FIFTY YEARS AGO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20993, 2 October 1931, Page 6

FIFTY YEARS AGO.

EXTRACTS FROM THE HERALD The following are extracts from the New Zealand Herald of October 3, 1881: The news about the natives at Taranaki is still puzzling. No explanation hag yet been given of why the Government, after discharging men from the constabulary for months, after abandoning all preparations for hostilities, should suddenly, commence recruiting, raising volunteer companies and sending large supplies of arms and ammunition to the district. Telegrams received during the last day or two materially modify some of the most alarming items of news received from Taranaki lately, in respect of the warlike disposition of the natives, and the Government is evidently anxious that any statement evidencing a disposition to hostility on the part of the natives should bo explained away. But if Ministers succeed in showing that the natives have done nothing to cause any alarm, and have said nothing in the way of threat, how are they to account for their recruiting all over the colony, and sending larj;e supplies of arms and ammunition into the district? Meanwhile the fences last erected by tjje Tarihaka natives are still standing, and as there is not even a pretext that these have been put up to preserve cultivation, they should be pulled down. If the natives resist, they must take the consequences. We do not suppose that the Government would dream of again making prisoners of 400 natives, to .have to go through the farce of releasing them again and taking them prisoners again, and so on. The constabulary is strong enough now to take down tf'o fences and if this is all that the Government intends to do, we see no neeo for augmenting the force, in tile district. General Sir Evelyn Wood, in view of the delay in ratifying the Anglo-Boer Convention, has be>=n invested by the British Government with full power to act in any emergency. The general has ordered active preparations on the part of British troops in the Transvaal * n order to be prepared for any difficulty.