GENERAL SUMMARY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume I, Issue 276, 30 September 1864, Page 3

GENERAL SUMMARY.

The most important piece of intelligence and one that will be received with anything but pleasurable feelings by the English taxpayer, is 1 lie escape of the Maori prisoners from the island of the Kawau, where they had been released u-pon parole and lodged by Sir George Grey. Our English readers will remember that at the sanguinary affair of Ivangiriri we lost a far larger proportion ot men in killed and -wounded-than did the NatireH, but the fact that we captured one hundred and eighty prisoners was thought to have left the odds in our favour. During tho past month these men have escaped to the peat cubic districts North of Auckland —have entrenched themselves in a newly built war pah 011 the skirts ot a ■ settled European district, have excited the sympathies of a - considerable number ot the hitherto quiet IS'orthern Natives, from whom they have obtained a full supply oi firearms and amnii-iiition, as well as provisions—and from the position they have fortified, and feeling certain of Native support around them, they defy the Governor to recapture them. The facts of the case arc simply these. The BaiiL'iriri prisoners and others, as they were tali en, were removed on board the ' Marion' hulk, which lay moored in the WaiteiiKU a. They were then under the charge of the Colonial G-overnment, and guarded by Colonial troops. They were comfortably and carefully lodged, well clothed, well i'ed, and when it was thought the state of their health required it, they were sent in su.all parties, under a sullicieut escort, to live in liuts upon the North Shore, opposite Auckland. In the plentitude of the power invested in him by Mr. Cardwell's late despatch, Sir George Grey suddenly too 1 ? it into his head to make these Maori prisoners his special charge, and to remove them to tho island of the Ivawau, his own private property, and to engage them there in bringing into cultivation the poor and infertile fern land of which that island is mainly composed. The Kawau is situated some -5 miles north of Auckland, opposite the European district of Matakana, and is not more than from three to lour miles from the mainland. The Maoris themselves were very unwilling to leave the AVaiiemata and their lodging in the 'Marion' hulk. They looked upon their remo-, val to the Kawau, to till the lands of Sir George Grey, as virtual slavery,and believed that t heir chance of release at the' close of the war was rendered very uncertain, So strong was this feeling that they now acknowledge that the plot to escape i'Vom the Kawau, was even planned during the voyage in the 'Marion,' from Auckland to that place. The Colonial Ministry were equally averse to this change. The prisoners had hitherto been kept well and comfortably at the expense of the Colony for many months, and tliev also felt for the prisoners that the poor fellows' condition would be considerably altered for the worse in exchanging their comfortable quarters in the 'Marion' for a life of manual labour to improve Sir George Grey's private estate at the Ivawau: They very properly reiused to listen to a first proposal of removing them to the Kawau, but when the Governor quoted the unconstitutional and arbitrary despatch of Mr. Cardwell, and insisted on asserting his prerogative, and assumed the entire responsibility of - the charge, they did, what they only could have done, handed them over to him. On Sunday,' the lltli instant, it was discovered that the whole of the Natives had left the Kawau on the preceding night, as it afterwards turned out, no guard having ieen placed over them by Sir George Grey—taking with them two days' provisions, and all the tools and implements supplied to them for the.cultivation of the Kawau estate. It afterwards transpired that they were assisted over to the mainland by. some of the Northern Natives, who have since supplied them with 200 stand of arms, ammunition, aud provisions. Sir George Grey, responsible for their escape from the first, has assumed the full responsibility of the consequences. Proceeding at once to the Kawau, unattended by a single member of the Ministry; he sent from thence tho late Interpreter of-the Hulk and a Native Chief, TcOriori, to follow up the fugitives and prevail upon them to return. The answer was a contemptuous refusal, accomwilli the threat that if followed they would resist to the death, and would'retaliate upon the Northern settlers. Again Sir George sent forth his messengers with the most supplicating appeals to the rebels to return, offering tlieni even, if they did hot like the Kawau, that he would permit them to occupy a certain block of some 0000 acres on the mainland. Again was the s;»inc contemptuous reply returned, and they remained on the Tamahan range, near Matakana, engaged in the construction of a strong war pah. The place is said to bo one almosfc of impregnability —and the so-called " friendly Maoris" in the neighbouring settlements were, when Ave last received intelligence from Matakana, engaged in pikauing loads of provisions to the pah. They have obtained several kegs of powder from the lvaipara, and there is little doubt but that the first shot fired will be the outbreak of war in the North, or as it may be more appropriately called, and for the sake of distinction, " Sir Greorge Grey's war." To Sir George Grey the escape of these prisoners, and the almost certain consequences of their escape has been mosS humiliating. He is said to have been bo chagrined at the affair that his health has suffered severely, aud it is believed that his retreat to his island residence at the Kawau arose from his unwillingness to lace the public after the commission ot so utter and miserable a blunder. He was sent out to i settle the Waikato difficulty, without the j necessity of war. We all know how utterly

he failed in doing so, —how lie precipitated, if he did not indeed cause tlie very war lie was expressly sent out to prevent; and now there looms before him the terrible spectacle of war with the tribes north of Auckland, who but for his silly blunder in allowing two hundred rebel chiefs, mostly men of influence, to escape and take up their quarters among them, would to all certainty have remained peaceable, and, at least openly, loyal. To allow these escaped prisoners to remain at large in the North will not mend matters. They are already in direct daily intercourse with neighbouring tribes, and are daily creating for themselves increased sympathy, and are leavening the whole North with disaffection. By the next month's mail we shall either have to recount the description of their capture, or the opening of the campaign against the Northern natives, and the commencement of another war, more bloody and costly even than that which has scarce terminated in tho "Waikato. We call upon the people of England to take note that this war, when it happens, will have occurred through the escape of two hundred rebel prisoners, taken from the safe custody of the Colonial Government by Sir George Grey, and placed by liiin, without a guard, upon a large unwatched island close to the main land, in the North ; that there wa3 no cause why they should have been so taken from the Colonial Government; that they were better and more kindly treated by the Ministers than they were by his Excellency, of which fact their very act of flying from the toil of cultivating his estate is proof, even if it were not well- known to hundreds amongst us. "We call upon the people of England to note that from the 11th of September, the day they escaped, until the present date, the Governor has acted solely on his own responsibility in this matter —that he has taken no steps to compel them to return, but acting without consulting his responsible advisers, he has left the Hangpriri prisoners unmolested, in a position Jtrom whence they are spreading the leaven of sedition throughout the North. "We have, on more than one occasion, asserted that the recall of Sir George Grey from the supreme command in this Colony is the only step by which the British Government can retrieve their disgraces, political and strategical, in New Zealand, that it ia a duty to themselves and to the colonists to appoint a Governor who may be able to command the respect of the European settlers and the confidence of the Natives, in the placo of Sir George Grey. "What we want is either that the General shall be unshackled from the control of a superior who knows nothing of military tactics, and who loves Maori interests more than he loves British honor, or, if the Governor is to be military commander* in-chief, that he be a man of the stamp of Sir Charles Napier, an honorable, intelligent soldier and servant of the Crown. The longer Sir George Grey remains in New Zealand, and the more he attempts to work out his Utopian impracticable schemes, the deeper he sinks the Colony and British honor into the mire, and the deeper he dips into the pocket of the already over-taxed British citizen. The determination of tho Home Government to exact a sum of £40 per man per annum, for every regiment retained in New Zealand, and £50,000 for one permanently to he stationed here, has done more to remove the kindly feelings of the colonists towards the British Parliament than any act hitherto determined upon by the liome Government. The Colonists will not quietly resign themselves to this dictum. They will use every legal means to resist what they conceive to be a gross injustice. They will, if this determination bo attempted to be carried out, refuse to pay a single sixpence towards military expenditure at all, and will vote no money for Native purposes, not even for the Governor's _ Establishment. The popular voice is as one on this matter, either let the Imperial Government fight out the ■quarrel which it has itself dragged the ■Colony into with the Natives, and fight it it out at its own cost, or let it withdraw from •interference altogether and leave us to settle our own internal affairs in our own way. Britain has no right to call on us to pay for its own blunders. It will be time enough for us to pay for troops when we have a war to fight which has been brought about by our own mismanagement. Pay for the troops the Colony will not. If Britain will not pay her own servants to perform her own work, she is welcome to "leave the work undone. The action taken by the British Government in the matter of the Guarantee to the New Zealand Loan has also raised a feeling of bitterness in the Colony. There is hut one feeling on this point, that Britain has placed herself in the undignified position of an extortionate usurer giving the weight of her name to the Colony's bill, for a " consideration." It is not to put the Colony in funds, that the guarantee to £1,000,000, is conceded by Great Britain, but to put money into her own exchequer. Mammon has eaten into the very heart of the British nation. The people of this Colony, will, however, we think, show most unmistakably their opinion of the selfish hcartless_ policy of—we use the term with a feeling of shame —the " Mother Country," by refusing to accept the Imperial guarantee, to a portion of the loan. The General Assembly will we believe, say—the guarantee to the whole £3,000,000 or to none, and will bid England wait for reimbursement of money advanced for war purposes to the Colony, until the Colony is in a better position to pay—that is, until the whole £3,000,000 has been obtained. The refusal of the Imperial Parliament to guarantee more than one million only of the loan, throws & most unmerited reflection on the resources of the Colony. AYe are, as yet, almost untaxed, in comparison with our incomes and means. The revenue already sufficient to bear the burden, is yearly expanding, and must of necessity go on increasing as population itself increases. We say nothing of the money return of the confiscated lands hereafter to be sold. Tho township of Ngaruawahia has given us an instance of the value of these lands, an account of the sale of which during the early part of the month will be found in another column. Confiscated these rebels' lands will be, for as surely as Sir George Grey interferes to work out the present distress of the Colony, against the will of the people, by returning their lands to the rebels and allowing them to retain their arms —so surely yill these same Natives break out in insurrection again when the troops are withdrawn, and as surely as

they clo this, will the Auckland colonists rise iu their just linger, and, with the assistance of the diggers of Dmiedin and Australia, sweep the Maori race from every rebel district. Trade which has languished in t-hc Soutl: is still brisk in Auckland, and though vor} many commercial failures have taken place in JJuncdin, Southland, and Canterbury there have been but few occurrences of the kind here. In Canterbury especially there is a very large amount of destitution. Thai which has the most damaging effect 011 the trade of Auckland is the wild and incautious shipment of large consignments ol goods If agents here. The market becomes glutted the goods are thrown into auction, solel ottei for less than cost price besides the adelitiona charge for customs duty, anel the loss lulls not only where it deserves to hill, on the reckless exporters at home, but 011 the lair dealing importer and merchant here, wlif has to enter into competition against good; solel at less than cost price. This is tin way in which commercial crises were brough about in Melbourne in her palmiest days. The iirst prize-light which has ever takei placo in Auckland occurred during the pas month. The combatants were a soldier am a Duneelin digger. The fight, pre-arrangei with much secrecy, took place some threi miles from town. A local paper whicl still struggles on against a daily decrensinj circulation, gave a report of it 1 la Bell's Life, and advocating tin establishment of the P.Jf. in an editorial .For ourselves, we refused to report tin details, and called upon the publi and the Authorities to eliscountenance tin commencement of these disgusting aiu brutal exhibitions. The active and intelligen head of the Police, Mr. Commissione Naughton, has since captured the principal and four of theringleaders anel they have bcei committed for trial to the next session of tin Supreme Court in December. The Aucklam public took the matter up so warmly, am expressed so much indignation at the inlro duetion of such practices as that of prize fighting into the quiet orderly society of thi Province, that the oll'ending journal wa obligeel to recant its opinions of the previou day, anel plcael as an excuse that the repor anel insertion crept in unknown to th Editor! Among the new enterprises of the niontl is the Manakau Steam Navigation Compair with a capital of £20,000. Their object i to open up the settlements 011 the Mauakai harbour b}' means of direct steam eommuui cation with Onehunga. Tlie project is a use ful one, a good thoroughly bolel speculation and the shares have been freely taken uj Another new enterprise is the weekly pe rioelical' Entertainment,' a very clever serial of satire, fun, amusement, anel intelligence It has already a weekly circulation of 2,(JUL The third number, which appeared shortl after the escape of the Maori prisoners froi: the Ivawau, fairly established it. Th frontespiece of each number is a beautiful I executed lithograph, anel the caricatures ar well elesigned and worthy of the Loiieloi Charivari. On this occasion it representee a figure and face resembling those of Si George Grey, beguiled b\ r the blandishment of two Maori, or rather of a Maori auel ; half-caste damsel, one of whom is blindfold ing liim, while the other with one arm roimi his neck is chuckling him under the elm with the other hand. The two hundretl am odd prisoners are seen scampering away ii the background. The public enjoyed th' caricature, anel appreciated the inuendo si well that the work was rapidly bought up and now it appears to bo establisheel and i certainly taken altogether the best literal" production of the kind published in Auck land. The Southern Monthly Magazine i still in existence. There is also anothc weekly serial, but it is not worth}- of men tion. The dulness of the month has been enli veiled by a two day's holiday 011 the occasioi of the Military Kaees which took place a Epsom, and a full account of which will b' found elsewhere. ' Dainty Ariel,' the pro pertv of Lieutenant St. Hill, was tin " favourite," and proved worthy of tin public opinion. The Supreme Court whicl commcnced its sittings on the 7th o month is still in session. The Proviuciu Council stands prorogued till Wednesday next. In another part of this paper will b< found an interesting account of the fearfu attempt of oue of au escort party to murde his comrades.