The Battle of Mercer.

Observer, Volume XIV, Issue 794, 17 March 1894, Page 2

The Battle of Mercer.

Everybody laughed heartily when Gilbert's ' Pirates of Penzanoe ' was produced, at the delightfully quaint idea of sending a posse of policemen to arrest a band of pirates. And everybody said: 'Perfectly impossible, of coarse, bat how deliriously absurd and how very Gilbertian. 1 But fact is proverbially stranger than fiction. Probably Gilbert himself never conceived the idea of making a posse of policemen arrest a lot of half-civilized savages, the descendants of the men whom Sydney Smith bid his friend Bishop Selwyn beware of when the Bishop was leaving for Maoriland, while he added : ' Good-bye, my dear Selwyn. Take my advice, always keep a cold boy and a smoked clergyman on your side-board, and if the Maoris sluiuld eat — I sincerely trust you may disagree with them.'

Yes, it would be pretty hard to conoeive a more prosaic termination to the latest native 'rising 1 than what has jnst taken place on the western bank of the Waikato river. Even the daring deeds of that idol of our boyhood, the dauntless Robin Hood, and his merry men, would look email and shabby if we read in the newspapers of Robin's capture by modern policemen. How would it read ? — ' Arrest of Robin Hood and Little John. Sherwoed Forest, thig day, by telegraph, from our own correspondent.' What a subject for a great historical painting does ' the battle of Mercer ' auggest ! ' The green hills in the background' (vide Star war correspondent, who has an eagle eye for the picturesque and a charming literary style !) • the placid surface of the broad Waikato and the peculiar assemblage of Maoris on the low bank of the river, close beside which a large war- canoe was lying moored to the shore.'

And there are the Maoris to the number of a hundred (including iv»Jiine# and piccaninnies) squatted about the athletic Kerei who ia earnestly counselling submission to the pakeha, no resistance, and ' the return of good for evil.'. And then we have Inspector Hiokson at the head of his file of policemen stealing on the foe, the Inspector's address to his men, the parley, the arreßt of Kerei, the charge of the tvaltines, the biting and scratching, and kicking and scolding, the arreßt of nineteen natives mostly ladieß) and their romoval to Mount Eden Gaol. But was it really absolutely necessary this arrest ? A very much more formidable 'rising' than this was crushed flatter than a pancake years ago at Parihaka. The ringleaders, Te Whiti and Tohu, were arrested. The other Maoris (there were a good many of them, too) were simply warned to dißperse, and they dispersed accordingly. Eerei made not the slightest resistance when arrested and he earnestly counselled his followers not to resist. Surely it was at least unnecessary that the nineteen prisoners arrested should be removed to Auckland? Most of these women had their babi6B with them. And they had to remain in Mount Eden Gaol, be it remembered, from Friday until Monday.

Is there no look-up at Meroer? The offence with which these women were charged was not a very heinous one, after all. They stood up for their lords and masters, which, when all is said and done, was not a very unnatural proceeding on their part. They have not been dealt with at the time of writing, but it is hardly probable, I take it, that they will get more than a few days' imprisonment. And are there no justices — no jay-pays — before whom these amazons could have been brought (and been promptly dealt with) without their appearing before Inspector Hickson, who is a magistrate ** officio, of course, but who had only juss oaused and taken part in their arrest? If there are no jay-pays in Meroer, Pukekohe is not far off, and there, as is well-known, every other man writes * J.P. after his name.