The Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 1864.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 170, 15 April 1864, Page 2

The Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 1864.

At a meeting, attended by a number of influential men, including several Members of Parliament, and almost all the names of those most famous and familiar to us as the supporters of the Missionary movement, held in London, and the report of which meeting, taken from the Home News, we published last week; it would seem that it was unanimously determined to send an address to Sir G. Grey, the Governor, imploring him to stay his hand, and bring to a speedy end the present war, now raging in this Island.

The petitioners beg that the misguided Maories may be spared, and that yet again the oft-tried and as often-failing negociations may be opened with them to save them, whom the petitioners consider worthy of a better fate, from the sword.

To those who have been long enough in this country to watch the gradual development of the effects of ourrepeatednegociations with the Maories, and have seen the result of the humiliating endeavors of Sir George Grey and others, to settle by diplomacy what the Natives had long been bent upon settling by the sword, and when they call to mind the numberless insults we have received from the Maories—the open defiance and the determined opposition to all attempts at conciliation manifested by those people, the ignorance of the real state of things shown by those gentlemen who have come forward to espouse their cause and to endeavor to stay the righteous hand of Justice raised to chastise that stiff-necked and rebellious people is perfectly astonishing. For forty years have men dwelt in the wilderness, negociating with these people—for forty years have men used every possible means devisable by human forethought and forbearance, and have offered up prayers both publicly and privately to avert and spare us from the horrors of a war which, if once begun in earnest, could have but one result—the destruction of the infatuated people who. provoked it, and the alienation of their lands as a righteous sacrifice to the outraged sympathies of their conquerors.

The Times, in an able article, takes a view entirely in support of the prosecution of the war with vigor, and in favor of the confiscation of the lands of the rebels as payment for that war—a war which, that journal very properly considers, to be one of their own making, and the consequences cf which should be made to fall with unmitigated force upon their own heads.

The Daily News is of opinion, on the other hand, that, but for the interference of the Mother Country, the Colonists would have found it prudent to keep the peace at any price with the Maoris, conscious, as that journal observes, that unassisted and unbefriended'in the matter by the Home Government, they, the Colonists, would find it to their advantage rather quietly to submit to any indignities than incur the risk of a hostile collision with their tattooed and warlike brethren. What a flattering idea the Daily News must entertain of the colonists !! —but, unfortunately, not far wrong in but too many instances.

The truth is, that whether the Old Country did or did not assist us in this war—a war we should certainly have had. The temper of the Maoris, always suspicious and doubting, had within the last three or four } ears arrived at that point when to fight us they were determined, and the more we humbled ourselves before them, the more determined were they to have it out. It is a wellknown fact that any attempts at conciliation, negociation, or talk of any kind, in matters which those people have made up their minds to settle by an appeal to arms, whether they be in the right or in the wrong—whether they are likely to get the best of the struggle or the worst of it, only makes them the more sure that the would-be negociators feel themselves too weak to offer any serious resistance, and that 'their desire for peace arises not from their wish to spare them, the negociated, but from a craven dread and horror of war, and a keen desire to spare themselves, the negociators. It was under these circumstances and state of the native mind, impossible® longer to maintain peace ; and those who think so, little know how matters have long stood between the Colonists and the Maories, and they quite misjudge us if they think that had the Mother Country left us alone to settle accounts with the natives, we should have allow'ed those people to run up a larger score of impudence and defiance. There can be no doubt whatever that the Colonists, being weary of the tardy and one-sided administration of Justice between themselves and the Maories, and the difficulty—nay, the impossibility of getting a Maori punished, even though he was the aggressor, would, before long have taken the matter into their hands, and have shown those pampered, petted, and spoiled people that whatever they thought of our notions of Justice, they must submit to them, whether they liked them or not.

It is to us that the Maori owes everything —it is to us that he owes even the preservation of his worthless existence, —and it is to us, and to us alone, to whom that people may be thankful for saving them from the cold-blooded butcheries and unprovoked wrongs which one tribe used to inflict upon another.

The hand of blood which was rapidly decimating the Maories, —a hand raised up from amongst themselves, has been stayed> but the fate of that people is not the less sure, although more slow. It is but a short reprieve, and another form of extinction. The decree has long gone forth that they shall perish from the face of the earth, and its pleasant places shall know them no more. Had they chosen to live at peace with us, and assimulate themselves to our manners and customs, they would quietly and slowly have dropped down the river of Time, and been lost in the vast sea of Eternity. As it is, their destruction is hastened by their own folly, and by the madness which has impelled them fruitlessly to struggle against the only friends they ever had, and attempt to drive them from the land.