AN AUCKLAND VIEW OF THE NATIVE QUESTION.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1561, 19 February 1879, Page 4

AN AUCKLAND VIEW OF THE NATIVE QUESTION.

[Prom the Auokhmd " Free Lanoe.''] Native affairs are the great New Zealand mystery, and. just at present, we have two great medicine men engaged in managing ■ them. The sayings and doings of Tawhiao, or whatever his last name may be, are chronioled, morning and evening, in Auckland, with all the solemnity of a Court journal, and we have only to be thankful that we are spared the infliction of a daily record of the colors of his majesty's mat, or the state of preservation of his most gracious majesty's well-worn blanket. As for Eewi, his sayings and his silences are recorded by most of our contemporaries as if tbe fate of nations depended on what that venerable savage had for supper, whether he was pleased or angry at what the Government said or did, or did not or said not. Now we don't grudge our contemporaries the full flavor of flunkeyism which is to be got out of recording the doings of Maori kings, prime ministers, or bugs. This sort of thing is dear to the souls of some people, and it would be cruel to deprive them of it; but there may be too much even of a good thing, and we fancy the public have had nearly enough o* this sort of thing. In a certain sense, no doubt, the Maori King and Rewi may be considered important persons, but their real importance is mostly of our own making. We have heard a great deal about the pacification of the country by Sir George Grey's meetings with Tawhiao, but we have a strong suspicion that it is all bunkum. The game is too much in the "heads I win, tails you lose," stage for our table. This constant interviewing of sulky savages suits their dignity very well, we suppose, but what has it ever done for us ? When Sir Donald McLean did it, Sir George Grey and Mr Sheehan denounced the whole business as folly and something very like treason, because protected murderers were at the meetings. Now Sir George Grey and Mr Sheehan do exactly as their predecessors did—the same to' \y is done over again, the same murderers with two or throe new oneß added are at their m etings.and we aretxpected to consider it thesa / mg of the country ! Thisis just a little too st;>ng for our Btomachj, and it is Burely time a little common seme took some share intheprooedings. What does all this interviewing mem, and what will it end in ? Our owa impros*

smn is that it means just tho same now that it j meant three years 'ago. It means the unlimited flour and sugar, blankets, and saddles, in tho first place. It means tall talk by the Maoris and fencing by the Ministers. It means the attempt t,o make the so-called king and some of his chief followers pen- j eion»rs on the colony in the hope that they I will value their pensions more than the excitement of a shindy with the settlers. This may be all very well in its way, but it is neither new nor statesmanlike. Sir Georgß G-rey may wear Sir Donald McLean's cast off political clothing with more dignity than its late owner could assume, but it is ungratefnl to forget to whom it belonged originally. Of course we shall be glad to sec tho raiment worn to some purpose by the present proprietor. We shall rejoice to hear of anything being actually done by means of all this eating and drinking and speeihit'ying, but we confess we don't expect it. When we a?o the Maori potentates do something beside eating and drinking and speech-making, wo shall begin to believe ; when wo see the lands now shut up and under the bar opened and sold or leased to tho Government, and in the hands of the working Pettier, we shall begin to see the end of the nativo difficulty, and, what will be almost as good, an end of official humbug. So far it is jrnt as well to admit that nothing has been done. Certainly we have had no disturbances, but, fortunately, that is no new thing. On the other hand, we have not got leave to make roads over the King Country ; we have not got liberty to survey a Jine of railway; wo have not got a right to buy or lease land in the interior ; we have not even got Tawhiao to accept a Bubsidy, Balary, pension, or bribe, whichever we choose to call it, as tho price of his general goodwill. In the mean time wo are spending a deal of good money in making a lot of savages think their goodwill essential to our very existence. *The result of this may be felt by and by in a wav we shall not like.