The Taranaki Herald.

Taranaki Herald, Volume IX, Issue 444, 2 February 1861, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald.

NEW PLYMOUTH, FEBRUARY 2, 1861.

It is obviously our interest, as well as our pride, to give the most accurate account possible of every important incident of the I war, and we court criticism and open our columns to every one who can give us information, but when all is done and said, it will be impossible that our accounts should be consistent in every point, and give satisfaction at the same time to all the actors. A correspondent of the News (M.M.) taxes us with stupidity and un • fairness, because in a leader last week it was stated that the garrison of No. 3 Redoubt sallied to attack the enemy in the trenches. As to want of sense, it may be observed, that because great pluck is implied in such an action it is not on that account improbable to those who remember the charge of the 800 at Balaclava. And as to the fact, we have, on the one hand, the assertion that men of the 40th Regt. were the first in the trench, and, on the other, " M.M.'s" statement that no men of the 40th were there at all. Here is a great perplexity to one who wishes to believe all things. On the whole, it seems probable that both regiments got as fast and as far into the thick of the fight as they could contrive to do ; and in the noise, smoke, and doubtful light, it is easy to understand that different men should get different impressions, without any imputation on either one or another. If the members of the different corps would be content without comparisons, there is ample credit in the action to satisfy all. In another column will be found a letter from a " Practical Artilleryman," who thinks his corps should have been named. Here was, no doubt, an oversight ; but, on the other hand, the importance of the hazardous service of throwing live shell over the bank was not overlooked, and this, every one knows, is the work of the artillery. It could answer no good end to publish statements by men of one corps depreciating those of another ; but informatioa of a positive kind on matter of fact, and by eye-witnesses, we gladly and gratefully accept. But we do not hold ourselves responsible for everything that appears in our correspondence columns. The name " Fourth Estate" which has in this century been applied to the Press to indicate its vast political power is one which, in a young Colony, has less appro • priateness than in an old and populous community. We generally think of it as referring to the newspaper or periodical press, whose functions are, in an especial degree, political. In looking at the action of this great machine in a country like Britain, a thoughtful person must at times shrink in dread lest this great metallic power, this brazen serpent, should swallow up its neighbour powers of more living texture. No one can escape an influence which besets us like the air. The power is not essentially one to be dreaded, but the frame in which it acts, and the habits of those who direct it, all of us have some hand in determining, and these need jealous watching. In New Zealand newspaper writers, as such, are for the present comparatively a harmless race. The " We" of the press is personally known to his readers ; he may dance his pert dance, unrol his budget of assertions, round off his sentences, with just so much of good or mischief as properly belongs to his and their weight in society. None of our journals are yet of that ripe age or that marked special success which carries much prestige. At home it is otherwise. The larger journals have a sort of personality and reputation irrespective of their changing contributors. The centre to which flow daily correspondence from every land, details of the course of every trade, the earliest intelligence of every event, physical or political — we are apt to fancy cannot distil less than the serenest wisdom. The sheet which weekly embalms four-and-twenty essays on politics, literature, science, and art, drawing their illustrations from every province of human knowledge, — on one page extending a jocular patronage to Lord Palmerston, on another grave counsel to Italian patriots 'end people, on a third encouragement to Faraday, correction to Tennyson, or rebuke to the Preßaphaelite painters, — which contains knowledge of every land, from the sources of the White Nile to Kamschatka, of every people, from New Zealand to the Esquimaux, — snch a sheet snatches from- the dazzled reader his ready and humble deference. The writers for each paper acquire a sort of corporate

style, so that one may often recognize by the manner of an article the sheet on which it is printed ; and we forget that, after all, the twenty-four essays are but an aggregation ; that not one of them is really wiser than the writer who penned it — none of them derives any wisdom from its three-and-twenty neighbours of the week. And thus the authority of the anonymous writer in an important paper is exaggerated beyond what belongs to his arguments or his character. The men themselves who supply " copy" for these monsters fall often into the snare ; the writer feels the importance of his journal and swells, and thus fortified, he naturally acquires those three gifts which are as valuable to his craft as to the orator — boldness, boldness, boldness. But however dazzled we may feel at the extent of resource and the unhesitating manner of the skilful writer, it occasionally happens to most of us to be able to apply a test, and hold an independent opinion of some view or statement put forward under these high auspices ; and it is a healthy practice when opportunity occurs to get rid of the glare of authority for a time, and let every kettle stand on its own bottom. Such an opportunity occurs in the comments of the English press on the War Question. The two leading papers of their classes — the Times and Saturday Review^ on the arrival of every mail take the subject in hand, and the differences of handling in these two journals are exactly in point to the above remarks. The Saturday Review in its earliest days took in its vigorous hand the correction of the older Times on this very matter. Number after number of the clever weekly brought its periodical punishment to the arrogant excesses of the daily sheet, and the words of the young hopeful, which seem to have effected great reform in its grandmother, would serve us now for its own instruction, if we had them at hand. The article of Nov. 3rd, 1860, "The Casus Belli in New Zealand," is evidently intended to convince, for it opens with an appeal to the pockets of John Bull. A New Zealand war is "an extra twopence income-tax." The writer then proceeds to describe the quietest of quiet populations, the first and only Conservative Colony that England evgfPJanted. as Mffl.wtpwately calling" Jl 'i'o'r'more troops and fiercer measures." It would puzzle the writer to show (except in the case of one, the lowest of the New Zealand press, now defunct) anything that could be called passion or. fierceness in favor of the war, either in the newspapers, the Parliamentary debates, or in any document under any public sanction ; yet the assertion goes out with some effect, no doubt. " The cause in dispute is itself very complicated" says the writer, but he proceeds wonderfully to simplify it by begging the whole question in the next line, where he represents the people of New Plymouth as casting the eye of desire on land belonging to Maori proprietors who did not choose to sell it. Away flies the assertion over the globe, with the weight of the Saturday Review to back it. Then we have some balancing of statements about interpretation of Maori words, and the balancing of Wi Kingi's legal claims, mana, &c. Here even the insight of a Saturday Reviewer is hardly felt to justify a decision at the antipodes on questions so delicate ; so the writer informs us the matter was too thorny to warrant the application of the summum jus — the outraging of a friendly chief! "The jurisprudence of Brennus," says the writer, " the simple arbitrement of the sword, was held sufficient j for one of the Queen's subjects of Maori blood." Never, surely, was the alliance of ignorance and audacity more astonishing than in this misconception of the issue, and of the relations between the Maori and the Governor. But the Saturday Review has said it, and it is a first-class paper ! Possibly Teira was right — this writer admits as much by declining to decide ; was he to have no remedy, then ? The Court for adjusting this question was, good or bad, the only one ; and if King refused to enter it, — refused to enter on the question with the Commissioner or the Governor, judgment necessarily went against him, and probably it was not inconsistent with British precedent to use force, if necessary, to carry out the judgment. But the repudiation of the Courts and of the Governor's authority, if but a trifle, showed the set of the current, and this brings us to the bottom of the matter, which the Times has got at, but the Saturday Reviewer, in his piofundity, fails to fathom. The question is one, not of justice, but of policy. To mistake here, is to pre-

judice the decision by importing a sort of heat which moral qnestions arouse more readily than those of policy. On grounds of natural equity, if those were insisted on, twenty years occupancy and cultivation of a part of the county, and the necessities of of a growing population, give the colonist a better title than the Maori has independent of any treaty right. To the latter race the land is only needed as a guarantee of that rude independence which for several years menaced, and now assails the Colony. The Waitangi treaty of cession has been torn to shreds again and again by the Maori. The possession of Waitara and the district, on communistic principles, has never been admitted as a right in the tribes who occupy it, and who, twenty years ago, returned by favor of the European presence, and repaid the benefit by expelling the settlers from their farms. Equitably the claims of the colonists far surpass that of the Maori ; but far more than equity is conceded to the latter ; everything, in fact, consistent with the presence and healthy growth of the Colony is conceded. But, at the outbreak of these troubles, the Colony was impeded by an attempt without law, treaty, or equity, to establish the communistic principle in land holding, and to carry it out by land leagues, inconsistent with the life of the Colony, but in the interest of Maori independence. Kingi's attitude, though selfish, was in other respects the same as the Kingmakers of Waikato. It wanted their patriotism, but was as hostile to British rule. Waikato felt this. Was the moment ripe for bringing the matter to an issue ? We say " yes." The Times in a broad clear article avoiding the bewildering web of details, says " yes." The British Government says " yes." But the Saturday Reviewer, bold enough in statement, has quite failed to imagine and comprehend the juncture, and he merely echoes Archdeacon Hadfield, adding a base and ignorant'charge of " nigger despising " against the Governor. The question has passed out of the hands of Saturday and other Reviewers, but the style in which a leading liberal paper treats a Governor and a Colony of Englishmen at the antipodes, is a wholesome lesson to us not to be beguiled by brilliancy, or by a large name. * "We cannot help noticing the lukewarmnesi evinced by thpTaranaTcj Militia and Volunteers, on *m'eWe^Bnhe"ba!ne of Matarikoriko, by not above half their number mustering on that (what one would have thought) most momentous occasion ; which so enraged Col. Carey as to make him order them all to be off about their own business, and immediately supplied their place by a detachment of the 1 2th regt. It is thus evident that the settlers themselves are getting heartily sick of the war, and would be but too glad to get out of it." The above choice composition appears in large type in the New Zealand Spectator of Jan. 16. We do not reprint it for the purpose of rebutting any of its statements ; nor to defend the recusant militiamen and volunteers, who must be content to reap as they have sown ; nor to take up the cudgels for Colonel Carey, who is quite eqfial to defending his calumniated temper against the Spectator. It is evident some of the militia and volunteers did not care to go out on " that, what one would have thought, momentous occasion" of Matarikoriko ; this admits of no denial. Perhaps they were overburdened with laurels ; Waireka and Mahoetahi on the- one side, and on the obverse Ratapihipihi and the Huirangi Anabasis, make up a pretty medal for an irregular force ; and some of its members preferred, for a change, the olive, or perhaps the ivy wreath. But this elegant writer is slow of perception. Our sickness at the war began, not at Matarikoriko, but six months earlier. We wish, however, to guard this accomplished person against plunging into the opposite error of over haste. It must not be imagined there is any sickness here which could be healed, under the system of those patriotic gentlemen who inspire, or perhaps are, the Cook's Strait Guardian. A treaty of Waikanae, securing us the full privileges of naturalization as subjects of King Potatau the Second will not bring about the cure* The complaint will disappear rapidly, in proportion as Colonel Carey's wrath is directed exclusively against the enemy, so as to supply their place by detachments from any or all the gallant regiments now in the field among us. No one, as yet, wishes to be under the colors of the Yen. Archdeacon Hadfield. The process of military seton by which the disease of New Zealand is being drawn to a head, and made to exhibit itself topically in Taranaki, is not a refreshing process in that favored spot. But we are not so absolutely foolish as to cry off from the remedy, because the disease shows more virulent and universal than some people had fancied.

We. are tired of the -war, but have not forgotten the state of sufferance we were living in before it; and the Taranaki settlers know that the day of trouble and violence must-sooner or later have come, and must be patiently borne to its close. The civilians have since Matarkoriko turned out on several occasions with perfect good will. The livelier motions of a guerilla warfare suit them better than the more regular duties of waiting on a " sap."