NEW ZEALAND TO THE SECRETARY OE STATE.

A— Kft. 1

5

Troops, although the Lowlanders were infinitely more numerous in comparison to the Celts than the British Colonists in New Zealand are in comparison to the Maoris; and though the Lowlanders were animated against their assailants by the animosities which spring from differences of race, language, and religion. In short, it is not to be denied that if the small British garrisons which now hold some of the towns, and thus leave the Colonial Eorces free to cope with the insurgent Natives in the open field, are withdrawn, the main hope, under Providence, of the Colonists in the North Island must lie in the hereditary feuds which have hitherto prevented the Maoris, like other races living under the tribal system, from acting together against the authority of the Queen. If the entire Maori people were to unite against us now, we could probably hold only the towns of Auckland and Wellington. So, British authority would have been practically annihilated if the British Troops had been removed from Scotland during the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, and if the Hanoverian had joined the Jacobite clans. So, too, the English would have been driven out of all India (except, perhaps, the Presidency cities,) in 1857, if the European army had been withdrawn, and if the Sikhs, together with the Nizam and the other loyal native princes, had joined the Sepoy mutineers. The Bishop of Lichfield (Dr. Selwyn) has remarked on more than one public occasion that there is, in the present condition, of this Colony, nothing which is new to the student of the history of other countries where formidable aborigines had recently been brought into contract with alien invaders or settlers. The social state of the Maori districts of New Zealand at the present day is analogous to that of the Celtic districts of Ireland down to the reign of George 1., and of the Celtic districts of Scotland down to the reign of George 111. In fact, it has often been observed with truth that those who wish to understand the present condition of the Maoris, should read with care the description of the Scotch Highlanders at the end of the 17th century, as contained in the 13th chapter of Lord Macaulay's "History of England."* In my Despatch No. 116, by this mail, I attempted a description of my visit to the Maori camp near Wanganui on the 17th ultimo, but I should have drawn a much fuller and more vivid picture of what I saw there, and especially of the meeting between Colonel Whitmore and the Maori chiefs, if I had simply quoted the following passage describing the Highlanders under Dundee : —" All that was left to the Commander under whom these " potentates (the Highland chiefs) condescended to serve, was to argue with them, to " supplicate them, to flatter them, to bribe them; and it was only during a short " time that any human skill could preserve harmony by these means, for every chief " thought himself entitled to peculiar observance, and it w ras therefore impossible to " pay marked court to any one without disobliging the rest. The General found •' himself merely the president of a congress of petty kings. He was perpetually " called upon to hear and to compose disputes about pedigrees, about precedence, " about the division of spoil. His decision, be it what it might, must offend some- " body. At any moment he might hear that his right wing had fired on his centre " in pursuance of some quarrel two hundred years old ; or that a whole battalion " had marched back to its native glen because another battalion had been put in " the post of honor. A Highland bard might easily have found, in the history of " the year 1669, subjects very similar to those with which the war of Troy furnished " the great poets of antiquity. One day Achilles is sullen, keeps his tent, and " announces his intention to depart with all his men. The next day Ajax is storm- " ing about the camp, and threatening to cut the throat of Ulysses." 15. It was remarked above that, in the same sense in which the annexa-: tion of the entire territories of the King of Oude was one of the causes which led to the Indian rebellion of 1857, so the confiscation of a small portion of the land of the rebel Maoris may have been one of the causes of the continuance of the Maori war, which has now raged in New Zealand, with little intermission, since 1860. The map which I transmitted with my Despatch No. 22, of 17th March ultimo, will show that the confiscated land embraces but a small part of the surface of the North Island. Much of it, moreover, has been already restored. It appears to be admitted on all sides that forfeiture of land was a just punishment for rebellion, accompanied with cruel murders and 2

Paragraph 7.