observers: and their own conduct in bearing it gives distinctly the lie to the allegation sometimes made, that they sought the kindling of the war. The simple fact is, that after Grey's departure the conduct of the Maories grew more and more hostile, and finally became altogether unendurable. In 1855, a petty war having arisen between two sections of the tribes, pahs were built within six miles of the little town, and armed parties roved about the settlement, committing outrages in an open manner, and threatening the lives of any who interfered. One of the contending chiefs, Katatore, publicly announced that the ultimate object of his arming was to drive the Pakeha into the sea; and this threat (which brought him many allies), with the increasing insecurity of life and property, overcame the reluctance of the whites to invoking the aid of military force, and incurring the risk of being driven for a while from their homesteads. An urgent appeal to the acting governor, Colonel Wynyard, was made, and complied with (in September) in a manner very creditable to that official. A completely equipped force of 550 men was despatched to the scene of disturbance, under an able officer well acquainted with the Maori tongue and customs. In a few days the plundering incursions were checked, European law restored within its former compact boundary, and the hostilities limited to ground lying beyond its pale. The death of Katatore soon afterwards, by the hands of a hostile native, seemed to promise a more secure state of things. But the jealousy of race had now risen too high to be allayed by the removal of a single leader, and Wirema Kingi soon stepped into the place of the fallen man, and the control of the chief part of the neighbouring tribes, on the avowed policy of restraining all native sales of land in the vicinity, and thus preventing the growth of the Pakeha settlement.

We do not purpose to enter into the details of the vexed question of the Waitara purchase, the ostensible cause of the second New Zealand war. Stripped of the technicalities by which it has been purposely overlaid by the missionary party, and by the opposition formed (as in all colonies with responsible government) against the Governor and his advisers, the matter is simple enough. Colonel Gore Browne was legally wrong in insisting on the purchase, if it is to be taken for granted that any chief might interrupt all sales to Government in his vicinity, by merely securing a single objector of the tribe selling, and supporting his veto by the strong hand. But if this process of obstruction was to be put an end to, and the sovereignty of the Queen to be shown to have any substantial reality, the Governor did but his duty in bringing matters to a simple issue. Confusion can only follow the attempt to treat the communistic tenure of the Maori by the real property laws of Great Britain; and the reversal of his predecessor's policy by Sir G. Grey on his return to office (though with his antecedents in native dealings it can hardly be blamed), has effected positively nothing towards the pacification of the island. The opposition of Kingi was merely the local development of the same feeling of defiance which led the Waikato tribes somewhat earlier to elect a king of their own, in token of their independence of British rule, and their resolve to permit no further encroachments on the part of the fast multiplying Pakeha.

Once begun, this war of Taranaki dragged its slow length on into 1861, to the destruction of the settlement, and to no other purpose whatever. It was managed, on our side, with a thoroughly amiable regard to the mode of fighting popular with the Maories, and with a total rejection of all the proper maxims of conducting hostilities against a savage race. We did not employ na

tive auxiliaries, though such might have been raised from the north in any number required. We did not diminish our men's equipment, so as to gain the necessary quickness of movement. We made no attempt to pierce the hostile district with light parties, and to destroy the cultivations on which the enemy depended for supplies. Such were the principles which Washington recommended for similar cases, but here they were exactly reversed. Our commander remained strictly on the defensive, undertaking the hopeless task of protecting the whole settlement, a strip of ground about twelve miles by four, scattered over with homesteads, and bordered by as dense a forest as the world can show! The enemy, therefore, had only to erect a pah or two along the edge of the wood, to which we, as a point of honour, laid siege in regular form, whilst the Maories sent out thence small plundering parties to carry off all that was worth taking from the farms. Moreover, by way of preventing the war from spreading, a tacit understanding was made that no distant tribes should be considered as hostile, as long as they left their own immediate white neighbours unmolested. The result was, that the adventurous spirits of the Waikatos soon appeared on the scene by fifties at a time, to enjoy a pah-defending season, just as the young fashionables of London and Paris made their campaign in the wars of Louis Quatorze. Fortunately for our reputation, their contempt for the Pakelia soldiery grew so rapidly, that a considerable body ventured, early in 1861, to meet General Pratt and his troops on open ground, and received so instant and decisive a defeat as took away their stomach for fighting for the nonce, and left Kingi-never a popular leader, being violent, and at times drunken, it was said, in his habits-without support. Having no more out-settlers left to plunder, our local opponents were

glad to make a truce, which was called a peace for the sake of effect, and lasted from 1861 to the middle of 1863.

No sensible observer, much less the keen vision of Sir G. Grey (now appointed to his old charge) and of General Cameron, could mistake this temporary tranquillity for more than a useful breathing-time. The Waikatos and their neighbours unanimously rejected all our attempts at asserting, in the remotest degree, the supremacy of the Queen. The efforts of their chief men were constant to produce some more general combination for resistance than the mere local struggles of 1847 and 1860; and every day the feeling of hostility to the Pakeha, and of resolve to resist his progress, grew with what it fed on; until, finally, the system of organisation had spread so far that the use of armed guards, to protect the road-extension works carried on upon our own lands to the south of Auckland, was met by the murder of a weak detachment on the other side of Taranaki, 250 miles away. Then at last began the real war, which our whole previous history in New Zealand had but led up to.

So instructed a soldier as our new general was perfectly aware of that method of conducting it which has been previously adverted to as recommended by North American experience-viz., the continually taking the offensive in such light bodies, supported by native allies, as might permeate the whole hostile territory, and make the native feel the really unpleasant side of warfare, to him too often hitherto but an exciting and honourable pastime. Such, doubtless, would have been the policy of Grey and Cameron, but that the large resources which their joint representations had obtained from the Home Government gave them the choice of a more permanent method of securing peace. To pierce with good roads the territories hitherto closed to us-to open the noble water communica

If any evidence were required to prove that Lord Palmerston is the present Government, and the present Government Lord Palmerston, the exhibition which the Ministers made of themselves on the occasion of the recent debate on Mr Baines's motion would abundantly supply it. Poor old Pam was down with a fit of the gout when the dreaded motion came on. He was too ill even to see and advise with his colleagues as to the course which they ought to pursue; and so, on the Wednesday, when Mr Baines rose to address the House, nobody on the Ministerial benches knew either what he was to do or what was expected of him. Then followed a scene which few of those who witnessed it are likely ever to forget. The great Liberal party, as it is called, broke off into two camps. What Mr Baines advocated Lord Elcho ably and gallantly resisted; what Mr Stansfeld pressed with such weight of argument as he could bring to bear, Mr Lowe utterly demolished. Then was seen on the Cabinet bench a spectacle such as in modern times has rarely astonished the Senate. The Ministers spoke together-not in quiet whispers but with eager ness, much gesticulation, and warmth. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made a movement as if to get upon his legs, and was with difficulty restrained; and the Lord Advocate jumping up, nobody would hear him. Fortunately for the Cabinet time ran his course, and the bell rang to announce that the fatal hour of six was at hand. The debate stopped at the bidding of the Speaker, and the members went home.

Poor Lord Palmerston was still very ill-so ill that his medical attendants had forbidden his taking any part in public business. But Pam is a brave old man ; and,

to do him justice, thinks little of personal ease and personal comfort when higher things are at issue. He has long arrived at the conviction that after him will come chaos; and as far as his own party is concerned, we believe that he is right. Whether his past conduct has been such as to satisfy him, when he looks back upon it, that no portion of the blame attaches to himself, is more than we can say. Perhaps the time may come when we shall be tempted to mete out to him something of the same measure of justice which we have considered it our duty to mete out to Mr Gladstone, and then it will be seen how far such a retrospect could be attended with satisfaction to anybody. Meanwhile, it is certain that to the future he looks forward with an alarm which he scarcely takes the trouble to disguise, and that his great bugbear of all is the almost certain advance of democracy. The progress and issues of the debate he insisted upon knowing. They were communicated to him unreservedly, and he at once summoned a Cabinet Council, which met at Cambridge House. Not having been present at that meeting, we cannot pretend to give a detailed account of its proceedings, but the issues to which it led have leaked out. Lord Palmerston, we understand, informed Mr Gladstone that if he was determined to speak in favour of Mr Baines's motion he must resign the seals of office. Mr Gladstone, proud and irritable, and full of self-conceit, at once accepted the alternative, and was with difficulty prevailed upon to give way, rather than break up the Cabinet. Hence his silence during the second debate on Monday the 8th of May; a reticence so painful to himself, that it would not at all surprise us if he took an early, and probably a most

inconvenient, opportunity of accounting for it. Be this, however, as it may, Mr Gladstone held his peace, when his friends of Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, and Bolton expected him to speak, and submitted to be marched out, a silent and disgusted voter, into the same lobby with Sir George Grey, Mr Milner Gibson, and Mr Baines.

Two consequences seem to us to be inevitable from these events: there is an end to cordiality on any point between the opposite factions in the Cabinet; there is a complete split in what is called the Liberal party. Sir George Grey's enunciation of Ministerial views, in reference to the past and the future, satisfies nobody. The Manchester men can never forgive the declaration, that Ministers do not intend to go to the country with a Reform cry. Lord Elcho, Mr Lowe, and Conservative-Liberals of their class, can never again trust men who voted for a measure which they had unreservedly condemned. Whether, when it comes to the push, they will utterly desert their old leaders, is another question. Lord Elcho's extraordinary proposal to inquire, by Royal Commission, into the defects in the representative system of the country, and the best means of supplying them, would seem to indicate a sort of understanding between him, at least, and a portion of the Cabinet; and the guarded approval with which the Times' has spoken of the device, leaves little room to doubt with what section of the Cabinet this understanding prevails. But, as it is impossible to imagine that either the Radicals or the Tories will listen to a device so entirely unconstitutional, it appears to us that to Lord Palmerston, at least, no good will arise from the stratagem. The truth is, that the chaos which the Premier anticipated as a necessary consequence on his own relinquishment of office, has begun already; and nothing, as it seems to us, will stop

VOL. XCVII.-NO. DXCVI.

its spreading beyond the Liberal ranks, except such a change of Ministers as shall place the direction of public affairs in the hands of true men, by whatever nom de guerre they may at this moment be designated.

While these things are going on in the House of Commons, the Lords have been scandalised by the exposure of such a course of jobbery, or, to say the least of it, of nepotism and lack of judgment, in the Lord High Chancellor of England, as is without a parallel in modern times. The consequence is, that Lord Westbury has become to the Cabinet a source of weakness almost more telling than their Radical Chancellor of the Exchequer. Let us not, however, be misunderstood. We by no means accept the judgment which has been passed upon the learned Lord by the masses, and indeed almost everywhere, except in the House over which he presides. Obnoxious in very many respects we know him to be-flippant in speech-not over scrupulous in playing with truthrude-unmannerly-we may say, at once, offensive; but the tenor of his life past has indicated no disposition on his part to do, deliberately and in cool blood, either harsh or dishonest things. We quite believe that the discovery of Mr Edmunds's delinquencies neither shocked him very much nor pained him. doubtless saw in them a ready means of making a provision for his son, and was indifferent as to what might become either of the detected peculator or of the public money; but that he enticed Mr Edmunds to resign by holding out to him the prospect of a pension, with a view to the more speedy instalment of Mr Edmunds's successor, cannot, in our opinion, be credited for a moment. Why should he commit so palpable a mistake? Mr Edmunds's removal was certain. Whether it came a few weeks earlier or a few weeks later could not be of the smallest consequence. To all

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