THE LATE STATS PROSECUTION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 326, 23 November 1865, Page 2

THE LATE STATS PROSECUTION.

TO THE EDITOS OE THE TIMES. Sie, — A good name, undoubtedly, is of far more account than estates and treasures ; consequently, when assailed by thoughtless or designing persons, it plainly becomes the duty of the accused to defend himself by every legitimate means in his power. But, apart from the weightiness of injured reputation and its effects, no one possessing the quality of self-respect can afford to be altogether indifferent in relation to the opinions of his fellow-men. Under these circumstances, I trust that it will not be deemed an undue regard for my character, to address a few remarks to you on the subject of the alleged seditious libel, with which I was lately charged by our colonial Government, and for which I have been reproached in the columns of many newspapers and in our colonial General Assembly. In consequence of the novelty of a seditious libel in the colony, and the attention bestowed on it by the press, the animus of the Government to wards me became well known to the aborigines throughout the length and breadth of New Zealand, The natives considered the document on which the prosecution was based extremely unimportant, and were of opinion that the hostility of the Government towards me was a spite towards the natives themselves, and that I was made a martyr for their sake. And this opinion was deepened in their minds, when it was all but universally made known that the censuring of the Arawas originated with the Governor himself, as reported to me by the chief Tomika Te Mutu and others.

Not only did the natives generally, including the Arawas, against which tribe the paper was levelled, consider it a foolish matter on the part of the Government to prosecute me on account of the publication of so simple and harmless a document ; but Bishop Selsvyn, the Primate of New Zealand, in his depositions in the Supreme Court, clearly expressed the same sentiments and view, as did also a number of other respectable independent witnesses whose names neednot be chronicled here.

If it be granted that the publication of the socalled libel was an imprudent act, certainly there was nothing immoral in the document itself, nor was any offence committed against society or our rulers by its issue and circulation. The wisdom and prudence, however, and even the honor of the Government, may be fairly questioned, when the course of action pursued by them towards me is taken into consideration, for they magnified beyond all bounds a matter of no import whatever; they gave singular prominence and attached marvellous weight to a most significant paper. Of course, the extreme harmlessness of this celebrated paper is now manifest to all; manifest to the Aravvas, and to the natives throughout the island, who looked on in profound amazement at the cruelties practised, with a show of justice, under the whig of the law; manifest to the special jury, who, untainted by the prejudices of timeserving persons, discarded the irrelevant matter imported into the case, and set me free ; and manifest to the Government, convulsed with agony, writhing under the withering gibes of the Maoris, and under the disgrace attendant upon a most signal defeat, after their lavish expenditure of time, influence, money, and talent, and all the paraphernalia pompously brought to bear upon this extraordinary State trial. These are some of the points which cannot fail to strike every observer who thinks and sees for himself; and these are the points which induced many loyal chiefs to assert that the Government was its own enemy in the late case, robbing itself of its dignity, and degrading itself in the eyes of the Maori race.

Why, I ask, with all sincerity, am I charged before the judicial authorities for aiding in deeds of blood, when it is publicly known that I have, with unwonted earnestness, pleaded with the natives not to wage war, adding my feeble testimony to that of thousands more, in respect to its antiChiistian character and its unlawfulness? In my publications from time to time, it has been recorded as my fixed opinion that the Great Governor of the world has not directly or indirectly delegated to any potentate, governor, or military commander, or to any body of men, the awful power of terminating the earthly existence of any member—however wicked—of the human family. And shall it now be said that I sacrifice these princinles, endorsed, as I believe, by heaven itself, and which I have disseminated for years with unabated fervor ? shall it be now said, I repeat, that I can complacently lay aside these sacred principles to indulge in some petty spleen against the Government or its barbarous mercenaries ?

As a British subject, amenable to British law, I ought, without doubt, to suffer the penalty due to transgressors, if I at any time presume to infringe upon the rights of the law; but let mo not be compelled to suffer as a felon, to bo held up to public scorn, and despoiled of pecuniary resources, simply because certain envious or evil-minded persons imagine —yes imagine, for the guilty meaning said to be contained in the alleged libel was mere imagination from the beginning to the end —that a harmless Maori paper which recorded a few common-place facts contained seditious sentiments “ against the Queen’s Crown and dignity.” Well may William Marsh, a leading chief of the Arawas, in a letter addressed to me dated September 6th, and published in the Daily Southern Cross, exclaim in reference to the late legal proceedings : —“ You are being falsely goaded by the l-aw.”

Great ignorance was evinced by the Government and their agents during the late prosecution, with respect to the character and usages of the Maoris, the idiom of their language, and the significations of common-place words. Yarious parties, representing the legislative element, the magisterial, and the ecclesiastical, undertook to enlighten the philological world with reference to the peculiar, hidden, and double meanings of certain Maori words. Bishop Williams affirmed that “ pai marire,” though never used conjointly by the natives, bad come to designate a fanatical

sect -whose object is the overthrow of Christianity &c.; but the native teachers in the Bishop’s own diocease stoutly maintained that pai motive are used conjointly, and do not designate a fanatical sect—-that the sect in question is known to the Maoris by the appellation of Hau-haus. The” aver, moreover, that the Hau-haua are nor "attempting to cast off Christianity, but to improve it, according to their notions, by grafting on to it some of the human errors. The magistrate, Mr Beckham, argued at the preliminary examination, that pai marire were incorporated into the English language, and that in consequence no translation of the words were required—no English equivalents needed. The erudite Maori linguist, Dr. Mauusell, who was a witness for the prosecution, rectified the mistakes of the various Maori philologists, and by his simple truthful testimony clearly demonstrated the groundlessness of the accusations against me.

It was expected that the Government, seeing the tottering nature of their trumped-up case, and the extreme trivialuess of the evidence they introduced, devoid of facts—it was expected that, with becoming dignity, they would have desisted from further legal action; but they seem eager to exhibit their weakness to a greater extent, and we find them accordingly in the Supreme Court, like drowning men catching at straws, strenuously exercising their best energies to extract subtle and forced meanings out of the most common-place Maori words, and out of the most clearly expressed Maori sentences.

In contemplating the whole of these extraordinary proceedings, one is painfully reminded of a singular deficiency in the moral perceptions of the ew Zealand Government—their wild assumptions, their destitution of common honesty, and their reckless abuse of power, causing thereby a vexatious and pernicious interference with private life. It were well if our rulers refused to allow themselves to be dragged through the mire by every self-constituted dictator; nor should the public shirk the responsibility which devolves upon it “to let every unrighteous Government fear something more immediate than the faint echoes of distant history.” C. O. Davis. Coromandel, Nov. 1, 1865.