NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealander, Volume 1, Issue 47, 25 April 1846, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND.

[From the London Mail, December Bth,]

While we have to rejoice over the gallant services performed by the fleet under Admiral Cochrane, against the pirates of Borneo, the miserable failure of our troops in New Zealand have been matters of equal astonishment and regret. Not indeed, that there is a reason to question the gallantry and zeal of both officers and men, but because a series of blunders will have given the unfortunate natives a mistaken notion of their own power, and such an idea of British inferiority as must magnify the importance of their leaders, and so occasion further hostilities, and an expenditure of blood that might otherwise have been avoided. All this is very lamentable to find that it might have been obviated fay the exercise of a little forethought and common prudence ; for there seems to have really been nothing in the state of things which required much skill or military judgment. The same may be said of our hostilities with the natives from first to last. Kororaiika was lost by a series of blunders } and Heke’s pah was then attacked, and our forces were repulsed, for want of means to effect a breach, without which it should not have been attempted. And we now read of a defeat which might have been spared, had the commanding officer u taken the common precaution of ordering areconnoisance. ' Colonel Oespard has suffered much in estimation, and- his case has been instanced as‘one* shewing that officers should never be permitted to attain the higher ranks of the service,-till 1 their capacities for command, have been .properly ascertained, 1 •'> ; *• ■ : - .3