CORRESPONDENCE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume I, Issue 19, 7 November 1861, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

the Editor of the Hawke's Bay Times. Sir, —"To judge from the tone used by some individuals at this moment engaged in discussing the sore question of our relations with the Natives, one might he very readily led into the belief that those Natives were a despised and a persecuted people people who have been for long years past, and were at this present time, suffering from the most tyrannous oppression,—a people groaning under a terrible and a groaning yoke,—a people whose birthright had been violently wrested from them, and who were cast into the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage. Such views as this, to those who are more perfectly acquainted with the Maori character, and who have enjoyed opportunities of judging more correctly from personal contact with them, are exquisitely false ; and nothing can be more self-condemnatory than to suppose that that is the real condition of the case on behalf of the Maories. So for from it, they have been pampered and petted, soothed and coaxed, like spoiled children, until, from the total absence of stern and wise correction in the course of their training, they now turn in contempt upon their teachers, and in fact are endeavoring to administer to us that salutary chastisement which, had we been wise, we should have long ago have inflicted upon them. lhat there should be found amongst us people of our ow r n nation and kindred, who are desirous of shielding the Maories from the consequences of their headstrong folly in taking the adjustment of cases of minor affliction into their own hands, is very much to be deplored, for so long as the Natives are supported in the extravagant and lawless conduct which they have now adopted, so long will they continue in the same course, and go on from bad to worse, until they are finally drawn into the commission of some unpardonable outrage, when the vials of wrath with be uncorked, and the long-pent vengeance of an exasperated people will be pored out upon them with a fury and a determination which will sweep the deluded creatures from the face of the earth, and “ they, like the baseless fabric of a vision, will leave not a wreck behind.”

There could be found some substantial reason in support and palliation of Native aggressions if the cause which had led to those aggressions had been of a nature to warrant the adoption of extreme measures ; for it cannot be shewn by even the most ardent and unflinching supporters of the Maories and their interests, that their case is a case of such terrible hardship and long suffering as to warrant their taking violent and decided steps for the redress of the grievances and removal of the evils under which they at present labor. What is the cause of all this disturbance of our peaceful relations ? Have men, women, and children been seized and sold into remorseless captivity ? Has the property of these people been forcibly wrested from under their very eyes ? Have the ties of kindred and of love, which bind this afflicted people together,—which sooth their days of hardship and their nights of sorrow, been violently rent asunder, without pity, compassion, or shame? Have the tombs of their venerated ancestors been sacrilegiously ravished of their sacred contents ? Or have these long-suffering people groaned under the lash of a ferocious and merciless taskmaster, that the cup of peace should be thus dashed untasted from our lips ? No, not one of these horrors ! No, not one of these frightful miseries has been inflicted upon this headstrong and stiff-necked people to drive them into a course of self-defence and of manly resistance. Shame, then, for ever should cover the face of those who cry out at this time “ Peace ! peace ! when there is no peace.” The Natives of this part of New Zealand may, with great truth, be likened to a human barometer. There was no better indicator of the state of affairs during the Taranaki war than the fluctuating conduct of the Maories of Hawke’s Bay. If the troops were successful, down fell the mercury of their feelings to below zero, and they were friendly. If, on the other hand, their own people succeeded in obtaining an advantage, up went that lively indicator to fever heat, and they threatened to exterminate the whole white population ; and thus they have vacillated between one extreme and the other according as they received what they considered to be good or bad intelligence. Upon the failure or success of that fighting at Taranaki hung the enmity or friendship of the whole Native population of New Zealand

from one end of the island to the other, with few exceptions, and those exceptions are to be traced rather to some unquenchable tribal or family feud than to any real sympathy in the cause of the white. And, as was anticipated, so it has turned out. The fight at Taranaki began and ended in volumes of smoke, out of which no living fire has been extracted, and the Natives, taking heart from our weaknessaudforbearance,laugh us to scorn and treat us with that contempt which our vacillating and undecided conduct richly deserves. And it is a lamentable fact, but not the less true and not the less forcibly, apparent to us now, that all the evils which are now fast developing out of the chaos, are evils the seed of which was sown by the misdirected energy of those martyrs in the cause of truth—the missionaries. If during our intercourse with them, the Natives of New Zealand had uniformly shewn indications of great simplicity of character, or even had they, on occasions of moment to their interests, evinced ignorance of their own advantage, then those good-natured creatures who now contend in their behalf could show good and just reason for offering shelter and protection to this innocent and unwary people. But, unfortunately for the views of these benevolent men, from our earliest connection with these Natives down to the present time, they have given, upon all occasions, the most unmistakeable evidence of extreme shrewdness—a shrewdness and an ability in matters of bargain and of sale, and of all other things appertaining to them and their profit, which was truly astonishing astonishing even to those simpleminded men the early missionaries, who, after a short time had elapsed from the beginning of their teachings of these people, found that their wares were more difficult to dispose of than they at first anticipated, and in short they speedily discovered that the Maories were such apt scholars in the art of laying up treasures “ where the moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal,” that it was only by the utmost use of their superior talents and ingenuity that our beloved apostles of the Faith succeeded in keeping their reverend noses above water.

I warn the people of Hawke’s Bay against lending an ear to the false and pernicious doctrine which some are now strenuously endeavoring to disseminate amongst us—that the Natives are justified in setting our laws and institutions at defiance, for that we, in our dealings with them, have over-reached and grossly misused them, and that, furthermore, if it comes to a question of blows, the Natives will scatter us like chaff before the ■wind, and that once let them begin to jierform a war dance over our valuable scalps, than the two or three hundred strong and able young men now located in this Province would be swept away like stubble consumed by fire, or as the grass falls under the hands of the mower. The present attitude assumed by the Maories is an attitude which they have not assumed without due and careful weighing of the chances for and against success. They find us at this moment undergoing a process of transition ; they see before them a miserable grub, crawling on its hundred legs gathering prey, and they shrewdly suspect that, as many of the grub tribe presently turn into ravenous instruments of devastation, it is not unlikely that we are now undergoing that to them disastrous transformation ; and they therefore, while yet we lie prostrate and supine before them, will endeavor to extract our rudimentary fangs, and make such terms with us as will effectually put a stop to the gratification of our ravenous propensities upon a future occasion. All savage and half-civilised people respect that which is manly, frank, and determined, and despise all that is sneaking, cowardly, and false, indifferently whether these characteristics appear in those who are their enemies, or those who would be, if they could, their friends. Notwithstanding that they themselves give more frequent instances of the latter than the former condition of their minds, their intuitive respect for all that is brave is as strong as their intuitive contempt for all that is mean. If this hypothesis be correct, the only course which is left open for the final settlement of the present unsatisfactory state of our relations with the Natives is, first, to assert and enforce our physical superiority, and that being satisfactorily done, proceed to establish our mental superiority by treating them with justice, legislating for them with wisdom, and governing ihera with firmness. Then, and not till then, shall we live at peace and amity with these people. Yours, &c.. No Missionary. Country Districts, 4th Nov., 1861.