NEW ZEALAND AND THE ANNEXATION CONFERENCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3851, 20 November 1883, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND AND THE ANNEXATION CONFERENCE.

Tho Premier and tho ex-Premier of this colony, who aro to attend the Annexation Conference at Sydney, nro stated to luue been conferring as to the forthcoming event and tho policy they should pursue. Meanwhile a- Sydney paper has boon giving the people "on the other side " an idea of our representative statesmen by means of tho following lively sketch : — "Major Atkinson and tho Hon. F. A. Whitak'er aro to be the New Zealand representatives at the Sydney Conference next month. Tho latter was an astute lasvyer and a singularly wide-awake statesman. In order to get the ' bulge' on him it would be necessary to arise and go unto your father's house before night's candles were burned out and jocund day was sitting cross-logged on the misty mountain-tops. In big laud speculations and the unrevised text of tho ' eleventh commandment he is open to back himself agi.lnst the world— always barring Major Smith of Ballarat. The latter boasts that ' Whitaker ' whipped creation, and I whipped Whitaker.' The other N.Z. plenipotentiary is known as Jlio ' Majah ' among his people, just as Wellington was known par excellence in London as 'The Dook.' There might be other 'Majahs,' just as there are other ' Dooks,' but they arc only small fry, whitebait, 'prone trash' alongside this three-decker. It was during the last row in Taranaki that ho came to the front and remained there. Ho commanded tho ' bushrangers '— a determined body of local troops made up of men most of whom had a stake in the country. This corps did good service in the description of warfare unsuited to the highly-disciplined regular soldiors. At the same time it must be noted that tho New Zealand colonists have never done justice to the regular troops who cleared tho Waikato Valley for them in 1803 —n. work which tlic-y would h:ivo trial, or, trying, accomplished to the present day. The 'irregulars,' who were good enough at 'bush-whacking' and guerilla warfare, would have never seen the inside _of Rangiriri or Te Awamutii. The Maori*.. , .;, in their expressive 'pigeon-English,' used to call them, 'gammon the soger-*.' The «Ma j ah\s ' triumphs in the field were overshadowed by his success in Parliament, in a New Zealand Cabinet Iμ , was as necessary as the Duke of Wellington at Windsor Castle when any domestic squabble set the servants talking. Like tho V.Vnr of liray, whatever changes occurred, he could always be found in the same place. The hole wa< square, he (the peg) was square and nothing Bhort of dynamite could shift him. It was only tho other day he re-formed the present Ministry, on Mr Whitaker's retirement. Such are the men who will represent their colony at the approaching congress."