23 SEPTEMBER 1865, Page 8

THE IMBROGLIO IN NEW ZEALAND.

(NNE step appears to have been taken towards the quelling V of the official anarchy which for several months has pre- yelled in New Zealend. ,General Cameron, it is reported, has resigned. Whether he was the only or, indeed, the chief cause et the reigning confusion, we are not prepared to say. Time will show that. Meanwhile we have great doubts whether it would not have hem better to have made a clean sweep, and allowed the Governor to resign also. On the face of all the published evidence, General Cameron, we admit, appears to have been the principal offender ; but the antecedents of Sir George Grey are of that charanter which make us reserve our judgment as to the part he has played in those recent trees- actions Which brought about the resignation of the General. Governor Grey may for once have been straightforward, and Mr. Weld may have reason to think he has been cordially supported. But before we form an opinion on that point we should like to have the facts before us, and these we cannot receive until the arrival of the next mail.

e Our readers may remember how matters stood when the preceding news reached us. General Cameron had, so far as he was concerned, brought a weak and ineffective campaign to an end. He had evaded the Maorie, he had destroyed the twale pf his own troops, and he had managed to quarrel with the Ministry and the Governor. With the former by level- ling at them charges wholly unwarrantable, with the latter because the Governor had made the Ministry officially ac- quainted with the language employed by the General in a privatO note. But this private nate, it seems, only embodied the substance of strictures which General Cameron had thought fit to send home, and Governor Grey took the step he did in order that the Ministers might have an opportunity of putting on record an official answer. It is a nice point Whether Sir George Grey bad any right to convert a private into an official note, that is a point to be settled by Sir George and Sir Duncan ; and for the nonce they settled it by declining to hold anything but official intercourse with each other. There can be, however, no question respecting the right and duty of the Ministers to record an answer to the un- just strictures of the General. We were told at the time that General Cameron hal acted with spirit, by appealing home against the Ministry and the Governor. It was even said he sent an officer to the nearest point of telegraphic communica- tion with the War Office, and that the officer was instructed to await an answer. Long ere this, if the current rumour be true, he got the only answer any civil government having decent respect for itself could give to a General who so con- strued his instructions as to make himself an aspirant for a dictatorship, and the inevitable upshot of the business is the resignation of the General—a polite term for his recall.

General Cameron's offence was not only the use of unwar- rantable language towards the Ministry responsible for the government of the country in which he happened to command an imperial army.- He set himself to control the policy of the Government. In a letter to Lord Alfred Churchill, pub- lished in the daily papers, Mr. Weld distinctly charges the General with having thwarted the policy of the Ministry by political action- And apparently not without reason. At the close of the Waikato campaign, and the settlement of the troubles on the east coast, the Ministry and the Governor ageeed that it would be desirable to strike a heavy blow at the ruffianly, tribes infesting the country between Wanganui and TarimakL When directed to do this by the responsible Government General Cameron -could not refuse to obey. But it is now clear that his obedienee was half-hearted. He had eecome political in his views, and he allowed the politician to overecithe thageneral. He Conducted a campaign, essential to the peace of the country and the punishnient of the worst tribes in _New Zealand, in such a manner as to make it worse than useless. Heaimply marched along the coast, and never fought at all .unlesshe was attacked. He " turned" pals, 'as the phrase goes, and made the army a laughing-stock tethe Maories. This excessive caution 'ruined themorate of his troops. It made them fear the natives. 0 ver and'over again, ifs Maori was seen, even out ofraneae, the camp turned out and remained under arms. If a Maori fired off a musket half a mile off he was answered by a score of bullets. Kept on the defensive, made to endure all the hardships of war with none of its excitements, the troops lost confidence in themselves. How could they have confidence when it was plain the General had none? Under these 'circumstances the-march from Wanganui towards Tara- naki could not have any good effect on the pacification of the colony, and by these tactics the General was able •to frus- trate the policy of the Ministry and the Governor. To our Minds it is a clear case of military insubordination, arising from a misconception on the part of the General of the duties he was sent to New Zealand to perform. Either he thought his force insufficient for the work, and in that -case events have shown his judgment was' erroneous, or he thought 'the work' ought not to be undertaken, 'and lielinclertook it' only not to do it. In either case lie stands condemned. Mr. Weld, can scarcely' be right when he says that General Cameron "appears to have been appointed as a sore of military dictator." If he were he must have been acting on secret instructions, for the Governor is expressly' clothed with the powere of a commander-in-chief, and we cannot believe that any Minister in this country would try to override the public commission of a representative of the Queen by clothing a 'General officer with superior powers. Until it be otherwise made m-anifeet, we shall believe not that any official on this side of the globe infringed the spirit of the constitution by issuing secret instructions ton General, but that General Cameron unhappily allowed his private views on New Zealand 'politics to gain the mastery over his sense of public duty. That the troops, officers and men, Were profoundly disgusted with the war, we know ; that the General set up a qualified independence is tolerably clear; but it will be a most dangerous trisis in our affairs when our policy is to be governed by the likes and dislikes of our officers—for they really set the fashion of dis- content—and when a soldier is permitted, unchecked, to ob- struct the constitutionally appointed civil authorities of a colony, and substitute his views for theirs. In the present case the soldier has met with' check, but- not before he had done a great deal of mischief. "Our colonial forces," writes Mr. Weld, "have been forbidden by the military authorities to finish the war by taking Weraroa pals, the stronghold of the fanatics, and the consequence is that our policy has not been allowed a trial, and we shall place our resignation in the hands of the Governor on the meeting of the Assembly." So that the General has the satisfaction of having succeeded in preventing the termination of the war, and of forcing the Ministry he aspersed to resign,—and all by the exercise of ir- regular and unconstitutional means.

The story of this Weraroa pah is in every respect remark- able. When General Cameron advanced to the Waitotara river he defeated the Maories in a defensive action, but he turned aside from this very pale, then a comparatively small

work. It has been allowed to exist on the flank of our sea- coast line of occupation, and to grow from a comparatively small to an absolutely large work, nearly a mile long. As it was the stronghold of the fanatics in that country the Govern- ment desired its fall, and learning that the garrison had been reduced to about a hundred men, orders were sent down to the colonial forces to take it, and the " native contingent" was marched up as a reinforcement. When the combined forces approached the pah, the Maori chief in command sent a messenger to say that he was ready to surrender to the set- tlers, with whom the Maories wished to be friends, but that they would fight the soldiers. Thereupon the colonials moved up within five miles, and the rebel chief came out to negotiate terms. But while the negotiation was going on Colonel Logan, "Government agent," rade up, with his staff, and thereupon the rebel leader, declining to submit to the soldiers, broke off the negotiation. At this the native contingent became furious, and stripping for the fight, danced their war dance, and swore to take the pall. It was a most auspicious moment. Our "allies" were ready and willing, the pah was too large to be defended by the garrison within its trenches. But, lo ! Colonel Logan forbad the assault, and ordered the whole force to the rear. A singular mode of making war,—and to this singular mode the Maories owed their escape. It was natural that both the native allies of the Government and the Government itself should be angry. Colonel Logan ceased to be Government agent, and Brigadier- General Waddy summoued the garrison to surrender ; but they were stronger in numbers, rather eager to fight the soldiers, and the summons was refused. It will not have escaped the reader that the rebel Maories, even the fanatics, are ready to come to terms with the settlers, a very remark- able commentary on the abuse which our pro-Maories, civil and military, have been wont to heap upon the colonists. We have no wish to be unjust to our gallant soldiers. Colonel Warre, and Brigadier Carey, and Colonel Greer, nay, General Cameron himself at first, showed how the war should be carried on. But the General has become "political," the troops are not what they were when they landed, and the old feeling of contempt for " provincials " has sprung up in the regular army. General Cameron is so good a soldier that if he had not become political, he would not have allowed any of these things to come to pass.

For our parts we cannot help thinking that the Colonial Office has much to answer for. Mr. Cardwell has shown no statesmanlike qualities in the management of this troublesome business. He has neither had a firm grip of his Governor nor of his own policy—if he have one—nor, as it turns out, of his General. He would neither leave the colonists alone nor prescribe a decided line of action. We probably owe what- ever there may be of sagacity and insight in the dealings of the Colonial Office with New Zealand to the Under Secretary of State. Mr. Cardwell has shown neither courage nor wisdom. What would now be best for the colony would be the withdrawal of all the imperial troops, except those required to form an imperial garrison—the bit of red that represents the Empire—and the concession to the colonists of the amplest liberty to deal with all their own affairs. The colonists of New Zealand are now able to go alone. But if this policy were adopted one indispensable condition would be that the Governor should be able and honest, as well as learned in the customs of the savages of the Pacific, and another that the Colonial Minister at home should be a statesman, and something of a diplomatist withal, not in the bad, but in the good sense of the word. Our colonists are fast slipping into the position of allies, and we want a Munster who will give them wise guidance during the period of transformation, and who will justly secure and guard in his dealings with these growing nations the broad and fun- damental interests of the Empire.