THE HAWKE’S BAY TIMES. NAPIER, THURSDAY. OCT. 30, 1862.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 70, 30 October 1862, Page 2

THE HAWKE’S BAY TIMES. NAPIER, THURSDAY. OCT. 30, 1862.

A correspondent (tvliose communication we give elsewhere) has favored us with an account of another of those valuable illustrations of the nobility of the Maori character and their great love of justice, law, and order, which has rendered the Province of Hawke’s Bay famous in the annals of the Colony. From what we can learn, the natives concerned in this case of outrage are of somewhat high rank—belonging to that class referred to by Mr. Fitz Gerald in the House of Representatives, as members of the “ Maori nobility” which he was so anxious to see placed side by side with the elite of the land, in the Legislative Council, the administration of the Colonial Government, and the House of Representatives, as also in all subordinate legislative assemblies, Courts of Law, &e. They seem to be the very individualsthat originated the “grass-money question” at Petane, which has at times nearly led to collision and loss of life amongst us, and which has, by the insane action of the administratars of justice in these cases, elevated the will of the Maori above all law and right. It may appear somewhat strange to folks at a distance from the Colony that people such as these, who are so jealous of their imaginary right to extort payment by the “ strong arm” for the consumption of herbage growing on unoccupied and uncultivated wastes by the cattle of the settler, should yet make so free with his fenced and cultivated lands, nor hesitate to resort to personal violence wherever their absurd demands are in the slightest degree resisted. Their conduct when the circumstances of the case are reversed, shows clearly enough that they know full well they are in the wrong when they take forcible possession of another's property, and enforce their wills with violence and abuse —hut as at the same time they feel that they are beyond the reach of the law when they are its transgressors, and arc sure of impunity, they act accordingly.