THE POSITION OF THE COLONY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 188, 18 December 1868, Page 3

THE POSITION OF THE COLONY.

The following is from the New Zealand Advertiser (Government Organ) of Dec. 9 : — In all great crises men unwillingly resign themselves to misfortune without casting about to place upon the shoulders of any but themselves bitter and undeserved reproaches. There is nothing new in this. All public calamities in all civilised countries induce a desire for a victim, and it ia this tendency which usually prevents unanimity of action, and paralyses the arm of authority at a time when all its power is required. Instead of all uniting to put out the fire, men betake themselves to disputing whose negligence caused it. The present calamities of the colony spring directly from a cause for which neither the present nor late Government is responsible. The self-reliant policy was a noble and well-intentioned, perhaps at the moment a necessary expedient to solve the problem of the late war, and to cut the gordian knot of our entanglements with Sir George Grey, General Cameron, and the Imperial Government. The intention was praiseworthy, but, like the three million loan, it was too great a burden on so young a State. Had we obstinately declined in 1863 to take over the responsibility of native affairs till they could be transferred free from the difficulties produced by a long dilettante policy adopted for Imperial experiment ; had we said what we said in 1864, and simply demanded the recall of both Sir George Grey and

General Cameron, on the ground of the impossibility of co-operation between them, it is certain that the Home Government must have charged itself with the task we have rather vain-gloriously undertaken. But the colony, by a vast majority, accepted both the three million loan and the self-re-liant policy. So we have no choice left but to accept the consequences of our own acts. From these two political errors have arisen our misfortunes, for our subsequent failures were their certain consequences — unhappily our successes at first over a dispirited enemy led us still further astray, and it is only now that we understand the magnitude of our undertaking. The confiscation of the West Coast and Opotiki, and especially their occupation by military settlers, were further steps in a wrong direction, but the main error was in under-estimating the force required to hold by the sword so large an area of confiscated land, and overestimating our means to maintain it while we were so heavily taxed already to pay the interest of the three million loan. If we had adopted a less boastful tone in 1863 and 1864, our own words could not now be cast in our teeth as a taunt and an excuse for withholding aid in our time of trouble. But the present Government has little enough to do with these things. Their predecessors sowed the wind, and they are reaping the whirlwind. The late Government was unseated on the defence estimates. The House would not tolerate a force which, if then maintained, might have sufficed, but now is quite inadequate for the protection of life and property, and to secure the peace which the efforts of 12,000 men had scarcely secured. We were, therefore, found unprepared in the commencement of hostilities, and hurried recruiting did not produce the sort of troops who could successfully combat the long-trained Hau-hau bands. While blame may attach to the Government for insufficiently guarding the Chatham Island prisoners though even on this point there is much to be said, and though it is possible that Lieut. Col. M'Donnell imprudently precipitated hostilities at Patea, yet none of these things would have much mattered if we had had a trained force to nip the East and West Coaat outbreaks in the bud. Our reverses have been the consequence of the want of a trained force, and the dimensions which present hostilities have assumed result from the reinforcements which each success has brought to the standards of Kooti and Titokowaru. We find ourselves now engaged in two wars, or rather war in two places — war to the knife. We are unable to advance at Wanganui, because our force is insufficient, and, having been only a few weeks assembled, is insufficiently trained. We have been forced to fight on the East Coast more by the abhorrence which Kooti's massacre has awakened, and by the hope of thereby saving the pastoral districts from the horrora of war, than by any real claim on the colony of the Poverty Bay district. The late Major Biggs, when put in command of that settlement, and empowered to draw out the militia for actual service, was placed in a position to exact the services of every white man settled atTuranga. He had a strong redoubt, a body of unpaid and a body of paid friendly natives, had scouts out to give the alarm, and being forewarned of the possibility of attack, was to some extent forearmed. It ia true that at such times it is difficult to persuade out-settlers to leave their houses, but when it is remembered that all of these were living on Maori land, and in isolated homesteads, miles from one another, it is almost impossible to understand the temerity, almost amounting to fatalism, of their not at least removing their families to the shelter of the redoubt. In almost every settled district where settlers have at least a better right to look for protection, where the land was purchased from the Crown, and settlers have become attached to the homestead they have built, they hare retreated on the centres of population, and the men have taken up arms to protect the women and children. At Poverty Bay, however, where settlers in the proper sense of the term, do not exist, where, if anywhere, the inhabitants should have relied solely on themselves, we

hear most complaint that they were not protected at their scattered homesteads on Maori land, to which they had no legal title. Yet here a considerable force was actually paid, defences erected, and all that remained at the centre of the population were unhurt. At "Wanganui, the settlers, haying so largo a protecting force, cannot be persuaded to turn out as militia to fight for their own properties, and are now invoking denunciations on the head of the Q-overnment because 200 out of 450 constabulary have been temporarily removed to endeavour to put a speedy end to the war on the East Coast, in order that a crushing force may then be available for operations against Titokowaru. In Hawke's Bay, the militia and volunteers are serving without pay, and even finding men for Wanganui and Poverty Bay ; and in "Wairarapa the same course is followed. It is evident that where there is least right to expect aid it is most demanded, and if Government attempt to afford it everywhere, they will be strong enough nowhere to put down this insurrection. We, therefore, applaud the determination of Mr Stafford to act without regard to local appeals for the general good with the inadequate means at his disposal.