POVERTY BAY MASSACRE.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3115, 4 February 1871, Page 2

POVERTY BAY MASSACRE.

» TO THB BDITOB OF THE INDEPENDENT. Sik, — When Mr Hart referred the other evening to the " emergency meeting" of Justices of the Peace ai?d others, which took place immediately after the news of the Poverty Bay massacre had arrived, he omitted to mention one fact regarding Mr J. 0. Richmond which ought to moderate the admiration which a certain portion of the electors seem to entertain for hit) character and conduct as a public man. On that occasion Mr Richmond warmly urged the necessity there was for sending the whole of the Wellington militia to garrison the redoubts on the West Coast. They wtre not to fight, aB he explained, but to hold the outposts. That is to say, Mr Richmond who was strongly backed up by Mr John Hall, was quite prepared to send a body of half-trained and wholly unwilling men into the field on the mere chance of their not being actually brought under fire. This monstrous act of folly and cruelty would have been perpetrated by Mr Richmond if he had had the power. As it was, the tone of the meeting showed him that it would be useless to make the attempt, but I ask the eleotors of Wellington how they can feel any confidence in, the judgment of a man who would have sent them out like a flock of sheep to be slaughtered by Titokowaru and his cannibal followers P Of course Mr Richmond thought only of victory! of heroic courage ! ! of patriotic feeling ! ! ! The Wellington Militia was to emulate the deeds of those Romans of the Republic whose hands were equally hardened with the plough, and the sword. I give Mr Riobmond every credit for good intentions and fornobleness'of purpose, butl say, this one incident in his career is enough to stamp him as a dangerous man for any North Island constituency to elect. It is not enough that a man should be honest and able — and I believe Mr Richmond to be both — but he should have tbatcalm practical common sense quite consistent even with genius — as instance such men as Bacon, Cromwell, and Goethe — which enables a man to ccc things by the " drylighb" of reason, and not through the mist of Bentiment, before he is entrusted with the interests in which one false step is fatal. It would have been email consolation to the working men of Wellington had Mr Richmond had his own way, to know that in his eyes there was something heroic in going to war without counting the cost, and that the determination to do or die ought to take the place of drill, though it didn't. It is the same excess of fancy and feeling turned in another direction which now causes Mr Richmond to pander to the prejudices of those very working men against the propertied clues generally, whose very lives he was at one time ready to sacrifice chiefly for its protection. — I am, &c, One who Attended the Meeting. Wellington, 3rd Feb.