Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1864.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IV, Issue 190, 2 September 1864, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1864.

The English, as a nation, are remarkable for inconsistency. Of this we have frequent instances in the conduct of their foreign relations. It is not many years ago since the Chinese Empire was involved in a war with us ; a war which that people sustained in maintenance of a corrupt commercial monopoly of a most injurious and pernicious drug, to prevent the importation and use of which in their own country, the Chinese Government had issued prohibitory regulations. Now, the high and mighty philanthropists who lately addressed Sir George Grey upon the subject of his treatment of the Maories, urging him in the most pathetic terms, for the love of God, to treat them kindly and considerately, troubled themselves very little to interfere on behalf of the. Chinese, when our armies burnt their palaces, and our fleets destroyed their seaport towns, and, not content with doing them incredible injury, and destroying immense quantities of valuable property, we made them pay handsomely in hard cash for doing that mischief, to enforce the acceptance of a branch of our trade which was repugnant to both political and religious principles. The Chinese are much more deserving of sympathy than the Maories. The one is a Nation of people who had attained a high state of civilization while yet the painted Briton was snaring wild fowl on the present site of London, and who, in defence of their undoubted right to rule and govern themselves as they chose, and as they had been ruled and governed from the earliest ages of the World’s history, resist the intrusion of Europeans, and the introduction of their useless merchandise , and poisonous drugs, and customs. The Maories, on the other hand, are a people who have not one single claim upon our sympathies or esteem. Savages always, savages now, savages for ever—these people—without arts, without sciences,with ou t one single tie of affinity with us—have been treated with a consideration, with a marked and studied courtesy, not vouchsafed to those nations whose wealth excites our cupidity and which would seem to point to one of two things, either that the Maories possess some great virtues known and revealed alone to Governors and Missionaries, or that we are so dreadfully afraid of them that we dare not attempt to bully them. ■ It is deeply to be regretted that the cloak of Religion should be so frequently used to cover national weaknesses. The missionaries never interfere much in the matter of the rights of a people with whom we can drive a lucrative trade, no matter at what expense of morality and justice that trade is driven; but they scrupulously interfere, with a great sounding of sackbuts and psalteries, and all

other kinds of music, in behalf of those people.who, by their insignificance, are not likely to excite the cupidity of our traders, when anything like coercion is talked of to oblige them to accept law and obey justice. Sir G. Grey’s Seed Potato treaty is a very remarkable example of this kind of conduct. The Maories have ever been treated with the greatest consideration; their customs, rights, and usages, such as they are, have been scrupulously respected—their property, their lands, have always been exempt from any sort of pillage ; yet has this people, without cause and without provocation, taken up arms against us, and slain in cold blood many an inoffensive man, and destroyed many a thriving and happy home—and now, in the hour of their defeat, and in the day of their justly-deserved humiliation, we extend to them the hand of friendship, and invite them indirectly, before yet the justice of the chastisement which they have received is sufficiently impressed upon them, to renewed hostilities and outrages as soon as they feel themselves strong enough to begin them. The painful truth is, that if the Maories were placed in the same position in the scale of our commerce as the Chinese, or other Eastern Nations, the chances are ten to one that we should blow every mother’s son of them out of the Island, by way of making them accede to our monstrous demands, and confiscate their heritage as a just tribute to our invincible valor and astonishing wisdom, as a warning to all others in like case as themselves, not to rouse the British Lion. We see the missionaries, while with one hand they hold out the Gospel, and with one mouth they speak righteousness,—with the other hand they drive their own interests, and with another tongue they speak of nothing but Mammon and uncleanuess, 0 Religion, Religion, what a deal of dirty work is done in thy name!