NEW ZEALAND.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 13, Issue 674, 19 April 1869, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND.

(Prom the Standard, Jan. 19th.)

It is highly characteristic of the spirit of British humanitarianism that the news of fresh atrocities committed by the Maories upon the New Zealand settlers should be the signal in England for an outburst of fervid sympathy for the poor persecuted aborigines. It is always when the " black brother" is guilty of some abnormal abomination at the expense of his white kindred, that he is selected as the object of our philanthropy. So long as the Maori only made war in a legitimate way against the Queen's troops we heard nothing of his sufferings, but when he takes to slaying and torturing English men and women he is immediately promoted to a place in the affections of the humanitarians. With that unhappy tendency to bestow their tenderness always upon the most ill favoured members of the family, precisely at the moment when they are proving themselves to be least amiable, they have begun to take up the cry of white tyranny at the very moment when we are informed of deeds perpetrated by the Maoris upon the colonists exceeding in fiendish barbarity the worst things ever told of the most brutal savages. In the face of the unspeakable abominations which are reported by the last mail from New Zealand as having been suffered by our innocent fellowcountrymen in that colony, no more humane feeling is able to enter the bosoms of our philanthropists than one of shame at the policy of the colonists. They hear of English officers being butchered and " potted" by the Maoris, and their first idea is of the abominable conduct of the whites towards their coloured brethren. The knowledge displayed by these tender hu-manity-mongers is about on a par with their sense of decency or their capacity for justice. The process by which they arrive at their conclusion appears to be this—the Maoris have been guilty of great cruelties towards the whites ; the Maoris were the first possessors of the land; therefore the Maoris must have been robbed and illused by the c donists. One devotee of that perverse and positive sect, surpassing the rest in zeal, vows that the sufferings of the colonists are a judgment upon them because of their oppressions towards the Maori —that the butchering and the potting were only a just retribution for the sins of our Government; and that before all things it is necessary to give back the confiscated land to the Maoris, if we would do justice between the races and restore peace to the island. The exceeding fatuity of this proprosal may be shown Ly considering what was the history of these confiscations. In the first place, it may be necessary to remind our readers that no lands whatever were taken from the aboriginals in the Northern Island of New Zealand (where only there is any Maori population], without compensation to its native owners, up to the close of General Cameron's campaign on the Waikato. From the beginning the English Government never claimed, aod never exercised, any right of proprietorship in the soil of New Zealand —a policy unprecedented in the history of European colonisation. Every acre which the colonists n>w possess was bought, in open bargains, from theJMaoris; nor did they sell to the whites except by their own choice and at their free will. Nay, the British Government even exceeded their duty in its excessive regard for the fanciful rights of the Maoris, by requiring, in their original treaty with the chiefs, signed at Waitangi in 1840, the natives not to sell their lands to any individual white settler, but only to the Government, when they had any for sale, The lands now occupied by Europeans (including scarcely a tenth of the whole area of the island) were all purchased on these conditions at such a price as the Maoris agreed to, and from those whom the Maoris themselves acknowledged to be the owners. Within the last four years the Colonial Government has even gone beyond this in its anxiety to protect the interest of its Maori subjects, by establishing a " Native Lands Court," before which any individual Maori is at liberty to prove his title to his lands and obtain a certificate of the same, which is a sufficient legal proof of ownership. Thus in addition to his origin&l claims (which were created

solely by ourselves, and which have their value only because of the British settlement), the Maories have been accorded th further privilege of obtafning British titles. There is absolutely no instance in the history of New Zealand of any force haviog been used to induce the recognised Maori proprietors to part with their lands, nor is there any other example in the annals of the world of a policy so just, kindly, and magnanimous towards the aborigines as that which the Imperial and Local Governments have pursued towards the Maori tribes. At the conclusion of the Waikato war —a war which the Maories had provoked, upon no pretence of oppression or ill treatment at our hands, but purely out of a morbid outburst of national sentiment—it became necessary, for the peace of the island, that we should not only punish the insurgent chiefs, but take such guarantees for their good behaviour as should secure the supremacy of the British authority/ It was with this view that, in accordance with a perfectly wellunderstood rule of Maori law —a rule which the Maoris have never attempted to dispute, of which they themselves have been allowed by us the benefit in past times, and which, in fact, is the foundation of every primitive law of property —the Local Government, with the sanction of the Imperial authorities, took possession of certain tracts of land in the interior which had been conquered from the insurgent tribes, with the intention of founding thereupon a chain of military settlements. That intention was, unfortunately, never properly carried out. But pretend that there was any injustice or oppression in theso confiscations is absurd. By

strict Maori, usage as they have themselves acknowledged, we might have taken all the lands of the rebel tribes. We took only a small portion, leaving, in every case, in the various conquered districts, tracts more than sufficient for the maintenance of its original possessors. To speak of giving these lands back is a folly surpassing even that which we are accustomed to hear out of the mouths of the professors of humanity. It means nothing less than that we should give up the Northern Island to the Maoris—that we should undo all the work of the last thirty years.