NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 128, 29 June 1863, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT.

(From the Sydney Morning Herald, May 30.)

The notice contained in the *Otago Daily News in reference to[the. confiscation of land at New Plymouth, will give us some insight into the policy of Governor Grey. His proclamation relinquishing Waitara naturally created much astonishment, because no abdication of Government can be more formal and explicit than;that of yielding property to the demands of men, who, in the opinion of that Government, have no legal title to its possession, and who have sought it by disorder and bloodshed. We scarcely think any one would have asked for the relinquishment of Waitara had it not been mixed up with European disputes. Sir ! George Grey has taken this course as a concession to the party who were in opposition to Colonel Sir Thomas Gore Browne. He has so far seemed to sanction the charges against that honest and courageous representative of the Queen. Those who were on the spot know that the Government do not believe there exists any kind of objection against the title to the land, which would he sustainable before any tribunal. The natives are aware of the same thing, and therefore they steadily refuse to be parties to adjudication. The Governor has cut the gordian knot, and we should have given him credit for getting rid of a difficulty, and terminating a dispute in which the pride of several eminent Europeans has been implicated, had he not by the same act done an injustice to a worthy predecessor. Having done so, however he has taken now another course, and gone to the extreme of power in confiscating the property of the natives, and offering it to those who will go as military settlers and fight out the conquest with the natives themselves. Shortly after the war began we strongly recommended two measures—one the formation of a military'’ road, and the other the establishment of military colonies. In these plans there is nothing very novel, they having come down to us from the Homan Empire—that is from one of the wisest peoples of antiquity. To occupy a country usefully, it must be done in strength, and the superior race will soon degenerate into ruthless and sanguinary tyrants, unless they establish their authority beyond dispute. All the sentimentalism about the natives defending their own soil and country is pretty enough in poetry, but most pernicious in public policy. It is pernicious not only to the British who profess the rule, but to the natives who must submit or be destroyed. We naturally inquire under what view of law this course has been taken. In what light are the natives of New Zealand treated whose land is thus confiscated in ‘expiation. If the natives were murderers, other people are not involved in their guilt, unless it can he shown that they have abetted and sus-

taiued them —unless, in fact, by a proper legal tribunal the criminals are proved to he guilty. Treating them as subjects of the Queen, an inquest was held on the bodies of the slaughtered soldiers, and a verdict of wilful murder was returned against the criminals. Falling into hands of the English, they would be put upon their trial,, and if found guilty executed. 5* The law would be thus vindicated by their death, and their property would be forfeited to the Crown like that of other felons. But the disposal of a large block of country belonging to the natives considered as a race or as a tribe—its confiscation and subdivision as an act of conquest, seems to assume that the men who killed the soldiers were not assassins. The policy pursued by the Government seems to assert that they were acting in behalf of an enemy—that they were, in short, the advance guard of a military force —that their ambush was a fair stratagem of war —that in killing their foes t ey were only doing what all nations attempt whenever they think proper to appeal to arms. No one holds the soldier responsible for the blow [he strikes when he is commanded by a superior or sent out by the State ; and we cannot treat the natives a 1 once as individuals responsible for their acts alone before the tribunals of the country, and as enemies in the field whose country we have a right to_conquer and retain by right of conquest, ■

Thus we are involved by the conflict of our policy—sometimes treating the natives as hostile and unsubjugated people, 1 and at others regarding them in their individual character as amenable to our law, and entitled to its protection. There can be no doubt that the course adopted by Sir George Grey comes nearer to the true state of facts, and that we have been at war for the last two years. The natives have never made any submission. They have never offered any atonement. They have never given up a claim. They have in our a Government which professes to act in perfect independence of the Crown, and which requires and enforces obedience on the British resident in New Zealand. This last act of the natives, however barbarous in its colours, is nevertheless the consistent continuation of their previous policy, and now we are incapable of enforcing law or punishing iudividul crime, or even protecting our own people from Maori law. We are brought to a crisis which it is impossible for any Governor under any circumstances to avoid. Sir George Grey now goes further than Governor Browne ventured to go. He has established a principle will ultimately extend confiscation over a large portion of the island of New Zealand where the natives exist The time is not far distant when the policy initiated will have to be carried to its fullest limits ; and all native rights held in a state of solution, unattached to any individual whatever, but belonging to the same myth of tradition, or some reserved possibility of future population, will have to come down to the limits of facts as they are. It has been the misfortune of the natives that their rights in their own personal possessions have not been more absolute, and that while the Crown gave full effect to all titles which were personal, whether derived from their tribal relations or family inheritance—it did not claim as trustee of both races all remaining to be sold for the common benefit of all. Had this beeu done, a large revenue would have been at the disposal of Government, and a share of it might very properly have been employed in aiding

the natives in their efforts to become a civilised and prosperous people. Instead of this, the land question has never been settled upon any intelligible principle. The position of the natives lias never been defined with any great exactitude. We have sometimes had war, and sometimes we have had peace, without knowing exactly the boundary between the two conditions ; and now the Government is abandoning the right to a purchase, acquired after the most careful investigation of personal rights, such as might be due from the Government to its subjects, and has passed over at once into the policy of conquest and of confiscation. Meantime it is proclaimed that there is a fine opening for enterprising young men to acquire an independence. Fifty acres of land do not seem a very large quantity in this country, accustomed as we have been to think of estates by thousands and tens of thousands ; but it must be remembered that the land of New; Zealand is*a very superior quality, and that in this respect a small fertile farm would be greatly .more valuable than a larger breadth of country in many parts of Australia. It is extremely probable that the settlers may have to defend’their | acquisitions, but the Government which places them there will supply them with weapons and furnish support. A colony so strengthened would soon be in a position to defy all Maori attacks and disturbances.

In looldng’aCNew Zealand* questions, we must reiterate a fact which cannot be too strongly insisted upon—that in all other dealings with the Maories they have been the [very utmost* indulgence—and even with deference; that endless mortification has been the doom of British sellers, wherever their rights were in collision, by the leaning of the Government towards the least powerful race. Every acre of land acquired by the Crown has been voluntarily sold and paid for; and large sums of money have been annually voted to assist in the education ami improvement of the aboriginal tribes. It is true, it was the interest of the Government to conciliate the native population ; but it is equally true that, having done so with more than necessary scrupulosity, the guilt of these conflicts must be with the natives who have so foolishly excited their jealousy and stimulated their rebellion.