THE PREMIER AND THE KING.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1356, 19 June 1878, Page 2

THE PREMIER AND THE KING.

[“Thames Advertiser.”] Sir George Grey’s luve for the natives, and fop the King party especially, is too sive. Ho will sacrifice all the allotments in the Waikato, 500 acres at Newcastle township, £SOO ft year, a mansion for a Eunanga, houses, and many other gifts too numerous to mention, in order to buy the favor of an outlaw and his rebel followers. This is too much like sacrificing the last drop of his brother’s blood to satisfy bis intense, bis burning, love for a pack of miserable savages, who forfeited ail claim to British sympathy at Rangiriri, Orakau, Te Papa, and To Rangi. Let the burial mounds still scarcely o’ergrown at these centres of their bloodthirsty attacks, and scores of .others, where no memorial marks the resting-place of illustrious dead slfiin by the wily savages, remind us of

the misdeeds which caused the forfeiture of the lands now to be compensated for, and lot us ask if the flour-and-sugar policy of the late Sir Donald McLean was not infinitely preferable to the violation of our feelings which such subserviency indicates ? What right can the Premier possess to pledge the colony to these things. However anxious he may appear to have been to leave « his word ” in writing, the Parliament of the colony will yet insist upon a voice in such an important concession. No doubt the Premier will be able to give a very plausible reason why these promises should he ratified, and these lands placed at Tawhiao’s disposal; but we take exception to such a method of giving first and asking permission afterwards. Only the Czar of all the Russians is credited with such autocraey ; and if the working men are to be the power in the land which the Premier professes they should be, they will yet have a voice in the yielding to Tawhiao of these important concessions. If this is to be the result of visits to the Maori Xing and his people then we cannot approve of the policy of seeking such interviews. Tawhiao reserves to himself all the rights and privileges of his position, and is well rewarded for his persistency in asking back Waikato. What guarantee have the colonists of New Zealand that next year Tawhiao will not be even more richly rewarded to afford Sir George Grey an opportunity of showing his love for the native race—for these who harbor our murderers, and who would themselves again stain their hands with our blood if the opportunity occurred of doing it without a further sacrifice of territory by confiscation. Another matter of importance to be considered before taking such a step is the claim which other tribes will have upon our sympathy and assistance in the form of returning territory confiscated, a sample of which wo have just had in the application of the East Coast natives for the return of portions of the Patutahi lands, now about to be offered to public competition at Gisborne, and from the sale of which a very handsome sum is expected to be realised. We are told that roads will follow through the King country, and that this will be the thin end of the wedge to a settlement of all native aukatis and isolation. This remains to be seen. Fpr our own part we do not believe a word of it. Tawhiao will not be so easily lulled into submissiveness.