THE DEPARTURE OF THE TROOPS.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIII, Issue 3018, 29 March 1867, Page 6

THE DEPARTURE OF THE TROOPS.

To the Editor of the Daily Southim* Crobb. g IB The occasion of another regiment leaving' Our shores should perhaps remind us of the debt of gratitude we are supposed to owe the mother country for having, when we were menaced with total, extermination'or extirpation, sent, at an immense cost, so many brave* defenders. I for one, however, find my thanks sticking "in 'my throat, and cannot give them utterance, for I cannot forget' that it Was the blundering pigheridedness of the servants of the Crown, through a long course of misgovernmerit,tb.afc got n» into the mew. We were then contemptuously forbid from endeavouring to help ourselves, but the work was set about by the Imperial Governments their' own peculiar stupid 'fashion,' for which we are expected to pay ; and now.having got us 'inextricably in debt, we are left in a worse position than we were in at first. We are pretty much in the same staters one of our crockery merchants would be if his store were infested with rats that occasionally upset and broke a piece of delf, to check which he wished ,to have a cat, which would perhaps for a time hive destroyed a little more; but a higher power said, "No, what you want is a bull, and a bull you Bhall have :" and having had it, all that w»s left was a bill for the animal's keep. Or we may be likened to a man who, having been carelessly pushed into the water, calls for help on the aggressor, when the latter in a flurry flin«s him a chunk of w6od which knocks, him on the head and nearly kills him. Finding how much more trouble the second piece of clumsiness will cause, the injured man is cur3ed and left to get out the best way he can. Is it for this kind ;of thine we are to be thankful and hurrah for'the red, white, and blue? We might have some cause for thankfulness if the bull does Tiot leave his taU behind, and we might at leaistmakea show of grata, tude were the Imperial Gotetdment, reco^nwirig its own handywork, to tear "up the little bill wtiioh they bullied us into accepting.— l Urn, &c.; J _ r 1