NOTES OF THE MONTH-

Colonist, Issue 1165, 4 December 1868, Page 4

NOTES OF THE MONTH-

THE NATIVE WAR.

" A painful feeling 13 evinced in England , by the news of the Ma'6riio.u.tbreak l ßj^TrS^h': .., is the announcement contained.in the latest telegrams of English intelligence received by the Suez mail steamers, Jby telegraph toY, Galle, up to 30th October last. It is well ;. - and it must be gratifying to the colonists . of New Zealand to know that the current of r public opinion is changing, and that regard for the welfare of the coloniots is taking the '. place of that erroneous and costly affection^ • which for long years has been lavished on the aborigines, whose recent deeds of -_■' cannibalism,conveyed by thelastmail.hadnofc;' yet reached the ears of the English public^ \ We read the telegram as meaning what' we. -, have said—that the "painful feeling" iß.a feeling of solicitude for the sufferings of the British people who dwell in these idanda^

coupled, it may be, with a not unnatural solicitude on 'Change for the safety of those securities, public and private, in the hands of English bond-holders and mortgagees, and which will be not a little imperilled, if this new and bloodthirsty outbreak is not checked and subdued—put down once aud for ever by a firm and relentless hand. But, from whatever cause it arises, it is satisfactory to note that the tone of the Eugiish people is changing; and that, as we info:, an ignorant, mischievous, and misplaced sympathy for brutal savages will no longer be permitted to paralyse the efforts of .those whose fear of English opinion has so frequently stayed the sword of the just avenger, and delighted the truculent rebel by the spectacle of a rebuked and maligned body of colonists, whose greatest error was too 'much kindness, too patient endurance of wrongs. " Make peace with the Maoris;" " be gentle with them, they know no better;" " do not abuse your strength," " treat them kindly,pardon theirerrors ;"—these, in effect, have been the instructions from the Colonial Office, together with foul and false accusations of maltreatment ou our part —accusations conceived in the mind of a disappointed and romancing officer, aud published in England as if true. If that " painful feeling" was awakened from what at the date of latest advices was known at home, how much deeper must be the feeling when the tidings shall arrive of our wounded men being roasted alive, and eaten peacemeal ere yet their pangs were ended, and before the light of life had left their dying eyes ? What will be said when it is told in England of the nameless mutilations to which prisoners were subjected by the Wanganui chief Tito Kowaru, who had the bodies of the dead taken limb from limb, pickled, and sent through the country of the rebels as a delicacy to incite other disaffected tribes to imitate their deeds ?

All this would be known when last month's mail arrived in England ; but how much more ought English sympathies to be aroused when they read the sad chapter of cruel butchery of defenceless settlers, men, women and children, attacked in the middle of the night, and cruelly tortured and massacred by the quondam prisoners who escaped from Chatham, and on the 10th of last month desolated a fair and fruitful district in Poverty Bay? Men have been shot and tomahawked in their Dight dresses, women burned alive, and babies in arms have been taken by the feet, and their heads literally "dashedagamst the stones," and the mangled corpse placed in the arms of the tortured mother! Does England think of vengeance ? Let the home public read the narrative, somewhat disjointed perhaps, but harrowing, which our columns of this morning contain, and the old Anglo-Saxon blood must tingle in the veins of the people, of whom we are a part, and prompt them to generous sympathy. It is no doubt easy to say that the Maori race are few compared with the European, and that we should fight them ourselves. But the trade and the recreation of the Maori for centuries has been war. We have cultivated the arts of peace ; and while the native loses nothing in fighting, we lose all that nearly thirty years' cultivation of the wilderness has gained. Men cannot leave their trades and occupations, their farms, their employment in towns without making such sacrifices as threaten to depopulate the Colony by an exodus which will surely ensue, if life and property in exposed districts can only be defended by such costly means. There are other fields which may attract the enterprising colonist; and if the Colony is to remain without substantial sympathy from the mother country, the burden of her troubles will be too great to bear, and all who can (if this Maori conflict continues much longer) will leave the Colony for fairer fields. Reduction of the European population means financial disaster, which will approach, if not reach, Colonial bankruptcy. To the utmost limit of its means, the Colony, North and South, is prepared, and will try to bear, a reasonable burden; but the demand is already too great, and the strain cannot much longer be sustained. If England's sympathies are what they were of old, for her own flesh and blood, she will be not less prompt in affjrding frank assistance, such as she gave to her children in India, and her embassy in Abyssinia. The cost would be small as compared with either of these great enterprises ; but both physically and financially, as regards this Colony, the necessity is scarcely less urgent. In an article which we reprint in pag9 7 of this month's summary, we endeavor modestly, but with not a little indignation, to controvert and repel the unjust attacks made by the JPall Mall Gazette on the Colpny, and our treatment of the natives. "While such mistaken views prevail in England as to the condition of the Colony and Its people, and their dealings with the natives, there can be but small hope of disabusing the public mind by any merely logical process of argument. The bayonet and the rifle bullet are at present the only hope we possess.