The Westport Times. SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1869.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 534, 24 July 1869, Page 2

The Westport Times. SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1869.

The recent reticence of the Maori King, and his refusal either to receive orvisit Prince Alfred during his stayin the Colony, vere at the time accepted as anything but favorable indications of the alleged pacific spirit of the Waikatoes. Subsequent rumors of a coalition between the King, the mysterious Te Kooti, and Tito Kowaru rather enhanced the fears which close students of Maori movements entertained as to the expansion of their present disposition for war and the extermination of the Pakeha. That events have developed themselves in the direction feared, and that a crisis more imminent than any that has presented itself during this guerilla warfare has at last come, or is on the eve of coming, is apparent from the nature of the intelligence conveyed in the telegrams which we publish to-day. It is a highly significant circumstance that both Houses of the Legislature should simultaneously, and, so far as tve are informed, unanimously resolve to solicit the aid of the General Commanding the Forces in the Colonies. It is equally significant of the extremity that, in the House of Representatives, the resolution should be moved by the leader of the Government, and seconded by the presumed leader of the Opposition. And it is especially significant of the necessity for haste and for secrcsy that both Houses have passed these resolutions without any official utterance as to the precise position of affairs. Among those who, like us, live at a distance from the actual field of warfare, but who have to contribute no small proportion of its cost, there can only be one feelinf—the hope that the fears as to the position of our northern fellow-colonists are ungrounded or exaggerated. Next to that feeling, and in the event of the preparations now made being thoroughly warranted, it can only be a source of satisfaction to find that the past dilletanti dealing with the Native difficulty is to give place to a determination more adapted to the circumstances, and more calculated to culminate in that feeling of desperation which will ultimately and only terminate this sickening war and its countless cost. That General Chute will feel warranted in complying with the appeal made to him is by no means certain, well-advised as he must be of what we were going to say is the English feeling, but what, we hope, is the feeling only of England's Colonial Office. In the event of his compliance, and of the consequent arrival in this Colony of all the troops readily at command, it is sincerely to he hoped that the same division in the councils of our rulers which made the last campaign contemptible will not again occur, and that the new Governor and the old General, supported by the undivided sentiments of the people and their representatives, will, by the one element of unanimity in spirit and design, prove thoroughly equal to the occasion. This is the more needed now, when it is the anomalous policy of England to actively encourage emigration from her whores, and to leave her emigrants, when yet only incipient colonists, to carry on an unequal fight with the natural difficulties of their situation and the unnatural savage.