THE NEW ZEALAND WAR.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1192, 4 February 1864, Page 3

THE NEW ZEALAND WAR.

The following correspondence is published in the < Daily News ' of November g IR —AII who know what the honor of England is, will thank you for your protest against the course of butchery which has been commenced in Japan, and which the organs of the Prime Minister are urging the nation to continue. But your protest will be vain. There was a time when the choice between this policy aud that of honor was offered to us. The victory of Lord Palmerston on the question of the war made by him in China for the purposes of the opium smugglers decided that, so tar as the present holders of political power are concerned, the policy of aggression was to prevail. The bombardment of is the sequel of the bombardment of Canton 0 and those who applauded one of these acts will not'condemn the other. What the conscience'of the English people, to which you appeal, might say, is a different question. Hut long before the conscience of the English people can be fairly heard, the marvellous, and, we may be sure, not uninstructive civilization of Japan, into which the peaceful influence of Christendom might in the end have infused a higher life, will be laid, like that of Mexico and Peru and by hands more coarsely rapacious, in the dust.' It will be so, at least, unless, as seems possible, the Japanese, a spirited race, knowing the character of the Power which, in the rinme of civilization and Christianity, approaches their coast, and having heard tales of Indian and Chinese slaughter, find in spite of their weakness, salvation in despair. As to the case of Japan, however, you have said all that could be said. There was only one phrase in vour article to which I would venture to demur. You spoke of this policy as being earned 011 " for the extension of trade." It is carried on, not for the extension of trade, not for the commercial benefit of the nation, but for the aggrandisement of a tew adventurers, members of a class which, by Us wealth, its energv, and its union, has succeeded in making the government its tool.. When these men have made vast fortunes by the abuse of the public foice, and at the expense of- the public honor, they wi.l spend them, not for the public happiness, but in siddin"field to field, and house to house, in disinheriting the English people of the English soil, and in making English society more and more a hideous contrast between enormous, wealth and luxury on one side, and a mass of wretchedness, degradation, and penal pauperism on the other. My present object is to call your attention to the last act of a long tragedy which, in pursuance of our great Christian " mission," is about to be presented fn another quarter. " The day, said a w etch doomed to die by slow torture, " will be cruel, but it will end at last." The day of the New Zealanders spoms about at last to end. This wild stock, if the accounts of its enemies maj be trusted, had in it some qualities of high promise, and cultivated bv kind hands and under happ.er ■msnices miiiht have borne to humanity good h-iiixts its'kind It had been selected by Nature for that climate, and was no doubt physically the lies suited for it. Had an Augustine landul alone among the Maori race, he might have breathed into t ie breath of national life, and have made t n Christian nation. Had Augustine v.sit glo-Saxon forefathers with greedy colonic 1 wcked * Juwte&m Si.i'. "if!« glory' mill Its greatness, v.oulil love fouml lii'fwc 'Is hour a nameless srrave. // «•<? membei* "J "" ciimmmw/ ami if the intern!* nj lluilcmmiiS «" * «.« »»•""■« TTinZ Vnice will cost us something, in spite of the pat > vouTilTtnke the map of the N ( )rtheni given "in the New Zealand Blue-book illustrate these disturbances, you imu uactat > ux the beneficent influence of ral nrocess of colonisation. \ou may see 1 •>'» i u - lE, of .1.0 Ki,. s of S|»ai„ i,.. roc,» . ,o 1. of the Creator in the arrangement of "''Silists, when left to tlianselvcs, will scil,c f„, 2 mki of ini.ti.ni u'liw>l) 11 the best both 011 economical giouiuls an for the purposes of civilisation. Hut when they Protected by the force of an Empire, which the know very well will, in spite of all , t« the contrary, be sent to their aid as otten . ease to Ske it necessary, their coyetousness of lind leads them to spread wide, grasping the tei tory with their out-settlements, and thus bnna g themselves inevitably into hostile 5 .Vivo trihns It is tint nordmale rapimiti/ of htna ISSHsSSS pnnislmient we enn* on tnte mischief. It has ituui« lviae( i them to give imprudent encroachments, < f course, up their out-settlements at a Tto nSSr'to »af that to tee »neiviltat

tribes land is life, and the loss of their land, with which they are incessantly menaced, is death. They know 110 handicrafts or trades by which they could subsist as mechanics or labourers under the new proprietors, nor lias the notion of such u changed mode of existence yet presented itself to their minds. And, therefore, as they see the fatal circle of encroachment gradually closing upon them they iling themselves against it in despair, and commit acts of savage violence and atrocity which inevitably bring on war—a war which " makes a savage of the civilized, and kindles the fires of hell in the bosom of the savage." We are told that we planted ourselves in their country, "not by force or fraud, but by treaty." No doubt that treaty was mode in perfect good faith, and the poor ignorant wretches fully understood what they were doing when tlicy signed it 1 Ido not question that every step of this process of spoliation has been duly consecrated by legal and diplomatic formalities. So was every step of the process by which the Anglo-Norman adventurers and their legal jackals disinherited the Irish nation. We assume the right of intruding ourselves into the territory of these people on the ground that they are savages, and that Ave are civilised men. We then affect to deal with them as though they were as civilised and as capable of comprehending the real effect of all treaties and bargains as ourselves; and when they fly from a treaty or bargain, the consequences of which they find to be their ruin, we visit them with the penalties of war and confiscation.

Without going into details of any particular compact or dispute, thus much is clear on the whole— the natives have been deprived, without any adequate compensation, of a great part of the territory which was rightfully theirs and which is necessary to their existence; and they are manifestly destined by the growth of our settlements to lose the whole, together with the separate nationality which we are told they distinctly prize. Under these circumstances, they are not unlikely to be " suspicious," and to imagine that fraud lurks even where it may happen that no fraud is intended. So great and urgent is their cause for resisting the further progress of their destroyers, that I doubt whether a liberal morality would be extreme to mark the occasion of their resistance.

Till lately the natives were under our nominal guardianship, and little patches of land ostensibly I "reserved" for them amidst the rising tide of encroachment show, in justice be it said, that the Home Government has made unavailing efforts to discharge a trust far beyond the reach of its real power. But a short time ago the Colonial Secretary, perceiving the hopelessness of the task, frankly renounced the protection of the natives. Yet he has no scruple in employing the forces of the empire for their destruction. Are these poor wretches under our government or not? If they are, we owe them effectual protection. If they are not, we owe them neutrality in war. The truth is, they are really left by us to the tender mercies of the local government, which is hostile to them, and practically independent of us. But on the ground of our nominal sovereignty we continue to lend the crushing assistance of our arms to the settlers, and deprive the unhappy race of the last chance in its struggle for existence. By the colonists and by us, whenever a quarrel arises, the natives are treated as alien enemies, and as alien enemies who are not entitled to the usages of civilized war. The Government proposed to let loose a horde of Sikhs upon them, and it abstained from doing so, by its own avowal, on the ground of expense alone. But in official contemplation they are " subjects of her Majesty," and they enjoy at least one privilege of that condition, since, when they rise against us, they are treated as " rebels " and punished with forfeiture of land. The Mexicans, when they resisted the Spanish invaders, were put to death as the just punishment of " rebellion " a word," says the historian of the Spanish conquests, " that has"been made the apology for more atrocities than any other word, save religion."

Our sovereignty of New Zealand is futile, or worse than futile, for all good purposes; but in one respect it is no mere shadow. It makes us the tacit patrons of aggression, and the executioners of an unhappy and, had they been left to dwell in peace, perfectly unoffending race. We are lords of New Zealand for one purpose, and one purpose alone—to bach encroachment, and to crush its struggling victims with the power of an empire. It is for this, and to butcher Japanese, that the fleets and armies of England are sent to the other side of the globe, while, in the midst of our own community of nations, Poland dies unaided, and we follow up an abject confession of inability to prevent that great wrong with a series of diplomatic winnings which the strong oppressor treats with merited insolence, and which will be the scorn of history. When colonists, craving for land, planted themselves in New Zealand, bached by the power of the empire, the grave of the native race was dug-, and had it been thrust into that grave at once, its swift extermination would, perhaps, have been really less shocking to humanity, and less demoralising to us, than this murder in twenty acts, with all its hesitations and its interludes, the end of which, though long in coming, was always sure. I am, &c., Goldwin Smith.

Sm, —Few are able to cope with Mr. Goldwin Smith in matters of argument; and I am not one of the few. But so far as ho deals with mere matters of fact, he maj be open to correction. So far only, then, with your permission, I venture to criticise his letter on " The New Zealand War," published in the' Daily News ' of the tith instant. Mr. Smith's argument is very clear, and may be stateel shortly as follows:— 1. Her Majesty's forces are engaged m quelling a disturbance in New Zealand. 1. This elisturhance is the natural resistance of the to the encroachment of the colonists, who, " grasping the country with their out-settlements, bring themselves inevitably into hostile collision with the native; tribes," and whose " inordinate rapacity of land " gives those tribes " great and urgent cause to resist the further progress of their destroyers," and to that end to " commit acts of savage violence and atrocity, which inevitably bring on war." 3. 'I herefore, the force of Great, Britain is employed, not onlv needlessly in a purely colonial quarrel, but shamefully in "backing encroachment, and crushing its struggling victims with the power of an empire."

The second proposition is untrue in fact. Though the first outbreak commenced with a local litnd dispute, the insurrection owes its strength andextent expressly to a desire for freedom from the English government; it is now in every sense a rebellion. Again, the Maoris have no ill-will against the settlers, either in towns or outsettlements ; their hostility is to the form of government. Nor is the war sin"iif?air of mutual massacres between settlers and natives; the acts of violence and atrocity of which we hear have been committed by the natives as a part of their system of organised warfare. Further, the land has not been seized, but bought from them in tracts, by bargain, through a public department, and not by the settlers. In a few rare cases only has the fairness of a land bargain been questionable. The territory remaining to the natives in the north island is nearly thirty millions of acres for fifty thousand persons, and exceeds fourfold all that they havo yet disposed of. Their land is the great source of wealth to them —and that by its sale, not by its retention. Lastly, the government, whether of England or of the colony, may have to reproach itself with neglect towards the Maoris, but not with anv act of tyranny or oppression. And the colonists may claim, not, perhaps, to be free from blame of every kind, but at least to have been reasonably considerate and self-denying in their dealings with the natives. 1 content myself with the mere assertion of these facts in your columns, because they are patent and incontrovertible. It follows that the forces of Great liritain have nol been used to back encroachment, and to gratify an inordinate rapacity of land. Mr. Gold win Smith seems in the interest ot the Maori race to regret the colonisation of New Zealand. But the islands were fertile, pleasant, and but partially peopled, tempting to whalers and traders by sea, and close to convict settlements. Is ,t likely that in the absence of systematic colonisation the Maori race would have been " under happy auspices, and have borne to humanity good fruits after its kind"? , , ' The French might have been, and nearly wore, the colonising nation. Would the Maori race have been as well off under the masters of Algeria and laliiti, as under the British crown? In short to lock up the country from use was impossible. If the Maori was to be preserved, elevated, and Christianised, colonisation was a necessary part of the scheme, and that not by any country in the world but England. The British Government, in adopting the country as a colony, did the best that could bo done for the aborigines. That the duty has not been performed with complete success and without trouble or cost,, does not prove that it should not have been undertaken. „ ~ . I trust the time will come when Mr. Goldwm Smith will no longer be able to talk of " the fleets and armies of England sent to the other side ot the world;" when colonies and dependencies will give their proportion with the mother country, in war or in peace, to provide both men and money for an imperial force; when the reciprocal duties of allegiance in the old practical

sense of the word may be those which bind England to her colonies; when the old country may regain from her grown-up children more than the strength winch she lent them when young; and when the invidious distinction of taxpaying may no longer prompt English philosophers to unreasoning abuse of their absent fellow-subjects.—l am, &e., Crosbie Ward. ;i, Adelaide-place, London-bridge, Nov. 9. Sin, —Mr. Crosbie Ward, so far from correcting me, has not even contradicted me, as to any " matter of fact." He partly contradicts me as to a matter of opinion. He maintains that the Maoris are fighting not for their land, but solely for freedom from the English Government; that their hostility is to the form of government alone ; and that they have no ill-will to the settlers, either in towns or outsettlements. Suppose this to be true. Suppose the Maoris to be fighting only for freedom from a form of government which they dislike. I leave Mr. Ward himself to say whether the destruction of a race which only desires to be free is a satisfactory employment for the troops and the treasure of this country. But Mr. Donald M'Lean, the Native Secretary states, in a Memorandum endorsed by the Hon. F. Weld, the Native Minister, and transmitted by Governor Sir George Browne, that " the ruling idea of the Maoris is the preservation of a distinct nationality, and the prevention of the growth of English settlements." The latter part of this statement will be found, I believe, to be abundantly confirmed by the general evidence on the subject.

In the same memorandum Mr. McLean says, "The threats, curses, and opprobrious epithets used by Europeans towards them (the natives) confirm their worst suspicions. The offensive terms ' bloody Maoris,'.' Black Nigger,' ' treacherous savage,' are frequently applied to them; and though uniformly kind and hospitable to all strangers, they are themselves often treated with cold indifference, and sometimes with contempt, when they visit the English towns." Mr. McLean, Mr. Ward will observe, is not "an English philosopher," indulging in "unreasoning abuse-of his absent fellow-sub-jects." Tlie land of the natives, according to Mr. Ward, is " the great source of wealth to them—and that by its sale, and not by its retention." When the sale is complete, and the Maoris have not an inch of soil to subsist on, they will, according to this theory, be a wealthy and prosperous people. That the land " has not been seized, but bought," is a fact which I have never impugned. On the contrary, I expressed my conviction that every step of the disinheriting process had been carried on with due legal formalities. I do not question that the purchases have been made •' through a public department," and I should think it is as little open to question in whose interest the proceedings of that department have been carried on. I will not discuss Mr. Ward's assertion, that " in a few rare cases only has the fairness of the land bargain been questionable," nor dispute Ins rather ominous defence of the colonists, who, he avers, " have been reasonably considerate and self-denying in their dealings with the natives." 1 wish to accuse no man nor body of men personally of tyranny or of oppression. I only accuse the fatal system of government interference in the natural process of colonisation, which is the ultimate source of all these calamities and horrors. Let me point out once more that the home Government had expressly renounced the duty of protecting native interests. "I am ready, the Colonial Secretary had said to the Governor of New Zealand, " to sanction the important step you have taken in placing the management of the natives under the control of the Assembly. *1 do so partly in reliance on your own capacity to perceive, and your desire to do, what is best for those in whose welfare I know you are so much interested. But I do it also because I cannot disguise from myself that the endeavour to keep the management of the natives under the control of the home government has failed. It can only be mischievous to retain a shadow of responsibility when the beneficial exercise of power has become impossible.' Ihe natives are thus handed over to the management of an assembly elected by colonists whose disposition towards them is described in the extract above given from the memorandum of Mr. McLean. The home government had formally renounced the duties of a government towards them, and it had thereby necessarilv absolved them from their allegiance. 1o say, therefore, that this struggle is « in every sense a rebellion," is utterly unjust. It is in no real sense rt rebellion. It is a struggle for existence of the weaker race against the stronger; and we having cast the weaker race loose to shift for itself, are, nevertheless, lending the stronger race the overwhelming assistance of otir arms. " If the Maori was to be preserved, elevated, and christianised, colonisation was a necessary part of the scheme, and that not by any country in the world but England.". Ido not doubt that this is Mr. Ward's sincere conviction, as it is the sincere conviction of Englishmen in general. We seem to have thoroughly persuaded ourselves that in conquering, annexing, and slaughtering wheiever oui cupidity leads us we are preserving, elevating, and christianising heathen nations. AVe shall exterminate the Maoris for their laud, and then we shnll come down to prayers. Let Mr. Ward, or any other friend of humanity who reposes under this agreeable illusion, reckon up ou the one side the number of people who have perished by our wars, mutinies, and bombardments in India, Burmah, China, Affghamstun Japan, the Australian, New Zealand, and Cape Colonies; let liini add to this number the Chinese, whom we have poisoned body and soul by our opium, or who will perish in the confusion which our opium wars, liy ruining the native government, have produced Let him throw in the hell of evil passions which", together with all this .slaughter and physical misery, has been let loose over the world. Let him then calculate how many of the heathens have, according to any credible estimate, been converted to Christianity in the scenes of our conquests. He will, I think see some reason to doubt whether the conqueror's sword or the rifle of the exterminating colonist is tho chosen instrument for christianising the world. , , . , But, says Mr. Ward, if we had not seized the territory of the Maoris, the Lrencli would. Let the French, I answer, commit crimes if they will, and let the punishment of their crimes be on their own head The fact, however, is that, though the French Government, in its insane desire for extended empire, and its unreasoning emulation oi this country, may plant settlements which it calif colonies, when, in fact, they are nothing bui garrisons, the French are not an emigrating people They have no desire or tendency to take the lam 1 of others, for the simple reason that, unlike the ' English people, they' arc the possessors of tlicii ° V That " whalers " would have found it.worth then 1 while to eject the Maoris from their land I eai • scarcely believe. Nor do 1 see why the neigh borm< 1 " convict settlements'' should have done so. _Mm ' what 1 advocate in this matter of colonisation is tin free action of nature against the intcrierence ol Government; and convict settlements are not the work of nature. That the Maoris are a doomed race Mr. \\ atv ' does not deny, and I have not asserted that it is now possible to avert their doom. But it is possible botl ■ to speak of them in language which docs not, liki ' that of our great public instructors, outrage humanity, and perhaps le> draw a useful lesson fron ' their fate.—l am, &c., Golowin Smith.