LORD GRANVILLE'S LAST DESPATCH.
LORD GRANVILLE is entitled to whatever credit there may be in the perfect consistency cf his Colonial policy. He is perfectly consistent in his carelessness of the lives of the settlers, in his supreme indifference to giving,—what he is perfectly aware that he will give by this peremptory order for the recall of the last Queen's regiment,—the signal for insur- rection to the only powerful Maori tribe which still hesitates as to peace or war, in his purpose of reversing the deliberate policy of his predecessors at the Colonial Office, and in his inteistion of curtailing, so far as Imperial policy can curtail, the area of Her Majesty's dominions at the Antipodes. In all this he is perfectly consistent, and the frigid frankness of his announcements would really have in it something of magnifi- cent audacity, if he were not perfectly aware that English public opinion is wholly apathetic on the subject, and cares no more at present whether blood flows in New Zealand or not than whether blood flows in Spain or not. It may fairly be said for Lord Granville that the colonists have shown a most wonderful obtuseness in grasping the real significance of the colonial policy of the Government. Men who did not under- stand the meaning of his despatch of last May will scarcely be convinced by a peremptory recall of the Queen's troops at a moment when that recall will mean much what the desertion of half the troops in a critical battle would mean,—slaughter, disaster, panic. But it will be their own fault that they have not understood. Tho words were plain enough and the pur- pose was plain enough to any understanding open to belief. It cannot be denied that they have been blindly, pitiably credulous in their attempt to return to a policy of dependence,—in the belief that an almost frantic appeal for help in the mildest and least active form,—for the name, and symbol, and prestige of help, rather than the reality,—would derive the smallest support from representations of the massacre and the devasta- tion that will probably follow the withdrawal of the Queen's support. They cannot for a moment pretend that they have not had warning of what was coming. They have counted not merely chickens that were not hatched, but chickens which were not even in the egg, of which there was neither sign nor prospect. So much the worse for them. Lord Granville has not deceived them. He has simply declined to relent, when some relenting might have been expected from any Colonial Secretary not made of iron. To have said, Well, keep your regiment six or nine months longer, that you may have time to find a substitute, but then go it must,' would not have been generous, but it would have been human. Lord Granville's bowels of compassion have not even moved him thus far. It would not have answered his purpose. He con- fesses that he wishes to have the independence of the Maoris, which the late Duke of Newcastle was so anxious to see abso- lutely broken, acknowledged and established. He eonfesses that he wishes to see the land confiscated for open and violent re- sistance to the Queen's authority, and confiscated in accordance with a policy formally approved by the late Duke of Newcastle, restored to the rebellious Maoris. If, in order to accomplish these great ends,—the success of a native rebellion against the- Queen's authority, and the reversal of a penalty on such rebel- lion sanctioned by the Queen,—English settlers must pour out their blood, the end will at least sanctify the means. Lord Granville will regret, doubtless, the miserable necessity of" massacre and misery which his policy entails, but. he will not shrink from responsibility for it when it is the only means of curtailing the Empire of the Queen, and of creating a Maori kingdom which may hold a British colony in check. If our- readers doubt that this is, without any sort of exaggeration, the real meaning of Lord Granville's despatch, let them read the words in which he explains the political reasons for not granting the colonists any aid, however temporary :- "If the active employment of British troops in a colony in which. responsible government has been established under ordinary circum- stances is fraught with difficulties, it is still more objectionable when the presence of these troops is calculated to encourage the Colonial- Government in a policy which the Home Government have always. regarded as pregnant with danger. The present distress of the colony arises mainly from two circumstances: the discontent of the natives consequent on tho confiscation of their land, and neglect of successive Governments to place on foot a force sufficiently formidable to overawe that discontent. That the discontent of the natives does mainly arise from the confiscation of their lands is manifest. The neighbourhood of Tauranga and other confiscated districts on the East coast is that in which Te Kooti maintains himself. In Taranaki your own officer states that 'the larger and more geneially operative incitement to rebellion is the hope of recovering land and status,' while the restoration of the large extent of land confiscated in the Waikato is unequivocally put forward by the advisers of the so-called Maori King as the condition of pacification."
And later on in the despatch Lord Granville adds,—" But the- abandonment of land, the recognition of Maori authority, and the maintenance of an expensive force, however indispensable some or all of these may be, are distasteful remedies, which will not be resorted to while the colony continues to expect assistance from this country ;and a decision to supply the colony even with the prestige of British troops, objectionable as I have shown it to be on grounds of practical principle, would, in my view, be also immediately injurious to the settlers themselves, as tending to delay their adoption of those prudent counsels on which, as I think, the restora- tion of -the Northern Island depends." It is impossible, we imagine, to explain more clearly than Lord Granville here does that he withdraws the troops in order to force- upon the colony the recognition of the independence of the Maori King, and the reversal of the policy sanctioned by his predecessor as the penalty of rebellion. If, as is- but too likely, a formidable Waikato insurrection, a con- flict a outrance with the English settlers, and a policy of" massacre on both sides, should be the result, instead of the realization of Lord Granville's dream that the co-ordinate- authority of the Maori King may be acknowledged, and a treaty made—probably with the fanatic Te Kooti—for the re-adjust- ment of territorial boundaries,—we do not suppose that Lord Granville will either be surprised or shocked. He will, doubt- less, bear with equanimity the intelligence of the anarchy he has caused, especially if it leads to the final separation of New Zealand from the Empire. That this will be the result of this last blow of Lord Granville's we hesitate to predict. The New Zealand Government has shown through the last year so remarkable a genius for passive endurance and hope against hope, that we are far from disposed to assign any limits to its- elasticity. But the natural and, not improbably, deliberately- intended result of this policy of Lord Granville's is to force New Zealand, as soon as possible, into cutting a knot which_ only entails upon her embarrassment, humiliation, and weari- some as well as dangerous suspense, and is utterly fruitless of any substantial result of good.
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