Chap. XVI. PROCEEDINGS OF TOE MAGISTRATES. 40^ 
to the settlers, but in order to prevent the natives from 
presuming on our defenceless state. 
And we asked the Police Magistrate to rescind 
his prohibitory proclamation, as the 53 grenadiers 
could be considered hardly capable of defending their 
own barracks, in case of a sudden and well-concerted 
attack by the natives. 
But the Police Magistrate refused, saying it would 
be quite contrary to his instructions. He said a frigate 
with troops was now daily expected from Sydney : he 
would call the settlers out should any emergency make 
that course requisite. 
We represented to him the absurdity of calling out 
untrained men on an emergency to harass and encumber 
rather than to support the few regulars ; and we in- 
stanced the fatal result of Pf^airau as caused by the 
superiority of savages, who are very perfectly trained and 
drilled by the chiefs in their skirmishing warfare, over 
men who did not know which end of the cartridge to 
bite. And we made him acknowledge that he had 
neither the authority nor the will to cause the additional 
troops to be landed when the frigate should come, or 
the knowledge as to how soon the frigate and all the 
troops might be called upon to act upon the coast, 
and the settlement be again left totally undefended. 
But he smiled, and shuffled, and still pleaded his con- 
venient instructions. 
So we determined to act for ourselves. After ad- 
journing to learn the law of the case, we found that 
the only law against drilling (even if applicable to New 
Zealand, which point remained in doubt), provided 
that persons might lawfully drill and be drilled, if 
authorized so to do by any two Justices of the Peace. 
We came prepared with two resolutions, one asserting 
the expediency of the drilling, and the other intimating 
