THE GLOBE. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1881. THE NATIVE CRISIS.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2359, 25 October 1881, Page 3

THE GLOBE. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1881. THE NATIVE CRISIS.

Events in connection with Native affairs are being developed with somewhat startling rapidity. The Government evidently mean business, and have closed with several of the offers made by Volunteer companies to proceed to the front. As will he seen by reference to another column, the Wellington Naval Brigade are under orders to leave for the West Coast on Wednesday night, and the Nelson, Marlborough, and Thames Volunteers have been wired to hold themselves in readiness for immediate embarkation. Already six out of the fourteen days given to the Natives to make up their minds have passed away, and if after another eight days they make no sign, they will have to put up with the consequences, and meet as best they may the united efforts of a country thoroughly aroused by the unreasonable and unreasoning attitude taken up by Te Whiti and his followers. The accounts we have received from Parihaka are certainly of a most contradictory character. By some it would appear as if the prophet had not fixed upon the most advisable course to pursue ; by others the Natives are declaring to be preparing for war. One thing, however, may he taken for granted, namely, that the indifference at times assumed by the Maoris is put on, for the proclamation having been thoroughly well circulated in Parihaka they cannot but he aware of the fact that their present position is vastly different from that which they occupied some little time back, and that a crisis has arrived when they will be compelled to make np their minds one way or the other. It is to bo hoped that the energetic attitude assumed by the Ministry will have its due weight on the Native mind. The arrival of Volunteers from various parts of the country must give them a considerable insight into the resources of the Government. To compare great things with small, just as the arrival of a body of Indian troops during the RussoTurfcish war opened out to the Russian mind possibilities which had never previously struck it, so the arrival of bodies of men from different directions will give Te Whiti an inkling of the power against which he may have previously thought it on the cards to contend. Te Whiti, as everybody knows, lives an isolated life at Parihaka, and the horizon of his views is but limited. He very probably has but a small idea of the fact that, outside of the standing body of men kept by Government and the few Volunteers in his neighbourhood, there exists a reserve of armed colonists who are ready on any emergency to como forward and fight in any cause which they consider just. The sight of the varied uniforms of the Volunteers, and the knowledge of the fact that behind the new-comers there are numerous other bodies ready to fight if occasion requires, will most probably tell with great force on the mind of Te Whiti and the Natives. If hostilities break out the Volunteers would, at first at all events, no doubt be used as a reserve to garrison the redoubts and protect the settlers, but their services will prove invaluable. Both materially and morally the effect of their presence cannot hut be good, while, if called upon to enter into active service in the hush, they will certainly show that the dicta of competent and impartial critics, to the effect that finer material for soldiers than that out of which our Volunteers are made it would he impossible to find were not given hastily or without ample foundation.

We have before alluded to the unpatriotic attempts of a section of the Opposition Press to cry down the action taken by the Government as barbarous and hasty. We have shown that, on the contrary, the utmost patience has been displayed in dealing with the question, and that it would be next door to impossible to find, in the annals of the relations between Europeans and Natives, any case at all parallel in long-suffering to the one under consideration. The latest development of the case, as constructed by the Opposition Press, is to endeavor to prove that the confiscation has been nullified by lapse of time, and that the Government has no claim whatsoever on the lands about which such a fuss has been made. It is singular that this view has been brought forward only at the present moment. When Sir George Grey was in power and was busying his mind with regard to the settling of colonists on those lands not a whisper of such a nature was circulated. His attempts proved abortive by reason of his indecision and incapacity as an administrator, but, had he succeeded in opening out the Waimate plains and other confiscated territory, it is very certain we should have heard nothing of tho cry which has been taken up. The Opposition Press know well enough that the claim of successive Governments on the land has never been relinquished, and that the only reason why it was not enforced was on account of the attitude of the Natives in those parts. These successive Governments have never acquiesced in the Native theory that, if confiscated land is not at once taken up, it is to bo considered abandoned. It is a recognised principle in the laws of all civilized nations that claims may lie dormant oven if there be some reasons for their enforcement. Much more then may they still be considered in force when tho only reason that they have never been acted upon is that they have been kept in the back-ground by active obstruction. This unpatriotic section of tho Opposition Press has, for electioneering purposes we presume, made common cause with tho Natives even to the length of adopting their crude theories on legal rights, Shame upon it! we say, and we feel confident that all practical, right-thinking, and patriotic colonists will re-echo the sentiment.