The night of the 29th of April was, in the British camp at Tauranga, a night of deep humiliation and mutual reproach. The men were disgraced in their own eyes, and what would the people of England say? There is not a more gallant regiment in the service than the 43rd; Napier, who belonged to them, has commemorated their deeds of valour in the Peninsula, and the memory of the numerous engagements in which they have taken part is preserved on their colours. But now where were all the laurels they had won in the Peninsula and India? Soiled and trampled in the dust, and by whom? Not by forces equal to them in arms and discipline; not by foemen worthy of their steel; but by a horde of half-naked, half-armed savages, whom they had been taught to despise. They erred in despising them overmuch; they forgot, or they had never learned, that the defenders of that pa belonged to a race reckless of life, loving war for its own sake, who were then fighting, as such a race ever will fight, for their homes, their lands, their liberty, their all. The time may come when the Maori race will be subdued, but that will only be when the Maori race has been extirpated. Would that the people of England knew this as well as the colonists of New Zealand! A disgraceful chapter in the future history of our country might then have never to be written. The storming party learned when it was too late that the courage of despair rises superior to all human calculations of success, and that no bounds can be assigned to the heroic powers of endurance of men fighting for their liberty. It could be no ordinary race that waited patiently for eight hours, with no other shelter from the descending hurricane of shot and shell than a few boughs of trees covered with earth, till the moment had arrived for rushing forth and rolling back their assailants like a broken wave. It adds nothing to our glory to detract from the virtues of our adversaries. In the Maori character there is much to condemn, but much also to admire and to imitate. If, instead of being exterminated, they were embodied into regiments, commanded by men who spoke their language and studied their character, they would be found as useful as the Sikhs in India; and, on the ground of public expediency as well as of Christian principle, it would be better to save than to destroy. The Maori race once extinguished can never be restored, and it would be impious to imagine that any one race has been created in vain.