COLONIAL TAXATION (No. VII.)

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IX, Issue 472, 22 April 1867, Page 3

COLONIAL TAXATION (No. VII.)

(Nelson Examiner.!

Those of oar readers who have gone with Us iu the remarks we have made upon the Native Department of the New Zealand Government may yet be inclined to ask, What would you have the Government to do now iu the matter ? Granted, thev would say, that the system at present in force is a bad one; granted that the natives are not benefited while the Europeans are impoverished, partly at least through this, what is the remedy now ? The ditiiculty is by no means an imaginary one we confess. We have said already that ws do not believe a native war would iUllOw Ou tu6 WitiiuFaWttl Oi ■A-SScbSOro* pfij from the great mass of those now receiving it $ but this is after all a very negative advantage. It is unquestionably one thing not to set up such a system as our Native Department, and a very different one to knock it down altogether. It is so awkward a thing to make sudden and violent changes that we should not advocate anything of the sort when another course seemed open. In this matter of our native expenditure, however, we do not see that another is open. In the body politic, as in the human body, there may be departments so diseased that no half measures are of any use. And this, we think, is the position of our Native Department. We are now from year to year spending great sums of money in nourishing not a healthy but an unhealthy state of things amongst the natives, and, so far as we can see, there is no way in which we can patch up or modify the system so as to do any good. We say, therefore, by all means sweep it away, and bodily.

The position cf the natives in this country is an interesting one, and indeed it has been so for many years. For years we have been trying to work out the problem of how a savage race is to be civilised and yet preserved, and the .Native Department has been the fruit of our plans for effecting this. Everybody who knows anything at all about the Maories knows that we have neither succeeded m civilizing nor in preserving them as a people Here and there an individual has been drawn into the circle of European influences and civilization, and has chosen to remain there. In these cases our hopes of civilizing the Maories seem to have been realized ; but even then any hopes we may have had of preserving them have been disappointed. It would be hard to say whether the natives most civilized by contact with Europeans, or those most addicted to native vices and modes of living, have disappeared the more rapidly during the past ten years ; either extreme seems to have proved fatal to the decaying race. It is no doubt, however, better that if the race must die out, it should die oat as a civilized than a barbarous people. It might be even worth while to expend money to a considerable extent, if we had it, in the philanthropic task of benefiting this dying race. The fact is, that we have spent all this money year after year, and Lave produced no such effect. Wo have sent magistrates into their districts, and the tone of the natives is not altered even in the smallest degree. We have appointed the natives whom we wished to civilize assessors or chiefs of runanga, and as a rule they have learned to behave n little worse than before. Nor it it to be wondered at. To give savages money, is not to give them civilization, any more than to give them magistrates is to give them law and order. The thing, in short, has been fried, and has proved a great failure. The natives have been no less, but rather more lawless since they had law and order placed at their feet with the request that they would patronise them. The individual Maoris have become a little more arrogant, a little more boastful and troublesome to their neighbours, and a good deal more drunken since they have had salaries given them for work which they could not understand and did not care to do. The whole system in fact is a rotten one, and the sooner it is done away with the better the chance for all concerned.

But in withdrawing from these native institutions, it may be said we should be allowing the natives to sink back into barbarism, This we know to be the cant phrase in the matter, and we may be thought very reckless by some when wc say, as we do most heartily—Let them sink back into barbarism by all means! A good honest, healthy barbarism is a state of things quite easily understood and not hard to deal with ; but the sham civiliza-| tion, the pretence of law, the parade of! magistrates, and th* loud talk about order and good government—these things going hand in hand with disorder and lawlessness of every kind—form a social problem such as we cannot hope to deal with with any success. If the native institutions were done away with—if the magistrates were withdrawn from some districts wholly, and their duties defined and restrained in others; if the assessors and heads of ni nanga were dismissed from their offices, and cut off from tiie ; r accust means of supplying themselves with rum —something misht yet be done to civilize t»,s Muorico. u udvo said that the natives have not been civilized by these things; we will endeavour to suggest some things that would tend to civilize them. The basis of all civilization is selfrespect. With all their boastfulness and arrogance, the Maories have never yet even begun to learn the lesson of selfrespect. They often bully their European neighbours, but they are quits aware that they are vastly better than themselves. They get judgments against them in Courts, and damages from them for trivial or imaginary wrongs, while they are themselves regardless of the judgments of the same Courts, aud scorn the notion of paying ua-

mages; yet they feel that they are not on an equality with the European settler. It is not privileges they are in want of, for of these they have more than enough, but it is responsibilities. For years wo have treated them as children, and alternately coaxed and threatened them, equally without success. What is left is now to treat there like men. "Vy"e plainly they must be one thing or the other. If they wish to be lawless and savage, let them be so ; but let them be so openly and apart. If they would uso cur Courts and live among our peonle, they should be taught that there is not one law for a native and another for a European in anything. The man who can sue in a Court must also be the man to bo sued ; the mau who can get judgment and execution must be liable to the same processes of law. We do not say wo expect a great revolution in Maori morals from such a plan as this all at once; for we do not think any scheme would effect that; but it would have two good points about it which our present plan wants—it would be manly and it would not bo costly. In our view of the case wo are now spending £‘30,000 a year in degrading ourselves and the natives ; we should like to see the experiment tried of saving £30,000 a year in teaching the Maories the primary virtue of self-respect.

The importance of this question cannot be adequately measured by the mere money saving, however. It is far from unimuortant, indeed, that the colony should save £30,000 a year if it can be done; but in the case of the Native Department that is not all. The colony is now in a critical position, and in some way or other the danger takes the form of Separation. If it is asked why people agitate for Separation the answer is, “Oh, difference of interests,” or, perhaps more plainly, “Because of the native question.” Now ihidoes not mean so much the cost of the war, which is nearly at an end, as it doe# a sort of indefinite dread of that machine for spending money year after year with uo results and no returns—called the Native Department. If Separation ever takaplace, and this fine colony is over wcakem d and dwarfed by being divided, it will be to the Native Department more than to anything else that the evil will bo owing. Like many other evils in our arrangement, we are aware that it has got a firm hold, and will require vigorous efforts before it can be uprooted ; it is, however, well worth the effort. In our opinion the welfare of the Maories no less than the welfare of the settlers demands it, and the cause of colonial unity is intimately bound up with it.