Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 1864.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 180, 24 June 1864, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 1864.

We undertake, with pleasure, to write for the instruction and amusement of the people, and in defence and support of their rights, but we really cannot undertake to provide fools with brains wherewith to understand wisdom and to appreciate wit. The perversity and obstinacy of ignorance is proverbial. Nothing is easier than for the flippant and conceited, actuated either by direct or in' direct interests, or for the mere purpose of ventilating their “ reading and writing when there be no need of such vanities,” to take up the pen in support of anything corrupt, illegal, or foolish, and at variance, in consequence, with the material interests of a community. There is no lack of such scribblers as these —their name is legion, but it would be well for them, and for their patrons, and for the cause in which they draw their pens, if they held their peace. “ The wisdom of fools is folly,” saith Solomon, and we confess that we find that aphorism strikingly applicable in the case of those foolish people who are now engaged in defending that which is indefensible. In illustration of this, and in reference to the effect produced upon the interests of this province, and not alone upon this province, but of New Zealand, by the wholesale and indiscriminate abuse of the Native Land Purchase Ordinance, it is well to look at the question in its relation to our chances of purchasing land from the Maories. The Provincial Government, we believe, is upon the eve or has already concluded a purchase of lands from the natives. This fact, taken in its naked state, is highly gratifying, and will of course he immediately laid hold of by the interested few to illustrate in point their oftrepeated argument, viz., that the renting of lands by private individuals from the Maories does not prevent the purchase of lands by the Government from those people. But, softly. Before we can consent to that proposition it is worth while to consider the sort of lands offered for sale just now, by these Maories. If that review prove satisfactory, and if it is found that our borders are enlarged by the acquisition of available and valuable lands, we shall be glad to admit that wb are in the wrong, and to look

with indifference for evermore upon the occupation of native land by the squatters. We unfortunately, however, have reason, as will appear in the sequel, for knowing that this pleasant view of the case is not admissible. Everybody knows that all the best lands in Hawke’s Bay belong to the Maories, and everybody knows also that these lauds are now in the occupation of Europeans paying high rents for the use of them, and that that act is contrary to law. It is clear, then, from this, that the native landlords derive a large annual income from their European tenants, aad that neither the one noi the other contribute in the smallest degree to the maintenance of the Government, such as it is, or towards the administration of justice, such as that is, or otherwise, for the furtherance and advancement of this Province. Herein lies a greater evil than in setting aside those laws, which, it would seem, are “ more honored in the breach than in the observance.” If the Maories profited by the large revenues thus placed at their disposal —if that people by that means were advanced in the social and political scale, matters would then even assume a modified feature, but the contrary is the case, and they are thus provided with just enough of money, without the trouble of laboring for it, to sink them deeper, deeper down into the loathsame pit of indolence, debauchery, and every description of vice, wherein they delight to wallow.

The land which the natives now offer for sale to the Superintendent is a tract of country which not even the most daring and lawless squatter in all Hawke’s Bay would venture to settle on. Sterile, bleak, and inhospitable, abounding in wild pigs and black birch, this country, on the acquisition of which the Government organ will presently raise a great song of triumph, offers a striking example in proof of what we have so frequently said, viz., that the Maori will not sell to us lauds of any value to themselves, either as fitted for their own use, or for the use of the white squatter.

The Wellington Land Purchase Commissioner has secured a large block of land on the Manawatu river. But it must be remembered that this purchase of land has been on the tapis for near '2O years, and that it is therefore high time it was concluded, and there can be no doubt that more money has been paid for that land by that functionary, than was originally intended. At the time the sale was first mooted, the money just paid for it would have purchased half New Zea* land. But the same corrupt influences which have led to and culminated in the present war, and in the indiscriminate occupation of the native lands generally have affected and deferred, at great cost to the country, the completion of the purchase of the Manawatu to this day.

It is easy to find hollow and false reason in support of any piece of iniquity, public or private. There are puerile sophists even for tyrants’ tyrannies and gross vices. The Mohammedans and Mormons, for instance, can find, each in the example of their leaders, the one in Mohammed and the others in Joe Smith, excellent and valid reasons, so far as that example is concerned, for the mainte* nance of a plurality of wives and the countenance of other customs, which are admitted by all sound political economists, to be utterly subversive of the morality and of the physical well-being of a state. The Mohammedans as a nation are rapidly passing away, and the Mormons are fast reaching the climacteric of their prosperity, aud they,. like the followers of the Crescent, will presently be swept frem the family of man. So it has ever been, and so will be in all instances where nations or individuals set aside some great fundamental principle of Government, either by disregarding the laws of nature or the laws of mao. Fools may applaud and profit by that laxity for a time, but the end of it is desolation and misery. A people who from mere pecuniary motives, or laxity of

principle disregard one law are a people exceedingly likely from the s.yne cause, to disregard all laws. The consequence of that lawless act which has led to the occupation of the Maori lands, in that those lands possess through that means a value to their native owners, which, but for it, they never would have attained, and the best part of this Island is given over, by consequence, for an indefinite period to the owls of the desert and other squatters; and while, on the one hand, the natives are by no means substantially or lastingly benefitted by that arrangement, on the other hand, the really useful settler, the thew and sinew of sound colonization, is kept out of the country, and the current’of wealth which is flowing around us into other channels, runs not hither! We are as a rock in the sea lashed by every wave of tribulation raised by the storm of adversity, but never covered by the flowing tide of prosperity and progress which is fast carrying every other province on to greatness and independence.