1868? - Hursthouse, C. 'New Zealand Wars': a Letter to the Times - 'New Zealand Wars' p 1-22

[Image of page 1]

"NEW ZEALAND WARS."

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

SIR,

In our last New Zealand War, divers young Officers, bored by dullness of Bush Camp and absence of Loot, pining for Piccadilly and flesh pots even of the "Rag and Famish," avenged the cruel fate, casting them in such a Colony, by showing up its many iniquities and pretty generally damning everything therein.--Colonists, remembering the blundering pluck of these fledgling warriors, and the work which, though not allowed to do, they came to do, regarded such effusions far more in sorrow, than in anger, and were content to retort that if the Royal Army in New Zealand was slow at "fighting," it was, at least, alert at "writing."

But, in a late Times, there appears a letter from Colonel Gawler, wherein, free from the fetters of diffidence, he in substance, boldly asserts that the Almighty is so angered

[Image of page 2]

by the exceeding Wickedness of the New Zealand Colonists, in the matter of New Zealand Wars, that he does not bless their efforts to end them. But the "facts" of the good Colonel's letter only match its theology; for while he asserts that all New Zealand Wars have been caused by "Land," it is notorious that, in two of the three, Land has been no more the cause than Tenterden Steeple that of Goodwin Sands:-- "Heke's" springing from that worthy convert's disgust at Queen's Customs driving from the Bay of Islands the lawless Whalers and Traders who were such free consumers of his Pigs, Peaches, and Slave Girls--and the "Wanganui," from the accidental wounding of a Maori by a Middy.

The truth is, Sir, though critics of the Colonel's calibre may fail or refuse to see it, that in the matter of New Zealand Wars, our luckless Colonists have been infinitely more sinned against than sinning. Indeed, as Revolutions are not made with rose-water, so the treatment which young New Zealand has experienced from successive British Governments, (ripening the Maori into the rebellious Savage, and then forcing on her, alone and unaided, the work of "subduing" him) is not to be mincingly described, as mistaken or unjust, but as nationally disgraceful--as one which none of the Six Australasian Colonies will quickly forget. And if Mr. Gladstone's Ministry has due regard for national honour and justice it will speedily elect to do one of two things--either at once, succour New Zealand--or, freeing her from what have been made her paralysing shackles of Colonial Dependence, suffer her to seek independent Federation with Australia, or aid in certain other quarters which might be glad to give it, and which might suit her best-

[Image of page 3]

But Colonel Gawler is not alone in his denunciations of colonial wickedness--he has fit coadjutors in Missionaries of the Rev. Taylor's stamp, who, disgusted at the apostacy of "blanket-and-tobacco" created converts, and unable to punish them, seize unfortunate Colonists as vicarious whipping posts, and protest that it is the "model" which they exhibit to the Maori, not the Maori's own inherent savagery, which makes Christ's Truths "foolishness" to him; and incites him to the triumphant perpetration of such atrocities as the murder of the Rev. Mr. Volkner, the massacre of babes and women, the hideous mutilation, and the roasting, alive, of Prisoners of War. But the sufficient answer to the Rev. Taylor and his brother Bigots is this,--that a hundred years ago, and before the Maori had ever seen a Colonist, he was the like wily brutal Savage which, in grain, as a race, he is now. Those "characteristics" of craft, treachery, turbulence, weasel-like lust of blood, which, vented in ferocious internicine feuds and massacres, it is believed, reduced his numbers nearly one-half in the 70 years elapsing between Cook's visits and the commencement of Colonization, are, however hidden by lacquer of civilization, his "characteristics," still--and while History will record no instance, in ancient or modern times, of any Savage race being so tenderly dealt with as the Maori has been by British Colonization, it will also record that down, at least, to anno domini 1869, such tenderness towards him was as the rolling of the Sisyphus stone, all in vain.

For nearly a quarter of a century, our Colonial Office, (inspired by Utopian Philanthropists of the Buxton type, deluded by true Aborigenes "Destruction" Societies and Exeter Hall) jealously excluded Colonists from all share or

[Image of page 4]

part in the management of the Maori; and sought to tame and save him by a Policy, not inaptly, stigmatized as that of "Tracts and Treacle"--a Policy under which it is notorious that during the sway of New Zealand's two first Governors (Hobson and Fitzroy) and their chief Vizier, a Missionary Gunsmith, the Colonists were treated as the inferior race and the Savage, for the most part, suffered to do just as he pleased. Under this policy, the Maori presenting himself before Governor Fitzroy red-handed from the "Massacre of Wairau," was mildly admonished not so to stain himself again, whereupon, he called His Excellency a Paukena, a soft Pumpkin, whom he could eat. Under this policy, furious at the Crown's award that he had fairly sold Taranaki, and then, as now, having millions of acres of fertile wild land of which, dog in the manger, he made no use, he vowed to sack the Settlement, when most of Taranaki was instantly given him back. Under this policy, objecting to Custom Houses, Custom Houses were instantly swept away, and the whole fiscal system of the colony altered to his whim--while, the many minor cases, where, under this policy, he was suffered to spit on the Crown's paper laws might almost be counted by scores.

At last, the Colonial Office, having, as we have seen, had the sole exclusive management of this Pet of Exeter Hall for nearly five and twenty years, finding him wax more and more costly turbulent and unruly; seeing, indeed, that, in this Christian Convert of theirs, Missionary Councillors had foisted on it a very Wolf, with but little even of the Sheep's clothing, began, not unnaturally, to wish to get rid of him; and, as a first step thereto, arranged, that in all further dealings with him, its own Officer and Agent, the Crown

[Image of page 5]

Governor of the Colony, should seek aid and council from the Executive Ministry of the Colony's Legislature--and it was under such "new arrangement" that the notorious "WAITERA PURCHASE" was subsequently made.

Now, Sir, even the most rabid of Philo-Maories, admit that, up to this transaction, the Waitangi Treaty, by which the Natives made over the Sovereignty of the Islands to the Queen had, in the matter of LAND, been faithfully observed by the Queen--and assert that the first overt violation of the Waitangi Treaty was this "Purchase of Waitera"--and that, from it, have successively sprung all those Maori Wars and Troubles which have since desolated the Colony. I, with most others, hold that, for the honour and interests both of Crown and Colony, it was right to make and defend the Waitera Purchase. But, right or wrong, it was the deliberate JOINT act and deed of Crown and Colony--and, hence, in national honour and equity, it necessarily follows that its "consequences and results" must be borne and provided for by the one contracting party as well as by the other; and that the Crown has no shadow of claim or excuse for backing out of such consequences and results, on the plea of non-participation in, or non-responsibility for, the Act and Deed which produced them.

But it may be said that however much and justly Colonists were aggrieved by having the sole management of the spoiled and pampered Savage transferred to and thrust on them, as was finally done by the Colonial Office of the Duke of Newcastle, yet that in 1863 they fully accepted the charge by suffering Mr. Weld's Ministry to proclaim for them that New Zealand adopted the "Self-Reliant" Policy.

[Image of page 6]

This, however, would be quite untrue. When the imperial Troops had done just enough to make the Savage a still fiercer Rebel; when all close observers saw the struggle was not half over, the Colonial Office, in pursuance of its long cherished design of quietly getting altogether rid of the Maori with his Whims and Wars, insisted on withdrawing the Troops unless the young Colony paid for them. But, with a grievous Debt already contracted in aid of attempted suppression of bloody Rebellion--with dwarfed resources caused by Rebellion's stopping Immigration and driving away capital and labour, the young Colony could not pay for Troops--and, as Rebellion had been brought on her far more by the Crown's acts and laches than by her own, it would have been monstrously unjust for her to have borne the entire cost of suppressing it even if her infant exchequer would have enabled her to have done so. But, here, unfortunately, Mr. Weld committed a disastrous political blunder. Instead of officially denouncing this cruel scheme of the Colonial Office; instead of refusing to stain his hands by, in any way, promoting it; instead of daring Downing Street to take the responsibility of withdrawing the Troops in the midst of a crisis it, mainly, had brought on, Mr. Weld, piqued at the miserable slanders published against the Colony at home; disgusted at the squabbles and quarrels between Governor Grey and General Cameron, ever paralysing the action of the imperial Troops, impulsively, pettishly, declared that New Zealand would adopt Self-Reliance, dispense with the Redcoat, and, thenceforth, against the Maori, defend herself. Had he, happily, defied the Colonial Office, told it, in plainest words, that its own imbecile handling of the Maori had

[Image of page 7]

done the most to pamper and inflate the Maori into the Rebel--and backed such defiance by a public petition to the Queen, signed as it would have been by 99 in 100 of the Northern Colonists, praying her not to abandon the young Colony in its peril--and thus forced the responsibility of withdrawing the Troops wholly on the Colonial Office, it is more than probable that this Institution would not have dared to take such responsibility, through the well founded fear that its possible results might prove such as to bring down on the Colonial Office the pretty general contempt and indignation of an aroused British public. But, unfortunately, the Weld Ministry had not the acumen to see the good policy of such course, or the boldness to adopt it; and the instant they took to "tall talking" about Self-Reliance they gave the Colonial Office an advantage over them which it used in such a way as to make it appear to the world that imperial troops were withdrawn from New Zealand not against, but with, her will and consent. By some few, indeed, Mr. Weld's "Self-Reliance" was hailed as grand and even "chivalrous"--and, inasmuch as it was undoubtedly Quixotic, it might possess a dash of the chivalrous. Yet, when we remember that any collapse of the Self-Reliant Bladder could not have brought war, massacre, and ruin on Mr. Weld and his safe South Island friends and constituents, but solely on the poor Northern Settlers, we are aptly reminded of Artemus Ward's burst of chivalry, when he cried, "in such a cause as this, my friends, I would shed the last drop of my Brother's blood." If before Mr. Weld took on himself to proclaim "Self-Reliance" for young New Zealand, he had condescended to learn the views of the North Island people thereon, he would have

[Image of page 8]

found three-fourths, if not nine-tenths, of them protesting against it; and the small minority accepting it only on the positive condition that an effective Colonial Force should at once be created and maintained as some equivalent for the loss of the imperial Troops. But this Force, the very root and foundation of his "Self-Reliance," Mr. Weld and his fatuous South Island successors never raised other than on paper--hence, not even a Watch much better than Dogberry's coidd be found for guarding those Chatham Island Prisoners whose escape has done so much to relight a cruel war; and, hence, the hasty levies sent by the Stafford Ministry to march against the monster Tito Kowaru exhibited many a Recruit with whom Sir John would not even have marched through Coventry.

But even if the "Self-Reliant" policy had not thus been arbitrarily forced on the Colony, even if it had not been inequitable and unjust, and even if the North Island had endorsed it, the Colony could never have thoroughly carried it out because the Crown has so shaped her Constitution that, in matters of "Native and Self-Reliant Policy," she is divided against herself--inasmuch as when her "North" Island arm would be put forth to the effectual chastisement of the Maori, it, is by her "South" Island arm, held back. As a geographical fact, it may be known, here, that New Zealand is formed by two great Islands, North and South--but it is certainly not known here that the latter, where Natives are no more a power than Gypsies with us, has been as little the cause and creator of Maori Wars and Troubles, as Wales or Wilts --and certainly not known, here, that in respect to the great fundamental requirement in all Countries, security of life and property from

[Image of page 9]

rebel violence, the people of the South Island are no more affected by Maori atrocities than the people of Middlesex or Kent. In truth, the South has had little or nothing to do with New Zealand Wars beyond helping to pay for them. At first, when she hoped one vigorous effort might end them for ever, she heartily helped to make it; and her Representatives in New Zealand's Parliament were foremost in voting war supplies. But, this vigorous effort, like every succeeding one, miserably failed--she fears, with reason, that every further, unaided effort, may fail; and sees no prospect of cessation of alien war calls on resources which she needs to husband for the peaceful colonization of her fertile wastes. To the North Island, Peace is as essential as air and light,--to the South, it is almost as much of the luxury as the necessary. Indeed, in her great Immigrationary Interests, the South has been actually a "gainer" by Maori Wars and Troubles, for, notoriously, during the last few years, a large amount of fructifying capital and labour has been diverted from the North Island to the South, because life and property have been secure in the one, and not in the other.

The injurious way in which this difference of position and interest between North Island and South, in regard to Native Troubles, operates to the prejudice of the former, may rudely be shown by supposing that Fenianism had become dominant in Ireland, and that Irish members were a majority in the House--that in some great European convulsion, the France of the Third Napoleon, like the France of the First, menaced England with invasion-- that Mr. Gladstone asked for £5,000,000 as necessary to place the coasts in security--yet that the Irish Members

[Image of page 10]

would vote but one. In such crisis, what course Mr. Gladstone would take, is not easy to say--but assuredly there is one course which he would not take:-- for the sake of retaining place and power, he would not shut his eyes to real danger, affect that England was unduly alarmed, trust to chance, and undertake the responsibility of her defence with means ridiculously inadequate thereto. But, illustrating small things by great, this, substantially, is what the political Vicars of Bray composing New Zealand's Stafford Ministry have done; and now that a brutal War is crimsoning the fields of the North Island Colonists with the blood of women and children, they seek to palliate their gross neglect to provide against it by pleading that if they had asked their Parliament for the necessary "ways and means" they would have been refused, inasmuch as "South Island" Members, virtually, commanded a majority there. 1 But, if the South Island cannot be counted on effectively to aid the North in so vital a work as the suppression of barbarian Rebellion, how much less is she to be counted on in the succeeding work of vigorously attempting to civilize and save the Barbarian: a work which carried out on any scale likely to return fruits, might, for a long period, entail an expenditure of at least £100,000 a year. The former, she would admit to be, for the North Island, a work of practical necessity--but the latter she might well regard as one more of sentimental philanthropy, with which, she, at least, need have nothing to do --and yet, you, Sir, with almost every member of the imperial Parliament, and, even still, many Colonists, with my humble self, would regard this latter work as essential as the former; and hold

[Image of page 11]

it to be no less the function and duty of Civilization and Christianity to attempt to save the Savage, after taming him, as it was to chastise and tame him.

Encouraged as the Maori has been to view the withdrawal of the Queen's Troops as a sign of the Queen's abandonment of the Colonists to their fate, and inflamed by recent successes, such a spirit of lawlessness and audacity has been engendered among the rebel, half-rebel; and neutral tribes, and such doubts and fears of being on the weaker side instilled into the few who are really staunch allies, that, for some years to come, an effective force of four or five Regiments, with as many light gun boats, may be necessary to win a solid Peace for New Zealand, and prevent scenes there, which might startle half Europe with their atrocity. Such a Force the South Island will not effectively aid to create and maintain; and such a Force the North Island, alone and unaided, and numbering as she does but a handful of male adults, scattered in isolated districts over a rugged country, whose daily labour is, for the most part, necessary to their families, cannot create and maintain. 2

The indisputable facts that for the first twenty years and more of the Colonization of New Zealand the Crown jealously reserved to itself the exclusive management of the Maori--that in this period it did much to create him that law-scorning Savage which he now is--that both the Waitera Purchase and the subsequent Confiscations were as much its acts and deeds as they were those of the Colony--that it forced the Self-Reliant Policy on the

[Image of page 12]

Colony--and that, after having contracted a crushing Debt in efforts to secure Peace, the young Colony is inherently too weak to achieve such result--are grave and pregnant facts which, taken and weighed together, are amply sufficient to indicate and establish, by their own intrinsic force and virtue, that, in national honour and equity, it is now the duty of the Crown to aid the Colony with Troops,-- while, if any further considerations were needed to determine the Crown to adopt such course, there are some of no little pertinency close at hand.

For instance, let it be remembered that, for more than twenty years, our Countrymen were suffered, nay encouraged by the Crown, to emigrate to New Zealand, in the belief that, as they were emigrating to a British Colony, British Law and Order would be maintained there. When, as Pioneers for tens of thousands of their Countrymen, and as much, perhaps, for the good of the Parent State as for their own, they moved off to the Antipodes, they never dreamed, and by no official word act or deed of the Crown were ever prompted to dream, that in addition to their own hard but legitimate work of subduing the Wilderness, they would have put on them the extraneous and still harder work of subduing the Savage--nor that, when the Crown's past handling and management of the Maori had done so much to inflate him into an Animal with whom the purest philanthropy could effectively deal only by "Force," that they, alone and unaided, would be called on to provide such Force.

Again, we know that the duty of protecting and improving a Property is a duty devolving on the Owners of it. Who, then, are the Owners of New Zealand, a Country

[Image of page 13]

nearly as large as the United Kingdom, capable of supporting a population of full 20,000,000 in easy plenty? Surely not the mere Pioneer Colonists who happen to have been the first to plant new homes there; who are but as ripples of the coming tide, the mere advanced guards of tens of thousands of their countrymen who will follow them. With due regard to all Native Rights, the principal Owners of a Young British Colony and magnificent Emigration Field, such as New Zealand, are the 30,000,000 of people pent up in our little British Isles. It is their noble Freehold Domain, where tens of thousands of them, as much for the Nation's profit as their own, may take fresh lease of life, and find temporal salvation: --the sort of Land to which Abram went when the Lord said unto him:

The sort of Land which Moses promised Israel, when he said,

The people of the Mother Country, then, being at least part, if not chief, "Owners" of New Zealand, it follows that it is the duty of their representative, the Crown, to aid the Pioneer Colonists in the work of defending and protecting such joint property.

As to the argument of its being unfair for young Colonies, such as the Australasian, to require military aid from the Crown because they pay no imperial taxes, it is one far more specious than real; inasmuch as by and through the

[Image of page 14]

vast and lucrative trade they create for the Mother Country they furnish no small portion of her community with part of the "ways and means" of paying imperial taxes, and do thus, substantially, pay a share of them as much as if they carried them, direct, to the imperial exchequer. While as to the moonshine occasionally crazing the disciples of professor Goldwin Smith as to our Australasian Group of Colonies costing us more than it is worth, it may suffice to say that were it possible to reduce to figures and display in £. s. d. the various gains, profits and advantages, direct and indirect, which the Mother Country has reaped from it, we should probably find that every pound she had expended on it had brought Her a fifty back; and thus see that Lord Bacon, or Sir Joshua Child (for whether it was the bigger or the lesser Luminary, I forget) was, indeed, right when he told us that "Colonization was the very best affair of business in which an old, over-peopled, Country, can engage."

In a late leader, alluding to the merited testimonial dinner to Mr. Fitzherbert, you quote Major Atkinson's speech as strengthening your idea that the Colonists need no Mother Country aid, but can thrash and tame the Savage, themselves. The Major's post-prandial confidence in the fighting powers of Colonists, gracefully resting in his case on personal gallantry in the Field, is not to be contemned. Like every other Colonist, of Anglo-Saxon grit, he would rather win solid Peace by his own good sword than be aided therein by any Ally, white or black. And were the "experiment" tried of pitting Settlers against Maories to fight the quarrel out to its bitter end, I agree with him that

[Image of page 15]

in the long series of what, in "ferocity," would be as rat and weasel combats between them, extending probably over many years, cool and patient spectators, here, would at last see the former, however torn and mangled, come conquerors out of the arena. But, surely, every man whose humanity and philanthropy is not a mere paying "Bray" for the Market Place and Exeter Hall, but something for practical Christian use, would protest against any such gladiatorial "experiment" ever being tried. Those for whom our sympathies are now enlisted are the RURAL SETTLERS of the North Island--the blessed silent Men who don't howl at Hustings and make Colonial politics a trade, but who patiently subdue the Wilderness and make the desert blossom like the rose; whose blooming homesteads won from the waste by toil of years are annihilated in a night, whose wives and children are massacred, by the biped wild beast yclept the Maori. And such men I opine, are not, to be made the subjects on which opinions are to be tested, "experiments" to be tried--but are men whose deadly perils, {as great as those of Abyssinian Captives) should weigh with other considerations to sweep away the closet cobwebs of our pseudo Political Economists, the false teachings of our Goldwin Smiths, and lead to the speedy despatch of imperial Troops to their aid.

I would, further, venture to remark that in the various New Zealand leaders with which the Times has lately favoured us, three leading views expressed therein are radically incorrect:--the one, that friendly Natives should now be hired by us to destroy Rebel Natives--the other, that there is no War in New Zealand -- the third, that in "fighting power and resources" the Rebels are vastly

[Image of page 16]

inferior to the Colonists. Touching the first, permit me to observe that after a quarter of a century's close observation and study of the Maori character, and several years personal acquaintance with it, I would heartily endorse the following pregnant words of Admiral Sartorious, in a late Times,-- "Give the friendly Maori the warm generous hand of friendship--but, Heaven forbid, he should ever have reason to believe that in the battle and the fray he commands the first place." Looking, too, at the feeling now spreading among hitherto neutral, friendly and half friendly Tribes, that the Colonist's may prove to be the weaker side, it is probable that no large Native Force could now be raised; while, further, were we to go into some bloody crowning fight with Allies such as the Kupapas, 3 they might lose us the day. But, even if any effective trusty body of loyal Savages could now be raised to subdue their fellow Savages under the rebel flag, the process, as shadowed forth by the characteristic Maori letter 4 given at the end would probably be one of scenes revolting to humanity -- while, at the same time, any such Maori-achieved triumph would cause so general an "inflation" of the entire Race, such a sense of superiority over and contempt for the White Man, as would assuredly produce crops of further troubles, and destroy any chance Civilization might still have of saving the remnant of the race by bitting it in to British law and order, weaning it from Barbarism, and turning it to Plough and Fleece.

As to your idea that the scenes we have lately witnessed in New Zealand have not been of gravity and horror sufficient to be called "War," I would observe that if gentlemen, sitting at home in slippered ease and parlour

[Image of page 17]

safety, innocent of "villainous saltpetre" and far from War's alarms, would test the "dignity of Labour," by just moving to New Zealand and hewing out Bush Farms for themselves near the precincts of Poverty Bay or Patea, they would quickly discover not only that "War," but that War of a very desperate and brutal character was in the Land. War which has already swept away flourishing pioneer Settlements, which has exhibited the hideous spectacle of the torture, the "roasting, alive," of white Prisoners, the massacre of women and children, and which the most trusty Native Authorities, justly fear may spread and burst into a storm desolating half the entire Colony.

Finally, as to your expressed opinion that the Rebels are far weaker than the Colonists in "fighting power and resources," permit me to say this. The observations at pages 8 to 11, and appendix A, show that, virtually, the Maori War waging in New Zealand is not so much a War between both Islands and the Enemy, as between the North Island and the Enemy. Now the entire white male population of the North Island is but little over 40,000; and as it exhibits a remarkable proportion of children and youngsters in their early teens, the number of males between 18 and 50 would be found disproportionately small. The actual number of Natives in the North Island is not accurately known, owing to the various difficulties of taking much other than a conjectural Maori Census, but it may still be taken at about 50,000. Now, in estimating the amount of the Maori's "fighting force" from the number of his population, two pregnant facts are to be borne in mind--the one that it is a population exhibiting a remarkable fewness of females, children and aged men, and that a large proportion of the

[Image of page 18]

females, in all save the actual fighting, in stockade building, in food finding, in commissariat work, are almost as good Men as the Males. Hence, the actual "fighting force and power" of a population of 50,000 of the Maori Race would, numerically, be found perhaps even double that of a population of 50,000 of any other race, white or black. Again, we have to remember that a large portion of the Savage Races with which Anglo-Saxon Colonization has had to wrestle in almost every quarter of the world has not had the weapons of Civilization like those which the Maori for years has been buying and storing up--that no race of Savages has ever been half so well armed as his--and that none, not even the Red Indian, has ever shown such dexterity in the use of arms.

The Maori, too, having his pigs, tame and wild, his sea fish, tons of eels, birds, wild roots, and various indigenous edibles, is able to subsist by annually scratching in patches of potatoes, and has no farming to do. He has no settled pursuit, no shop, office, mine, ship, or bank to attend. At his pleasure, he can emerge from his Bush eyrie, and swoop down on the Settler with no more disturbance to himself or family than in our case might follow from our going forth to stalk the highland red deer. How different it is with the North Island Settlers I need not say--and looking both at the nature of the Maori and of his Country, at his arms, war cunning, and freedom to fight, it is sober truth to say that it would be easier to defeat, subdue, and bring to terms, in an open civilized country, 30,000 of the best troops of France or Prussia than such a Body of Natives as may now soon be tempted to take the field against the Settlers of the North Island.

[Image of page 19]

If the Government, weighing the great exigency of the case, its many unique, unparalleled features, the fact that New Zealand Wars and Troubles have, at least, been as much caused by Crown as Colony, and other considerations indicating that "help" ought now to be sent her, decide on sending it, no form of it would be so effective as that of three or four regiments of troops,--for they, and they alone, would beneficially act and operate in two ways:-- well led, as the Rebels know, they have, as "Fighters," no equals-- while, at the same time, their mere reappearance on the scene would have a signally deterrent and quieting effect on all neutral and wavering Tribes, and a most assuring encouraging one on all friendly Tribes, inasmuch as it would instantly and strikingly show to all Natives from North Cape to South, that the hopes of the Rebels, the fears of the Friendlies, that the Great Queen over the Ocean had abandoned her rights and duties in New Zealand, were, alike, foolish and vain.

Clothed with this additional moral force and power, and taking fighting qualities only to be equal, 3000 or 4000 Queen's Troops could now do more to prevent Rebellion spreading, more to win a solid Peace in New Zealand, than double the number of Colonial. Such a Force, despatched at once, ere the fire further spreads, operating with strong bodies of Colonial Rifles, and a few bands of trusty Natives, and, the whole, handled by a commander of the Magdala Napier stamp, would quickly win and dictate terms of a Peace in New Zealand, equally advantageous to both races--when if the North Island had but the wisdom to unlock her magnificent Wild Lands, and adopt popular Land Regulations, not forgetting grateful provision for "Military Free Grants," she

[Image of page 20]

might, in two or three years, draw to her shores an influx of Population, of capital and labour, power and strength, which would daunt the most desperate of any remaining disaffected Natives from ever disturbing her Peace again.

Indeed, assuming there were no pressing emergency in New Zealand--assuming that the national honour, and the Crown's share in the protection and development of the Crown's and the Colony's "joint" Property there, did not call for the prescence of Queen's Troops there, might it not, still, be reasonably asked, "where could they better be." Mr. Cardwell's Budget will provide for just as many Troops whether New Zealand be in or under the sea. Imperial Troops must be somewhere--and in New Zealand, they would be in the finest climate in the world, in a country which might well be made a Military Sanatorium of the Empire, in one affording them the finest training ground, and in one close to the Crown's "rich and tempting" Possessions in Australia, and not far from India, China, and Japan, where, perhaps, more than anywhere the British Soldier may look for work.

It may be that the next mail will show us that Fortune has, in turn, smiled on us, that Poverty Bay has been avenged, Tito Kowaru driven to his lair. But evanescent interludes such as these have many and many a time occurred in the long tragedy of Maori War. They are not PEACE--not the solid permanent Peace under which capital and labour would flow into the Land, plough and fleece progress, and industry resume her crown--not the Peace now to be secured only by the maintenance, for three or four years, in the North Island, of a body of Troops such as has been indicated, and whose operation and effect would be both curative and preventative.

[Image of page 21]

Encouraged by the reception which Mr. Cardwell, when at the Colonial Office, gave to certain suggestions of mine on a then pending "New Zealand Difficulty;" and remembering how, in Fableland, a very humble animal once served and saved my Lord, the Lion, I, some three years ago, in a printed letter to my Lord Carnarvon, ventured to counsel him to keep about three regiments in New Zealand till war passions had more subsided and till more time had been given for coaxing the Maori to plough; and I have since learned that such high authorities as Governor Grey and General Shute advised the same. His Lordship, however, getting unfortunately heated in a sort of "despatch war" with the Colony, turned deaf ear to all such representations; and the calamities foretold as likely to arise from petulant persistence in his own policy, have arisen; and thus, much to my grief, made my prophecies only too true. Let us hope that the accomplished Statesman, now in Lord Carnarvon's place, free from all bias of past differences between Crown and Colony, will not allow popular clamour for state economy, whether spurious or real, to deter him from aiding a young possession of the Empire which, in vain, has done so much to aid herself, and whose claims to Crown aid are so indisputably just and strong.

In conclusion, Sir, as it is, much the practice of London Journals, such as Pall Mall and Morning Star, to insinuate that those who venture on a word in behalf of our "Young Britain of the South," are actuated only by mean and mercenary motives, permit me, therein, to say, for myself, that, though one of the early Settlers in New Zealand, I have long ceased to have the slightest interest at stake there--and am led to address this poor letter to you solely in the hope

[Image of page 22]

that it may prove even a "mite" towards the good work of propagating Truth about a magnificent young Land where happy years were passed, and of arousing Mr. Gladstone, now happily in power, to act in the spirit of those pregnant words of his quoted at the commencement.

Respectfully yours,
CHARLES FLINDERS HURSTHOUSE.
4, Marine Terrace, Great Yarmouth.