful settlers, his view is that if they had not been of tho war parties they would have removed from the district. But when the Waikatos were fighting at Taranaki, and some of the tribes were losing heavily, was not tho Waikato country full of isolated Europeans, aud was the hair of a head injured ? It is, then, false that any attack has ever been mado on

the Europeans since Heki's war,, excepting when we first went to war ourselves with them. Mr. Bell perhaps alludes to the Maori wives and children of the settlers who have been recently taken away from their husbands in the Waikato. But tho maxim of law is that he who first did the wrong must pay the costs. Who began the war ? We shall be told that it was a new war that was begun at Oakura. But did not Mr. Bell behove that wo held Waitara wrongfully when he attacked the Natives at Tataraimaka. It is quite possible that Mr. Bell may be right when he says tliat military settlements are now necessary to the peace of tho country. But he ought to have added that he had helped, so far as ho eoidd, to create the necessity. There vrere no lack of predictions at the last session of

the Assembly that events would turn out as they

have done. We venture to say that, had the Native question been settled by the present Ministers it would have been a cause of great amazement to all their friends, perhaps even to themselves. That they would plunge the country again into war was to be expected. Men who argued that war was inevitable were not likely to maintain peace. But it was not to be expected that they would again renew a war when they had themselves destroyed every shadow of justification for its origin.