THE HAWKE’S BAY TIMES. NAPIER, THURSDAY, JAN. 22, 1863.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 83, 22 January 1863, Page 2

THE HAWKE’S BAY TIMES. NAPIER, THURSDAY, JAN. 22, 1863.

An inquisitive correspondent lias asked us, to our discomfort, these two most startling

questions: “What is a Civil Commissioner?” and “What are his duties ?” Oh! shade of that most respectable of witches, the renowned of Endor, help us, we beseech thee ! We should very much like to see the man who would have the audacity to venture a reply to these two tremendous queries. It is our belief that the man does not at present exist—we will not go as far as to say he will never turn up, but that he does not at present inhabit this earth, who could, with a clear conscience, give a satisfactory answer to these questions. A Civil Commissioner is, to us, one of those profound and unutterable mysteries which do occasionally occur to the utter confusion of us sublunary dwellers, and the only attempt at answer to these most perplexing enquiries upon which we shall at present venture is, that he appears to be one of those numerous recepticles, or sinks into which a free and enlightened Government, scorning all patrimony excepting in matters appertaining to the practical part of its business, delights to pour the superfluous cash with which the public treasuiy is at all times so severely afflicted. We are, however, bound to confess, that although completely taken aback, and altogether thrown out of our usual equilibrium, by the queries before mentioned, yet upon recovering from our astonishment at the audacity of the questioner, we have found matter for very serious thought to arise out of those questions. As touching question number two, we have seen one gentleman of most profound sagacity and wisdom, basking in the sunshine of this brilliant office and enjoying its emoluments, but -we never heard it complained that he had done anything, or was likely to do anything, worthy of note in exchange for that genial temperature and its comfortable and substantial accompaniments. We have heard it remotely rumoured that a Civil Commissioner has something or other to do with the management of the natives ; but, testing this rumour by the result of our own observation, we are compelled to acknowledge that we entertain serious doubts upon the subject. Again, another adventurous solution of the difiiculty appeared in the shape of a suggestion to the effect that he was a sort of a judge whose duty it was to decide disputes arising between Natives and Europeans, and that he had full powers to act in that excellent capacity. But to this most unwarrantable extravagance we give our flat contradiction. Such a thing was never heard of, and could only emanate from the brain of the most weak-minded of men. Again, it has been privately circulated, and has of course come to our ears, that this mysterious officer has a mission from the Great Mogul to introduce that enlightened and highly elegant evidence of civilisation and the advancement of science—the renowned and immortal pig-tail. This seems a little nearer the mark, but we are not quite prepared at this moment to give in our adhesion to it; but still we have strong movings of the spirit in that direction, and shall consider of it. Finding, therefore, that it is quite beyond the question to give an answer and determine what a Civil Commissioner is, we will proceed to give our idea of what that functionary ought to be. It is well known to most of our readers as an indisputable and alarming fact that the present state of this Island, as regards the Natives, is a state of anarchy, and that if anything goes -wrong wherein those people are concerned, no attempt at remedy is made, and the matter is allowed to die a natural death, and to be quietly and decently buried in oblivion, and so got rid of. Having this grievous state of things before their eyes, and smarting under a practical infliction of its consequences, a body of respectable settlers, representing at least the wish of the Province, wrote and signed a memorial to the Governor, requesting that some sort of tribunal should be instituted for the purpose of settling disputes

between Europeans and Natives. And, as is usual in the case of all discontented and grumbling applicants to the great powers, and, as was in times past particularly and painfully illustrated in the history of our great prototypes the frogs, so it fell out with the petitioners to the terrestrial Governor Grey. They have been favored with a log in answer to their earnest call for help, and shall, if they make any further complaint, be still more signally endowed with that most voracious of frog-eaters—a stork (i.e., goose ?) This state of things, it is hardly necessary we imagine to remark, is not quietly and patiently to be endured. It appears to us that the application for the institution of a special tribunal to take cognisance of Native cases was an excellent excuse for the Government to make good places for its friends ; but that compliance with the request of the petitioners was foreign to its purpose, as is the desire to settle for once and for ever the question of—Who shall be king in the land ?