Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY MAY 1, 1863.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 111, 1 May 1863, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY MAY 1, 1863.

A short time since we published the memorial of the Taranaki settlers addressed to Her Majesty the Queen, which memorial sets forth in a concise and clear manner the present state of that settlement and the causes which have led thereto.

It is probable that we may read and reread and search through the numerous strata of the history of different nations without finding an instance in which people have been exposed to greater or more severe trial and humiliation, and have submitted to that galling tribulation with more patience, with more long-suffering, or with more heroic endurance than our brethren in Taranaki.

We look upon the address to which we refer as one of the most remarkably touching and affecting appeals to the protection and to the justice of their Queen ever made by any body of men in any part of the British Empire. This appeal is rendered even, if possible, more forcible by the simple, respectful, but firm manner in which it is worded.

That a body of loyal British subjects, who have abandoned the peaceful security of their Mother Country to find and to make a new home in the uttermost parts of the earth, in the firm belief and conviction that the same protection which they enjoyed under British law and British institutions in the old country would he accorded to them in the new, should find that not only have they to contend against all the obstacles which nature has set between them and the accomplishment of the. object they had in view when they landed, but they have to contend against greater difficulties than any which nature has raised up, in a succession of the worst ami weakest acts of Government which has ever disgraced the annals of a British Colony. “ Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” and we read in the memorial in question a record painful in the extreme of hope deferred, and deferred again and again, until it makes the heart even of the reader sicken to contemplate such a harrowing and heartrending picture. Those brave but hardly-used men, the settlers of Taranaki, are indeed a brilliant example of what an amount of ill-Govern-ment a people may submit to without having recourse to open and determined rebellion against that Government. And it is fair to judge from his subsequent conduct, that our peace-loving Governor, Sir George Grey, was rather taken aback by the plain, honest, and most unmistakeably forcible appeal which those much-neglected and grievously afflicted people have made from him and his weak

and puerile administration to the highest power which they recognise on earth. It is recorded that Sir George had no sooner read the memorial than be called together all his wise men and soothsayers, and, regardless of the state of the Weather, took himself and them with all speed to the scene of the inditement of the obnoxious and alarming missive. But what went the people out for to see ? A Governor of a British Colony in all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war, come amongst them to hear their prayer for redress, and to help them to get back some portion of their stolen and pillaged properties, and to restore them to their dear but ruined and desolated homes ? No ! It was, after all, but a reed shaken in the wind.

In another column we have published the questions put by the settlers of Taranaki to Sir George Grey on his arrival amongst them —questions the importance of which is so great that they tell in conjunction with the memorial to which we have drawn attention, a concise and clear tale of the real state of Taranaki both past and present. From these questions it would seem that the settlers of that once thriving but still beautiful Province are determined to force out of the reluctant Governor some declaration of his intentions. Really, to judge from the tone assumed by Sir George, and by the ridiculous ignorance he professed of all that related to the state of affairs at Taranaki, it would seem that that unfortunate settlement was situated somewhere nearer the other extremity of the earth, and not at this extremity, and that he had been specially deputed and sent over to ascertain the real state of the case, and thus afford the Home Government some information upon which they might safely take action. It is hardly possible to conceive a more heartless or more studied piece of cruelty than this pretended ignorance of Sir George Grey’s of the condition of Taranaki. Everybody knows the unhappy condition of our fellow colonists located there. It is known all over the world. It is known as well in the backwoods of distracted America, and in the fashionable saloons of peaceful England, as it is known to every man, woman, and child, Native or European, living in New Zealand. Known ! ! indeed it is known ; and known, too, as a lasting, standing, and never-dyino' disgrace to the name of Britain. And in the face of this, in the broad light of the most wide-spread knowledge of the facts of the ease. Sir George must needs put on his diplomatic spectacles, and coolly assert that he at least was in ignorance. Yes ; before he would come out of the pit of darkness into which he has descended, before he would so far remember his duties as a Christian man and fellow-countryman, to say nothing of his duties as the representative of the Queen, this pink of diplomatic skill and statesmanship must positively insist upon the questions which these respectful but heart-broken people wished to ask him being put in writing, without compliance in which demand he was firmly determined to have nothing to say to them. How long, 0 people, how long will ye submit to all this folly and cruelty.

We ave anxious to believe that Sir George Grey finds out at last that all his talk about “ goodness and love,” and stuff of that sort> will not save him from adopting such measures as will make it apparent to his “ children” the Maories that, if they won’t be satisfied with his reiterated assurance of his undying affection for them and of his desire to save them from destruction, or other disagreeable contingency of a like nature, he must proceed at ones to illustrate his theory of “ goodness and love” by giving them a practical thrashing, and make them pay for that luxury into the bargain, and by this salutary means make them aware that he has become satisfied that longer to spare the rod will spoil the child. Whether the Governor means business at Taranaki, with all that array of fighting men

and general demonstration of'physical force, we cannot just now determine satisfactorily. He is such a slippery gentleman that when one is most sanguine of his being drawn into a corner and cut off from all retreat, he slips away, and cuts his diplomatic capers with greater vigour than ever. It is, however, most devoutly to be wished that he will be drawn into a collision with the Natives, and will be obliged to fight the matter out like a man.