The New Zealand Herald. AUCKLAND, TUESDAY, JANUARY 23,1866.

New Zealand Herald, Volume III, Issue 684, 23 January 1866, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald.

AUCKLAND, TUESDAY, JANUARY 23,1866.

SPECTEMUR AGENDO. "Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice : Tali© each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Thiß above all,—To thine ownself be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Tlioa canst not then be falsa Co any roan."

We cannot too strongly deprecate the renewed attempt made by a local journal, on Saturday last, to stir up an uneasy feeling in the minds of the European population respecting the temper and position of the Northern natives, the more so as such a course is not only calculated to create needless alarm to those of our own people at a distauco who know nothing of the real merits ol' tho case, hut, still worse, is calculated to infuse a feeling of dissatisfaction and suspicion into tho minds of the natives themselves of whose feelings it pretends to treat. "Wo have before this found it necessary, in the interest of the public, to check a similar course of writing, on the part of our cotemporary with respect to the North, which, had it been not so checked, would, in the opinion of those best qualified to give an opinion on the matter, have led to, perhaps, very disastrous consequences. For the same reason wo now proceed to point out the injudiciousness of indulgence in such sensational writing, and the incorrectness of the grounds on which the alleged critical state of the North is based in the article now under discussion. When a public journal makes so bold an assertion as that " there is a great deal that is " anything but satisfactory in the position of " matters in the North with regard to the " natives," and then goes on to calculate the number of armed fighting men these natives could bring into the field, the character of the country for a campaign, and the fearful consequenccs that must ensue from such a war, something more, we think, than mere assertion that native affairs in the North are in an unsatisfactory position, should be given. There should be some very substantial reason adduced why so delicate a subject should bo made one for public discussion. Yet not one tittle of evidence or proof has our cotemporary to give why he should raiso a feeling of uneasiness in the mind of the one, and a feeling of suspicion and distrust in the mind of the other race. We do not hesitate to say that lie has none to give, for we are well informed ourselves upon the state of Native affairs north of Auckland, and see no reason whatever to anticipate a rupture of the present peaceful relations between the natives and the settlers. On the contrary, the former are continually giving evidence of their desire to live in peace and harmony with us. The facilities for obtaining Crown grants for their lands, through the Native Lands Courts, are being constantly made use of, and the following fact will perhaps, in as brief space as could be desired, be as suitable a refutation of tho needlessness of our coteinporary's fears as could be wished. Our readers, as well as those of the Cross, are aware that Kawhia is the hotbed of Hauhauisrn and rebellion. A letter from tho principal Hauhau chiefs at Kawhia was lately received by tho head chiefs of the Ngapulii, asking them to rise in conjunction with the natives south of the confiscated line, and make a common assault on a day, not far from the present time, upon the European sottlers. Did the Northern natives entertain the proposal ? No! —it was at onco rejected, and the letter itself in which it was made was, wc can assure our cotemporary, handed over by the Ngapuhi chiefs to the authorities, and is by this time in the hands of the Government in Wellington. A better evidence of the sincerity of these natives in their refusal to co-operate w : th Southern rebels, could not have been found than in the handing to the Government of the letter inviting their assistance. Had the proposal been rejected because they thought the proper time had not yet arrived for carrying out such a design as that contained in it, they would never have cut off future opportunity by drawing the attention of the Government to the existence of a communication on the subject between themselves and the rebels. It is fortunate indeed that the loyalty of, or perception of their true interests by the Northern tribes is as strong as it is, or wliat between the coaxing of men of their own race and the irritation produced by the injudicious writings of some Europeans, they might ere this have been in rebellion. The Cross argues that the Northern natives neither love nor fear us, that they feel fully able to cope with us in arms—that the nature of the country they inhabit is such as would render a campaign a matter of the greatest difficulty to us —that, in fori , while we have much they have nothing to lose by such a war. Now, we believe that each one of these grounds which our cotemporary uses as a basis for an article, the effect of which can only be unnecessarily to unsettle the confidence of intending immigrants, and to infuse a belief into the ; native mind that we distrust their loyalty, and are anxious for an opportunity of I

purchasing " tlie luxury of conquering ' " tlieir lands and reducing them to a " state of weakness and enforced submission" is untenable. The northern natives have not been unobservant spectators of the events of the last two years, and we have no hesitation in saying, and those who know them best will hear us out in saying so, that the confiscation of the Walk at o for ever quenched any hope of successful rebellion that might have existed in the minds of a section of the Northern tribes. Nor is the assertion correct that the North is a country difficult of access, abounding in native strongholds, to which they could always retire before an enemy. At its very broadest part, the North is not more than sixty miles wide from sea to sea, and on the average not half that distance. It contains an inland sea itself, and in every direction is intersected by navigable rivers and creelcs, and is entirely surrounded by the ocean except at the narrow isthmus between Auckland and Onehunga, which constitutes its base. Its very position in fact places it almost defenceless in our hands, and this the natives well know. It could be far more easily conquered than the Waikato, and when conquered could from its isolated position be held without a single military post. When it is asserted that we have everything, the Northern native nothing to lose by a war in the North, the writer quite seems to forget the value a native places on his land. The forfeiture of his land is fully as much dreaded by him as the losses by our settlers are dreaded by us—nor is it true to say the natives in the North have nothing to lose besides their land. A large proportion of the cattle there as well as of the crops are owned by natives, and the Northern native knows, none better, the value of the peaceful possession of what will be after all the garden of this part of New Zealand. "We have alluded to the mischievous tendency of writings calculated to arouse needless alarm on the one side, and distrust and suspicion of our intentions on the other. The bugbear of native aggression within the settled boundaries of this Province has been dead in Auckland for some time past. No sane man but believes himself perfectly safe in any part of the Province, north of a line very nearly as far south as the confiscation boundary itself." There is in fact at the j>rcsent time a disposition on the part of very many owners of land north of Auckland, now in town, to occupy their land, and it is most cruel and injudicious unnecessarily to create a feeling of uneasiness in the minds of such persons. "We are, too, in the interests of the Province bound to cultivate to the utmost the immigration of families from home possessing the means of occupying and settling the waste lands of this Province, and in the present and prospective state of security to life and property in our settled country districts we are fully justified now in encouraging such a tide of emigration. The very obstacle which stands, however, in the way of success in this great work is the untruthful, suicidal course pursued by those who thoughtlessly or iguorantly keep alive a belief in the existence of the state of insecurity which has been succeeded by our present secure and peaceful condition. The war has drifted away to the Southern extremity of the Province, where even now it is being fast crushed out. On the other hand, wo would assure our native fellow subjects in the North that the suspicions of their peacefulness and loyalty, so rashly speculated upon, find no sympathy with the European population of this Province. The interests of both races are too closely united for either the one or the other to afford the " luxury," as our cotemporary calls it, of conquering lands or destroying property. "We have much missed the advantages of the Native trade which a state of war has interrupted, and none know better than the Northern natives who have very many of them acquired the usages of civilized society and an appreciation of other " luxuries" than that of fighting that their future welfare is inseparablj bound up in ours, that the next generatioi: among them will see itself in the enjoymenl of a large, perhaps the largest, share of the wealth of this Province.