CANON STOWELL AND THE NEW ZEALAND SETTLERS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 64, 18 September 1862, Page 5 (Supplement)

CANON STOWELL AND THE NEW ZEALAND SETTLERS.

[ln confirmation of the opinions we have given expression to in our leading article, we print the following letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Muter, of the GOth Billes, who resided for some time in New Zealand.] —Xeio Zealand Examiner, June 12. To the Editor of the Manx Sun. Sin, —As a Douglas man may 1 claim to reply to a speech of the Kev. Canon Stowell, of Manchester, reported in your columns of the 2nd of November last, as being delivered to the Doiurlas Branch of the Isle of Man Auxiliary to the Church Missionary Society. Had the subject been of less importance I would not have recalled to the recollection of your readers words spoken so many months ago, 1 dare say spoken vaguely, without intention of insult and misrepresentation, and, perhaps, with no idea that they would travel beyond the select few who heard them. Yet this speech has been copied into the New Zealand papers, and has been denounced by Bishop Selwyn, the great leader of Missionary enterprise in the Pacific, from the pulpit as untrue. Mr. Stowell declares New Zealand “to be the brightest gem in the diadem of the Society, and a beautiful specimen of the work of Christ in these latter days.” Before proceeding further he thinks it necessary to reconcile this with the rebellion of the natives against our Queen, the cold-blooded murders of peaceful colonists, and the utter dedestruction of one of the finest settlements in the colony, and thus he docs it “ Who has brought this trouble ou New Zealand —was it not the grasping, unfair, and oppressive emigrants? How did the civilized settlers treat the natives? Why, in the way that hunters treat wild animals they hewed them up and cut them down to make way for their boasted civilization. Alas! alas! that British civilization should so far forget itself as to allow the aborigines to be cut down and treated like dogs. It is to be deplored, however, that the dark pages of colonization will little bear to be inspected. It should be remembered that New Zealand is not a conquered country, and we have no right to tread it down with the heel of oppression as if it had been won by the sword. On the contrary, it was won by the sword of the Spirit; it was Chrisianity that brought New Zealand under the sceptre of England’s Queen, and Christian England ought to sec that the natives have fair play. The emigrants—in many cases the off-scouring and vagabonds of our own country —ought not to be allowed to take advantage of the ignorance of the natives, and oppress them as they have done—to a great extent pillaging their lands from them, and then when the natives turn round to defend themselves they arc cried out against as rebels and savages, and we are called upon to cut them down.” Having reached the grade of lieutcnant-coloncl in the army, as you may suppose, I have travelled far and wide over our colonial empire, and over the scenes of missionary labour in India and China, and I cannot but deeply regret to see a dignitary of the Church of England commit himself and his cause by such a perversion of facts. Those who have not visited New Zealand cannot form a conception of the injustice and cruelty of these remarks. It is thus these unfortunate people are to be represented to their countrymen after all they have suffered, and with a tempest of disaster impending. Has Mr. Stowell’s study of the dark pages of colonisation taught him so little P But plausible theories in Exeter Hall and in quiet rooms in Douglas brosk down before stubborn realities. Those who best know men in a low state of civilisation know this truth—that the more conceded to their demands, the more insolent and unreasonable they become. Those who know New Zealand best know that our policy in that country has been one continued concession. The horror of a New Zealand war has never been absent from the minds of the rulers—it has tinged every act of their policy. No one knows this better than the Maori. Seeing that we gave to the pressure they have advanced, and we have backed and backed before encroaching savages till wc now stand on the edge of the precipice, where to back further is .destruction. The Anglo-Saxon has endured from the Maori what he has never before

submittal to, save from the Norman Conqueror. From the massacre of Wairau to the massacre at Taranaki, the colonists have submitted to deeds the remembrance of which makes their blood boil with indignation, and the contempt held for them by the savage grows with the patience of the settlor. Had Mr. Stowcll to deal with these iron he would find that the right urged by Bob Boy is that planted in their hearts, as it underlies all human rigid, “that he should take who has the power, and ho should keep who can.” The only hope now left to us of averting the great war, the war not between the soldiers and the natives, but the far more dreadful one, between the Maori and the settlers, is in the intelligence of the former, who may see that it is impossible for the latter to retire further, that they stand on the brink of the chasm, and that any farther pressure would lead to a death grapple. It is of men thus situated that Mr. Stowell has made these remarks ; but, sir, you may depend upon this, that if the struggle comes, the Maori is lost; it is he that will go down the precipice, not we, for the instinct of the nation is true ; and if the war must come—-which every means under heaven will have been tried to avert—then the native race is doomed, and whatever may bo the tale told by the dark pages of colonisation, at any rate our race Will emerge from this struggle with a clear conscience. If the patience and Christian endurance of the settlers can avert this war, they are entitled to the sympathy and support of their countrymen at home, if not, they are more entitled to that sympathy and support than were the English in India during the mutiny. The colonists of Now Zealand may well pass with contempt such epithets as off-scouring and vagabond, because as a section of society they believe that they stand the highest in the world. My impression is, that they arc correct in this opinion. First, because the emigration from Europe to the country lias been the most carefully conducted, and the most select ever despatched from one country to another. Second, because it requires something energetic and buoyant to float to the Antipodes. Third, because the tendency of a prosperous Colony is to raise and elevate the individual, to give him a hopeful future and scope for action. For these reasons I say that if you picked one hundred thousand people at random in England, and compared them with the colonists of New Zealand, you would find the colonists, both socially and morally, higher in the scale. I have twice visited New Zealand, and my observations arc strongly in favor of this supposition. When the Maori will have become a matter of history—when the only trace left of them will be in some swarthy cheeks of (ho far-olf descendants of the settlers—New Zealand will still be a bright gem in the diadem of the Church, but this will ho due to the English, and not to the Maori race. Every elfort of the true Missionary is to bring them together—not to widen the breach. Amalgamation is the only chance for this decaying race—words tending to a broader separation arc more injurious, to those he intends to benefit, than the rov. canon can readily believe. Your obedient servant, D. T). M.