BISHOP SELWYN’S ADDRESS TO THE WAIKATOES.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 96, 9 March 1863, Page 3

BISHOP SELWYN’S ADDRESS TO THE WAIKATOES.

[ From the Sydney Morning Herald.~\ Those of our readers who take an interest in the affairs of New Zealand, (and who. can be indifferent to great a colony—distressed by calamities so oppressive ?) must have read the address of Bishop Selwyn with much astonishment. We can only account for his proceedings under a general explanation that when men suffer their minds to be seized with one idea it assumes an irresistible tyranny, absorbs all their faculties to itself, and disqualifies them even to recognise those considerations which are adverse to their dominant passion. Our readers have only to recal the facts connected with the New Zealand war to estimate the amount of temerity and folly displayed by this onceesteemed, we doubt not in many points excellent, but—by the misdirection of his talents—now, we fear, most mischievous man. We find him in the midst of the camp of the Maori king, paying his homage in the most formal and ostentatious manner to his authority, and defaming his own countrymen, and creating in the minds of the Maories an impression of their own power and right which will probably end in their destruction. The Bishop, of course, appears among them us a peace-maker, but when he speaks he seems to denude himself of all those qualities and characteristics which ought to belong to him as a British subject—to say nothing of his Episcopal relations. It moves one's indignation to find him so addressing men who have recently returned from pillaging the settlers —who have shed their blood upon their own hearths—who have shot them down on the highway, and who are occupying land which was sold to the settlers by the Crown. When we recollect this, and find him standing there and telling the natives that there are only two persons who have done wrong, we can hardly credit the testimony of our own sight. There, however, is the speech printed at the Mission press.

Who, then, are those two persons who only have done wrong, according to Bishop Selwyn ? The first is the man who, having an undisputed title to sell his land, sold it to the British Grown ! —sold it after the most formal and deliberate examination ; and the other man who did wrong is the Governor who told the natives that they should not fight their battles in the settlement, but submit to the law, and that all persons having full titles to sell the land, and disposed to part with it, should be unmolested in the exercise of that right by native interdict, from whatever quarter. What an amount of infatuation, not to say passion, must have possessed itself of the mind of a man in a position like the Bishop, who can utter such an accusation against the Governor of a colony, especially to men who have avowed, and never retracted that avowal, to resist the British authority by force of arms ' To this present moment no sort of atonement has ever been made for the injury done to the settlers by the Maories. To this hour they assert their right, by conquest, to hold possession of the land of our countrymen ; and not one of those who have imbued their bands in blood, and with all the stealth and malignity of assassination—has been brought to judgment! The Bishop himself had not influence, in consequence of his English race to obtain the common indulgence of a wayfaring man ! Sir George Grey's government purchased the wreck of a ship upon the coast because he hud full intimation that the natives would resist the removal of the property. In such a state of things—6,ooo men in arms

—every movement made under the threat and with the momentary expectation of war, the Bishop can find no other language to address to this rebel government and rebellions people, than that there are two persons who have done wrong—one, the man that sold the land, and the other the Governor who supported the law ; who upheld the Royal authority in the first instance by the most gentle remonstrances, and in the second with the firmness which was due to his position and to the dignity of the Crown. [ To be concluded in our tfc.r^j.