OUR TROUBLES IN NEW ZEALAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 100, 30 April 1869, Page 2

OUR TROUBLES IN NEW ZEALAND.

(From the Pall Mali Gazette.) Unless things take a better- turn than the last advices seem to indicate, it is but too probable that help from home' will be applied for. And we cannot expect that any Government will tarn a deaf enr to a call made in earnest, with evidence before it that the fate of lives and property to a very serious extent may hang on their determination. Supposing, however, that the Colonial Government is equal in its own judgment to meet the emergency, the best course, in all probability, which they could take is one which we scarcely count on the community possessing civil courage enough to submit to. The Northern Island should be placed under a dictatorship. Its resources should be employed at the absolute discretion of the executive created for the occasion. That executive should be rendered, as nearly as suah a word can be with safety used, irresponsible until the emergency is over. It should enrol a military force, calling it by whatever name might seem adapted to the case. Reliance on volunteers in such a matter is idle. Volunteers will fight hard enough in defence of their own homesteads, and to punish injuries inflicted on themselves, or in the general enthusiasm of national self-defence; or, again, where substantial advantages are to be earned by fighting. But they will not serve steadily where none of these objects are within view, and the only purpose is to protect a number of outlying settlers against an enemy continually at hand, by the exercise of constant and troublesome watchfulness even more than of valour. That is the business of a militia, or an armed police, strong in numbers, and under absolute direction ; not a plaything for "responsible 5 * Ministries in the colonial sense. But the dictatorship, which appears indispensable under present circumstances for the Northern Island, is, of course, not requisite for the Southern. Its proper function would be the self-denying one of contributing liberally to the expense of the general government, without impeding unity of action by interference with its military or police arrangements. News for Nelson. — A correspondent write* us (Westport Times) from Nelson in the following terms of the Duke's visit. "Everything passed off very jvell; but the expenditure has been something enormous, in fact I might say shameful. lam told on good authority 'hat the house accommodation alone for the one night H.R.H. remained in Nelson is £250, the •wine bill about £130, and the et ceteras on a corresponding scale. It is said that £2000 will not cover the expenses." A new lead of gold is reported to have been struck by some prospectors who have lately been at work midway between the Buller River and Addison's. or in the vicinity of what is generally kown as the Bald Hill. Gold had previously been got in the same neighborhood, but the leads were thin and not very rich. The party by whom this discovery ia said to have been made sunk deeper, and hare come upon a richer and larger lead of wash-dirt, which is likely to i>e reached most easily by tunnelling from Dirty Mary's Creek. The wash-dirt is said to be of a different character from that of the other leads, and the gold is rougher than that obtained at Addison's Flat, and is of a deep . red color, caused probably by the f erxuginous deposits by which some of the leads of the neighborhood are characterised. The statement is that the ground prospected is capable of paying from £10 to £14 per weeis, and that there is area sufficient for a considerable number of men. — Westport Times.