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WHAT CANTERBURY THINKS OF TARANAKI.

(From the Lyttelton Times, August 20.) "While the members of the General Assembly are engaged in dismissing native affairs, and while the present claims and future interests of the Maori race are considered with all the eloquence and experience that the House of Representatives can bring to bear on the subject, it would be strange if the Government and Legislature ignored the unhappy position of our fellow-colonists at Taranaki. The people of Taranaki had to bear the whole brunt of the late war; we have all heard of their losses and sufferings, and many have borne witness to the courage with which they endured the necessary privations of a struggle carried on over the site of their burnt homesteads and devastated farms. But it would appear as if too many had forgotten the state the i'rovince of Taranaki is in now ; a large portion of the European lands being still held by threatening bands of Maoris, who offer every day some fresh insult to the English, whom they look on as cowed and half-con-quered intruders. The ruined settlers, unable to return to their usual avocations, are living hardly on military pay, while their hearts are sick with deferred hope. They have held up for a long time with the prospect of the General Assembly before them, and they had received the assurance of Sir George Grey and individual members of the government that Taranaki should be restored to more than its old prosperity. But the Governor's speech on opening the Assembly was a cruel blow to their hopes. We do not wonder that his Excellency is extremely cautious at this moment in approaching such a powder-magazine as Taranaki, and that he is careful to keep all inflammable matter as much in the background as possible, consistently with justice, humanity, and the honor of the Crown he represents. But after all the promises on the one iiand, and the threats on the other that the Government have lec drop on (he subject of Taranaki, it is a cause of indignant surprise to many others besides the people of that province, that no mention whatever was made of the case in bis Excellency’s speech on opening the house of assembly. As soon as tins omission became known there, Mr. Hulke moved the following resolution in the provincial council, which was embodied in an address to his Excellency from the Superintendent and Council, praying him to authorize the loan of £200,000 on the terms already agreed upon by the council, to compensate the settlers for losses sustained during the war;

“ That this Council feels both surprised and hurt at the omission in the Governor s opening address’ to the house of assembly at Wellington, of all allusion to the critical position of the province of Taranaki with regard to its native population. That a province in which martial law is in force, and lias been for over two years and a half, in which European settlers have been wantonly murdered without respect to age, in which armed bodies of natives have been suifered with impunity to burn, plunder, and destroy property to a large amount, and to bold by right of conquest a largo and highly cultivated district, deserves, in the opinion of this Council,'some consideration in a speech of such importance, more particularly as the greater part of its population are now obliged to be supported by the general or provincial governments, all agricultural pursuits and trade hav; ing long ago ceased to exist, the remaining population being centred in town or at the stockades, whilst a very large body have been expatriated to Nelson by order of the military authorities.” No one who considers the present position oftho memorialists can wonder at the rather indignant language in which it is couched. We are not prepared to endorse the propositions therein made for the relief of the ruined settlers, but we do feel most strongly the injustice of allowing the present session of the Assembly to pass over w ithout taking steps either to reinstate them in their property or else to compensate them for the loss of it. If the interests of the Colony require that the Government should, for the present, wink atthe lawless occupation by the Maoris of some of the property of iiritish colonists, and at the intimidation which renders the rest untenable, then surely the Colony is morally bound to indemnify tile owners of the property's© sacrificed for the public good. Wc fee! sure that neither the Government nor the Assembly wish to sacrifice these long-enduring men and their families ; and they cannot consider their duty done if. while the position of the Maoris is considered from every point of view, that of our own countrymen should be passed over and neglected. This would, indeed, be sentimental philanthropy. Although, of course, every one in New Zealand must have read and heard a great deal about the war at Taranaki wc do not think that people at a distance have realized to themselves the losses and sufferings of individual settlers, or that they can conceive flic gloom cast over the province by the silence of the Governor’s speech with respect to its present position. A letter which we publish, from a former correspondent, and the following extracts from a letter handed to us by a gentleman in this province, will give some idea of the state of the ease. They are both productions of well-known and highly-respect-ed Taranaki settlers, who were actively engaged during the war : “No one can have any idea of what the people here have gone through. We got a room at a public house ; in the whole house about fifty souls were crammed ; it was just inside the trenches, no liquor was sold after five o’clock, p.m., and men, women and children came in trailing through the mud and wet to lie down on the taproom floor. '* * * I eventually got a house. A week after my child was born, the alarm sounded at night; all I could do was to place a revolver within my wife's reach and go to my post. What wonder if her health failed and my boy died. My income from saw mill and land was at the rate of £SOO a year; every atom of this is gone; the house burned first, then the mill: the working bullocks were driven away, the rest I have bad to sell. * * * Ido not tell you this because I repine or complain ; while God spares me life, health and strength, I steadily- keep my shoulder to tlie wheel, ami thank God it is no worse; I tell you, because it may give you some idea of (he sullerings of those who really did suffer; those who had not otiucr’s pay like myself, those who had to do duty as privates every other night; when (he militia had about. 10U great coats for about. 500 duty men ; when the great-coat was handed in wet in the morning by the man who had been fortunate enough to have the use of it, and was handed out again at night to the next piquet, still wet; when soldiers and militiamen dropped down on duty with exhaustion ; when disease, consequent on overcrowding, shortness of food and fuel, took two or three members of a family away by death. It was said that, the Government did not allow anyone to starve ; true, but when the deportation of the families without the husbands took place, those families were first sent who were drawing rations; and so many gave up the rations and starved. Of those who have been driven from their homos, all have suffered more than we have. What little money has been made out of (he war has got into the hands of a few contractors.” This touching and manly letter speaks for itself. If the demoralising influences alluded to in the memorial have developed some of the vices of human nature and proved too strong for some of the sullerers by the war, we cannot with justice dwell oh the despair of neglected men, but should rather remember the patience and courage shown on the whole by the people of Taranaki.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HBT18620925.2.11.3

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 65, 25 September 1862, Page 5 (Supplement)

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,370

WHAT CANTERBURY THINKS OF TARANAKI. Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 65, 25 September 1862, Page 5 (Supplement)

WHAT CANTERBURY THINKS OF TARANAKI. Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 65, 25 September 1862, Page 5 (Supplement)

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