The Taranaki Herald. NEW PLYMOUTH, NOVEMBER 24, 1860.

Taranaki Herald, Volume IX, Issue 434, 24 November 1860, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald. NEW PLYMOUTH, NOVEMBER 24, 1860.

The Wellington Spectator of the 14th inst. contains a reprint of a letter from Archdeacon Hadfield to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on the subject of thcTaranaki War. The title of the pamphlet, " One of England's little wars," betrays the narrowness, and every line of it exhibits the spleen and recklessness of a writer who is doing whatever one man can do, to bring into disrespect that Church whose firm hold upon the affections of the people springs from the breadth, the catholicity, and the moderation which has at all times distinguished its leaders.

If the greatness of a war is to be determined by the numbers engaged or the length of the list of the killed, then the less, the better ; i and we must thank God ours is at largest likely to be a " little war." But the thoughtful reader of history does not so estimate its events. It is a wretched vulgarism to attempt applying the rules of arithmetic to measure the importance of human affairs. The moral and intellectual world will have its own standard ; and, judged by these, it is open to question whether the war which a few years back strained the poweis of five great nations in the Crimea and Baltic was essentially larger than that which smoulders around us. The true greatness of a struggle depends on the character of the ideas and interests at stake, and the spirit in which it is waged — not on the number of the bayonets it employs or the corpses which it makes.

If Archdeacon Hadfield really thinks that " the question is simply this — Is a native chief to be forcibly ejected from his land because an individual member of his tribe tells a subordinate land agent that it is his, and not the chiefs, and that agent believes him ?" — if that be a true account of his opinion, — contempt for the part of the Government in the present war is a proper result for him to arrive at ; but the public will arrive at the result that he is shamefully ignorant of the facts lie pretends to describe, and wickedly rash in his statements. It is, however, transparent through every word this arrogant person has spoken or written, that what he calls opinions, are the passionate feelings of a man who combines womanly weakness with priestly pre-

sumption. Such is the temper of the man that he probably cannot see what the Colony sees, and what the Government and many others saw long ago — that from causes for which the present Governor is but little responsible, and the Colony at large not at all to blame, a large part of the Maori population, including the majority of the active spirits, was alienated from the British Government, quite irreclaimably, except by the Colony passing through a crisis. It was a question whether the British Colony should continue to exist in this Northern Island ; and, conjointly with this, whether the Maori race should bo suffered to drop off like rotten sheep, or rescued.by the help of law an d order. A long series of events, into which we will not now enter, had paralysed what little strength our Government ever possessed for the control and civil Government of the natives. It was impossible to hesitate befoie a catastrophe such as threatened the two races here. W. King's insolent repudiation of the Governor's claim to -adjudicate on his pretensions to the patch of land at Waitara was a straw, indeed. But it was from straws like this that a consuming conflagration was about to arise. A race utterly disorganised, with all its old authoiilies decayed, yet full of the high spirit which, properly subordinate, helps to make a noble nation, was in contact with a highly-organised, orderlj, and progressive people, which was pressing on the former at every point with daily increasing pressure. Such elements required a power to control them. Power outside them was absolutely essential for the best interests of the Maori race.

Only the blindness of passion could allow a man of Archdeacon Hadfield's education to fancy and assert, that W. King asked to have his case " decided in some competent court, on evidence given upon oath." He did not ask for any arbitrator. Independence — freedom from all control was his desire. Far better terms were open to him ; far more liberal equity has been always accorded to the whole race, than any court affords. But he desired that thing which all men naturally love beyond all justice — the liberty to use his own selfwill.

In this he struck the " dominant" of Maori feeling. A host of strings vibrated to the sound. The sympathetic notes, even before that moment, were not sleeping ; they weie already murmuring to every bieath. " How shall we raise the Maori people ?" asked some leading men of Waikato, of a clever and unprincipled European adviser. " Your path is between my thighs" was the pieguant answer : one well understood by his heavers. It justified and confirmed the jealousy of our growing power, and hastened, if it did not originate, the Land Leagues and the King-movement. " We will not be a race of subjects, — of slaves ; we will have our own laws, our own rulers, and our own territories. We will be one people ; you shall be another." They desired not a hostile, but an independent organisation. What a flimsy barrier separated independence from hostility we could tell them. The hopeless impossibility of the scheme was evident enough for us. who have history to tell us how vast a toil it is to build up a nation. The issue could not have been other than bloodshed and disaster, and we cannot be too warmly thankful for the wise decision of His Excellency and his Advisers, which did not wait " the ripening of the melon" — " the launching of the canoe."

The war, then, is not in any opprobrious sense a little one, as to its motive. It is not about a plot of ground

" That is not tomb enough in continent

To hide the slain." It is a forlorn hope to rescue the Maori from himself ; and a going out to meet and avert a more wholesale calamity, which menaced the European Colony.

Then as to the spirit in which the contest is carried on, we have some reason for congratulation. It generally happens that something like an equality exists in the amount of self-restraint on one side and the other. But such is not our case. It seems as if the Colony felt fully what is due to oi>r position as a civilised people, and that barbarism is not to be met by barbarity. The Executive and the Legislature vie in their efforts to meet and forestall the reasonable desires of the Maori. The general intercourse with the race is maintained in a forbearing spirit, and in the very heat of assault and rout, to the honor of our soldiers and settlers, the prostrate rebel who submits, has quarter, and that care for his wounded body which he would miss among his own comrades. May

such a spirit of self-respect and moderation grow among us. There is every ground to hope it will. We see with pleasure the pen of a satirical contemporary directed obscurely, but unmistakeably, against the exhibition of savagery which disgraced certain individuals, when on a recent occasion the dead and wounded Waikatos were brought into town. If continued and consummated in the spirit in which it has been so far carried on, the war may be " little " in extent, but will not be contemptible. Blunder and disappointment marked its opening ; and even now, under an improved command, much remains to be learned. But history will record the moderation and candour of our government, the courage and humanity of our fighting men, and the righteousness of our aims : and will declare that this war was no " everlasting disgrace " but an honor to the British name ; when the intemperate ravings of one or two passionate missionaries and the hypocritical chorus of political partizans that echoes them, will have met the deserved fate of all unrealities and passed to oblivion.

We had no intention of re-opening this general question which, among us here, has pretty well found it bearings. The iteration of those politicians who make the " unholy war " one of their battle cries, for the present, has betrayed us into telling again this ten times told tale. Our object was to point attention to the utter insincerity and profligacy of those, who, now that there is but one conclusion to our troubles possible, continue (as the newspaper we have quoted) to vent and retail statements which, if true, could but do mischief by feeding the illusion that the rebels have a large party of thoroughgoing sympathisers among ourselves — and statements which, in the case before us, are false in the main ; when true, are only a part of the truth, or truth mixed with falsehood : and which, as their author in his evidence before the liouse of Representatives assures us, were most of them founded on secondary information, and ought not therefore, in common honesty, to have had the sanction of his authority.