ALLEGIANCE versus INDEPENDENCE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 103, 3 April 1863, Page 3

ALLEGIANCE versus INDEPENDENCE.

To the Editor of the Hawke's Bay Times. Sir, —Your issue of the 16th instant contains a report of a case tried in the Resident Magistrate’s Court at Napier, in which a Native was convicted of larceny ; one noteworthy feature of the case being the fact that “Tareha” sat on the bench with the R. M. This at once raises the questions, Is it necessary to be a subject of the British throne to qualify a person to sit as a magistrate in a British Colony ? Is it required that no man may administer the law B until he has been sworn in to decide “without fear or favour” on behalf of our sovereign lady the Queen ? Is the person named Tareha a subject of Queen Victoria? Has he

sworn fealty to her Majesty, her heirs, and successors ? If he has not, what right has he on the bench, administering law in the name of the tyueen ? On the other hand, if he has been sworn in, and vowed faithful allegiance, how does it happen that he takes on himself as “lieutenant of King Potatau” to stop road making occasionally, and by threats of violence compel the Provincial Government to pay him for liberty to make roads, or for the waste gravel taken from the “bed of a river” for road making. If sovereignty means anything at all, it surely means the right to make roads and bridge rivers, as well as to use the rivers either for navigation or road-making. Again, how does Tareha’s supposed subjection to the Queen tally with his sending of official notice to the Queen’s magistrates that in future they are to abstain from meddling with any cases of dispute between Maori and Pakeha, as the Maori Eunanga (i.e. the King’s Court,) will alone decide these cases ; for such, according to the official organ, (the Hawke's Bag Herald,) was the purport of a bouncible letter from “Tareha and his confreres to the Queen’s representative” some time ago. Is allegiance to the Queen of Britain a thing to be assumed when convenient, and repudiated at pleasure ? Is it not time to decide, and no longer halt between two opinions ; if the Maori race are independent, and they are practically admitted to be so whenever they cross the path of the Government, why are not our international relations established on a clearer basis, and the heavy expense of ‘pretending to govern them avoided ? Why is our money expended so lavishly on their behalf, or to amuse them ? Why should we pay for building mills for their sole benefit? Or if Maori independence is not to be acknowledged, why not enforce our laws strictly against so called chiefs as ■well as against plebeians ? Or is it in this, as in certain other matters, that laws are made to be obeyed by the quiet, the well-disposed, the weak ; to be broken by the turbulent, defied by the strong, and treated as of none effect by the high in rank ? Can any man confess that such is the state of affairs here, without feeling ashamed of his country? Yours, &c. A SAXON. Ahuriri, 23rd March, 1863.