This "self-relying" policy of the Weld Ministry relieved the colonists of a great burden; for the poll-tax was to be paid only for soldiers remaining at the request of the New Zealand Government. Furthermore, the relations between Sir George Grey and General Cameron had for long been none too cordial, and one thing added to another brought about the departure of some of the British regiments.
To put the matter in a nutshell, the Governor asked the soldier to dare and do more than the latter believed he could accomplish with the troops at his disposal; so he refused point blank. The Governor thereupon dared and did on his own initiative, and proved the soldier wrong.
Here is an outstanding example. After General Cameron had been surprised at Nukumaru,[67] he passed on up the coast, leaving unreduced the strong Wereroa pa, which was occupied in force by the Maori. His reason, given to the Governor, was that he had only fifteen hundred troops with him, and to attack the fort with less than two thousand would be to court disaster. When five hundred friendly Whanganui natives offered to take the pa, the General sneered at their offer as "mere bounce" and, further, insisted that the Governor knew it to be "mere bounce."
The Governor's reply was to collect a mixed force of five hundred men, including three hundred of the "bouncing" friendlies, and borrow two hundred regulars from General Waddy for moral support. With these he marched upon the pa about which such a pother had been raised. The Queen's troops, who were not allowed to fight—though the enemy did not know that—acted as a camp guard, while the colonials and friendlies worked by a circuitous and very difficult route to the rear of the pa. Here they took a strong redoubt, which commanded the fort, and captured fifty Maori on their way to join the garrison. All this was effected without the loss of a man, and the enemy, seeing themselves, as they supposed, surrounded, evacuated the pa by the front. Had the regulars been allowed to fight, the hostile force must have been annihilated; but, much to their astonishment, they were allowed to walk off unopposed. The numerically insignificant contingent of colonials and friendlies entered the pa next day, having accomplished in two days, under the Governor's eye, that which the commander-in-chief had for six months declared to be impossible of accomplishment with less than two thousand regulars. Perhaps, however, he was right.
As one result of this constant friction and of General Cameron's representations to the British Government, there remained in the colony in 1865 only five regiments, and these were employed in guarding the districts which had been reduced. After March, 1865, the Colonial Forces for the most part conducted the war in their own way; but it would be absurd to deny that, but for the regulars who remained, the conquered tribes would have reassembled and obliged the war to be fought over again, or necessitated an increase in the strength of the colonials proportional to that of the Imperial troops withdrawn. As it was, while the regulars stood on guard, the colonials fought their fight unhampered by reviving sedition—fought and, as we shall see, conquered.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] See p. 55.
[67] See p. 233.