THE MISSIONARY v. COLONISATION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 5, Issue 274, 5 June 1865, Page 3

THE MISSIONARY v. COLONISATION.

[_Concl%tded.'\

From the N. Z. Herald. We bave heard much of the land greed of the colonists, and we know that the source whence our enemies at home have received their unju-t impressions against the colonists is a certain section of the missionaries in New Zealand, but we never expected that those very men would have allowed the cloven hoof so unequivocally to protrude from the cassock, as on the present occasion. Truly if this is not land sharking, and on a gigantic scale, then we are at a loss to know what land sharking consists of. The heifer and other merchandise (not enumerated)

probably an old musket or two and some fishooks, were well laid out and with an eye to business in 1839, when they can bring in a good round sum of .£20,000 in 1865. The whole thing is monstrous. Had the Church Mission Society asked the Government a sum of £2, or even £3 per acre, it might have been paid and would have been a piece of land-sharking even then over which the society might have chuckled—but to ask a sum of £20,000 is virtually to stand in the way of colonisation, and this is perhaps as much the object of the society as money greed, or conversion of the Natives to Christianity. The missionary party when accused of obstructing colonisation have always indignantly denied the charge. Can they do so now, with this extortionate demand on record against them ? There is but one course to adopt. It is impossible for the Government to yield to such a demand. The “ New Zealand Settlements Act, 1863,” provides for the confiscation not only of native laud, but of that of Europeans, where it may be required for the purposes of the Act. Let the Te Papa block, thenj be so coufis cated, as well as that of the darker-skinned rebels alongside, and the amount of compensation to be awarded settled by the appointed tribunal. We know that the missionary interest brought to bear upon Sir George Grey to induce him not to take this course has been very great and urgent, but wo maintain that any Ministry having respect for the interests of the colony is in duty bound called upon to insist that even-handed justice shall be carried out in this case, and, that room shall be afforded for the successful colonisation of the district. It is not as though the Te Papa block were any longer of use for the only purpose for which with any regard for decency it could be supposed to have passed into missionary hands, namely, as a mission station. Tauranga has outgrown any such requirements; and with the presence of a large European population has passed into a better, happier stage of civilisation than that of the mission settlement with its hordes of idle dirty natives lounging around the Mission house in a state of savage communism. The Native as well as the European will now have his allotted portion of land in this district, and to live he must labor upon his land and use it, and adopt the practical, real civilisation of bis white neighbor.