Sir George Grey.

If I remember aright, Sir, you lately threw out a hint that the prosecution of this unhappy War to a speedy, final end might now be promoted by the recall of Sir George Grey. In a letter lately addressed to the Hon. Member for Taunton, I attempted to picture Sir George as that "pattern Colonial Governor" which, generally, he is held to be. In some of its features, this popular estimate of him is a correct one; but his warmest admirers would now scarcely contend that he is altogether the right man in the right place. He is a Governor who m his former reign in New Zealand was an administrator of that "Tract and Treacle" Policy towards the Maori sketched at page 34. This said that, platonically, he is an admirer of our Maori Beauties, our chaste Susannahs of the Bush, and he seems to "love the Maori Race not wisely but too well." In former days he spared his tatooed friends so often that his tatooed friends scarce credit he will smite them now; and there are not wanting among them, I fear, those who even hint, in Maori Councils under the Greenwood Tree, that the escape of the 200 "Waikatos from Sir George's open cage; at Kawau was an escape winked at by him. Half the Rebels laugh at him, half distrust him, while the friendly page 54 Tribes rather stand aloof from a vacillating Ruler of whom they seem to think that, after he had encouraged them to take up arms in the White Man's cause, he might patch up a Peace with the Enemy and leave them to the vengeance of the Foes he had tempted them to provoke.

He has quarrelled, too, a Poutrance with his Fox Ministry, one of the ablest, one of the most enlightened, which the Colony ever possessed; and it is not, perhaps too much to say that nine-tenths of the Colonists, including men of all opinions on the War Question, would now pray for his recall.

The only Governor you ever gave us in New Zealand who read the Maori book aright, and who had the manhood to incur the responsibility of acting up to his convictions, was Governor (Sore Browne, and him you suffered to be deported to Van Dieman's Land by Exeter Hall. The hero of Scinde, flower of the flowering Napiers, is no more—but General Cameron and many a good soldier is to the fore; and, for the day, a quick Man of the Sword, rather than an adroit Despatch Writer, is what New needs more than she has ever done before.

There is, too, Sir, another point closely affecting the speedy final ending of this War which would, I think, be worthy of your attention. It is this, that if you really mean to aid the North Island Colonists to win such a Peace as shall be permanently beneficial to both races, the "non-content" members of your Legislature might well receive gentle teem with unfounded assertions, debasing the Colonist, exalting the Native. These diatribes, appearing as they do in one or two of the "base exceptions" of our Local page 55 Press, are instantly seized on by our Missionary Firebrands, by our Pakeha-Maones and Bush Pedlars who live by the Maori, and are so translated and interpreted to the Natives by these gentry that the Rebel Tribes are made to believe this—that with a very large and powerful body in the great Runanga of England they are suffering Saints, and that if they can only hold out a little longer the Troops will be withdrawn and a Peace offered them placing the Settler under their feet—while the Friendly Tribes are made to fear that if they heartily join the Colonists in crushing out the Rebellion they will not only offend the puppet Maori King but offend the real though distant English Queen.

In this way the Philippics of certain Hon. Members of your Legislature almost reduce you to the absurd position of the pugilist who should hit his adversary with the right, himself with the left; while as to the rabid balderdash put forth by your soi-disant "Aborigines' Protection Societies" and your professional and dilettanti Philanthropists, it is not, perhaps, too much to say that it has already cost the two Races almost a Life a Line.

He who asserts that the Mother-Country has no interest in a New Zealand War—who ignores the fact that it was Downing Street's mal-administration, not the Colonists', which has suffered a War to arise—who would recall your Troops, save your money, and leave an insignificant handful of your countrymen in the North Island to their chance of exterminating or of being exterminated, comes before your Public with an "ad captandum" cry, and will find crowds of listeners and troops of friends-among whom, though, you, page 56 I think, Sir, will not be found. But he who on the grounds which have been urged, or on any other, seeks to prove that it is not only the interest, but moral duty, of the Mother-Country freely to aid those Emigrant Children whom she has encouraged to act as her Pioneers in New Zealand to win their way out of a War which her has given them, may have "fit audience—but few."

Nevertheless, Sir, I for one, shall continue to hope for the best Despite the colonisation fallacies of Professor Goldwin Smith, reiterated by the Hon. Member for Taunton—despite further vituperation of Colonists by the Hon. Member for Maidstone—despite the ready help which mere South Island Settlers like Messieurs Fitzgerald and Sewell might be willing to lend in the unholy work of seeking to cripple the rival North by process of withdrawing the Troops before a solid Peace is won—despite all this, I shall hope now that you have a little army expensively gathered together on the spot, and before you need it elsewhere, you will use it. I shall hope in your Councils you will remember that it is the deliberately formed belief of the majority of the old North Island Colonists (the men of twenty years' experience of the Maori and his ways) that if you leave them before you have helped them to achieve the task which their slender ranks disable them from achieving by themselves, namely the task of showing the Savage that the Civilized Race is the stronger in arms, War, sooner or later, must again burst out, and become, possibly, a War of annihilation. I shall hope that you will either recall Sir George Grey, or insist on his no longer tampering with the "core" of the disease at Taranaki; and that with equal humanity and sound statesmanship towards both Races, with equal regard to your own interests and honour and page 57 ours, you will turn a deaf ear to all tempting pretexts for laying down your arms until the just "conditions"^* of a solid Peace have been conquered and obtained.

Such a Policy as this would be welcomed by half the Natives, and would command the support of nine-tenths of the whole of the colonial community. Such a Policy as this, too, might lay the foundations of a state of peace and prosperity under which, in another decade, you might find New Zealand a prominent member of some great "Australasian Federation"—the chosen home of half your finest Emigrants, ^† and a Colony giving you an export and import Trade to the extent of £10,000,000 or £15,000,000 a year—while under such a Policy as this you might reasonably hope to see the Son of the most dreaded of the Anthropophagi of the Antipodes metamorphosed into a peaceful Citizen, possibly into a Legislator, ^‡ of your future "Britain of the South."