THE Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, WEDNESDAY, 1st FEBRUARY, 1865.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume V, Issue 221, 1 February 1865, Page 2

THE Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, WEDNESDAY, Ist FEBRUARY, 1865.

By the last mail from England we were supplied with a report of a visit made by Mr. Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Imperial Government, to Liverpool, and of certain meetings held there by the townsfolk, with his addresses on these occasions. Mr. Gladstone is very popular in England just now, being regarded, and justly so, as the conqueror of difficulties in financial questions, the liberator of commerce from burdens and restrictions, and the enlightened friend of the working classes. His popularity was shown by the numbers that attended to hear his addresses and by the enthusiasm with which they were received. It is not our intention to follow Mr. Gladstone through the course of his lengthy addresses, but to refer to a particular principle laid down by him, and to argue from it against the errors committed in this colony by the representatives of the English Government in their misgovernment of the native race.

Mr. Gladstone dwelt at great length on the demoralising effect of accepting the privileges of freedom and'not submitting to its responsibilities, of receiving the protection and shelter afforded by the power of a great empire without the performance of duties that are the inalienable functions of such a condition, and applied the force of his argument to the colonies of England. We for the sake of argument allow the correctness of his premises and the legitimacy of his conclusions; and as it is admitted on all hands that what the Colonial question is to the mother country, the Native question is to the colony of New Zealand, we cannot do wrong in applying the same principle here.

It would seem that the whole aim of those to whom the Imperial Government has given the management (we cannot say government) of the natives has been to set Mr. Gladstone’s principle at defiance, and to confer all the rights and privileges of a British subject upon them without any of his burdens, responsibilities, or penalties. From the time of Capt. Hobson, who at Taranaki set aside the award of Commissioner Spain in obedience to the demand of Maori rebels; through all our dealings with them—the condoning of the murders at Wairau in the Middle Island, the repetition of payments for the same land, down to the most recent and abortive attempt to introduce the Civil Commissioner absurdity, itself the ultimatum of privilege without responsibility. The only exception to the rule being that laudable one of our late Governor in the matter of the Waitara, and which has called on his devoted head the odium of so many would-be-thought philanthropists. If this has been the training we have given the native race, how need we be surprised at the result ? We have never enforced law against them, and of course they will resist our attempting to begin the operation. We have sown the wind and reap the whirlwind, according to the inflexible laws of natural things.