Untitled

Wellington Independent, Volume XVIII, Issue 1960, 22 September 1863, Page 3

During the American war the Confederates have fitted out seventeen privateers, thirteen of * which bave heen destroyed. They have cap- . tured 106 Federal merchantmen, and destroyed i tno millions sterling *$orHi of property:

THE PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE NEW ZEALAND QUESTION. (From the Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 18.) In the iue\ itable division of opinion which interest, ignorance, and passion produce on every occasion, there are very opposite views on the merits of the New Zealand war. Some speak of the natives with contempt and detestation ; others regard them as defenders of sacred rights, which we are invading on the assumption of superior power. The truth lies between these extremes ; but those who occupy the middle way commonly pass without much demonstration, and though forming the larger mass are often overpowered hy the voices of the minority. The natives deserve the respect of English- ! men because they have shown characteristics such as v/e admire most in our ancestors, and regard as thebest fruits of patriotism and civilization. They lespect themselves; they love their countiy ; they are fearless iv war; they are apt to imitate aud learn ; they have exhibited iv their intercourse with Europeans much sagacity ; their conduct has often heen chivalrous in a high degree. Anecdotes of this come from all quarteis, and spread over all our records of the people. To theiast hourofpossibleintercourse, and even beyond it, there have been characteristics such as could hardly fail to win on the sympathy audcommiseratio:i of mankind. For example, just on the eve of actual collision, one of the members of the Government visited a distinguished chief with the view of rtconciliatiiig- him to the British authority, aud inducing him to abstract himself from the war. He heard him with great courtesy and replied, in a quiet, unimpassioned but determined manner, that the war was now one of his race ; that the country where the war was waged was tobe the scene of his future career ; that he belonged to Waikato, aud that he would go to Waikato and die. This chief was possessed of property valued at £50,000, aud it will be inevitably forfeited as the result of bis paiticipation with the rebel natives. But who could fail to admire the magnanimity of his resolution, however fatal it may prove to himself and to his race! It would be absurd, however, to represent such a rnaß as a specimen of the whole people. There are various shades from dignity 'and truthfulness down to the lowest sconndrelism and the most brutal ferocity, and we fear that it-is the exhibition of lhe latter whicii will extinguish the sympathy forthe natives, and cause many to reconcile themselves to the war of extermination. On- the other hand, there are those who make it to be a ciime to attempt the subjugation of the natives. It is true that tbey have instituted monarchy, which is entirely new to them ; that they have placed themselves under the government of a king with the one purpose of throwing off the authority of tke British Crown. In their late intercourse with the Europeans, they ! bave committed great outrages, and some ol their last acts were such as no people having ' any respect for their own dignity and rights could possibly submit to— such as expulsion from territories already purchased from them— tbe violent separation of men from tlieir wives and children, and tbe deliberate butchery of some unoffending settlers while employed in their ordinary occupations. For example, a young man not long from home was shot in'his own verandah. An old man and his son were both destroyed by the hatchet of the natives while employed in their field pursuits. These are crimes which cauuot be tolerated, and have flowed from the disorders arising out of an attempt to oppose tiie authority ef the Crown and to exempt the native population from the salutary restraints of equal laws. Fad we any doubt upon this subject we should certainly feel great scrujiies in giving: any warm support to the colonists in their present positiou. Had they brought on the conflict by taking from th* ™ tives their lurnl without purchase, had they refused them the equal protection of British law, or had they imposed upon theni burdens of labour or taxation such as might have anything like the appearance of slavery, if in short anything had been imposed by the English on the natives whicii Government does not regularly require from British subjects, we should have great reluctance, even under the dangers of the colony at the present moment, to sanction the applicaiion fbr assistance; but we are utterly unable to fiud any ground of complaint against the British rule that would be sustainable foi a moment against any civilised government in the world. The question is brought simply to this by the force of that passion for independence whicii has been awakened in the native mmd — either they must yield, or the English must retireeither they must be conquered, or the English must perish. Having come to such a point, we cannot hesitate fur a moment that it is the duty of every Englishman to give his sympathy to his own countrymen, and of every English colony to afford whatever aid may be consistent with Us own safety, to bring this conflict to a sjieedy conclusion. A lingering war could .only exasperate the passions and prevent justice being done at its close. There is one point upon which some scruple may be raised— namely, the foifeiture of the land by the natives; but there are two great considerations. The war, produced by their insurrection, is imposing an enormous charge upon the Biitish Government aud the colony By whom is that cost to be paid ? Are those who have provoked war and made it inevitable, to go scot free, and even to carry off the plunder, as they did from Taranaki, back to the Waikato as the spoils of victory without making any ftstilntion ? There are rights on both sides, and surely those who make resistance necessary, by unjust aggressions, are bound to bear the consequences. It ia clear that, whether in civil or political or international examples, the benevolence which would relieve from the consequences of wrong doing those who have been guilty, only animates then? to new injustice, aud leads them to defy the power which does not strike. There are two forms in whicii people have been punished who have rebelled— one W tlieir • personal subjection, and the other by the confiscation of their property. The fiist is one of the question. No British Government would sanction an absolute confiscation of the native territory. It is vast, and at present for the most part uninhabited. A very small proportion of the entire country is occupied by the natives. There aie great forests within but a few miles of Auckland, whicii are converted into natural fortresses by the natives, and from which they can bally at any moment to threaten and destroy. It is impossible that any Government should permit such a position to ba held by an unreconciled race. It is requisite for its ■ safety— even for the exercise of justice towards the natives— that they should be no longer objects of fear. To rentier them impotent it is necessary to acquire such portion of their territory as shall render their access impossible. The Government will occupy such posts, and drive back the native tribes— not into a desert land, nor into the sea, as they threaten the English people -but into terfilorics equally fertile, but remote from the British towns, and wbeie, if they think proper, they may renew those lessons which for some years seemed to have raised them so high as a people, and to have given them so large an amount of wealth. We understand that there is one native chief whose vicinity to the English has given such , value to Lis J«nd that he derives a revenue of £] 100 per annum. Had not the English, oisome other civilised power, settled in New Zea- i land, he would have been still a savage, with his.blankets and his pigs, dividing his time between « horrid feasts" and interminable war. i

Had almost any other nation, save the English taken possession of New Zealand, they would have made short work of his territorial rights, and the revenue he derives from English improvements would be the property of the Crown or of the settlers. But with such unexampled justice have'the New Zealanders been treated, that they might convert all tho territory they now possess into a fee simple, over which they could exercise all the rights of landowners, did they think proper to do so. But they have chosen, and their choice is fatal. Now the only issue of the war must be a retrograde movement on their part into the more distant portions of the island, and the absorption of so much territory as may indemnify the men on whom they have imposed the cost and labour of sei f-preseiva tion by conquest.