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Lyttelton Times, Volume LVII, Issue 6507, 4 January 1882, Page 4

The style in which the Government apologists uphold the present Native policy is unique. We have been told, in reply to our strictures upon the latest development of the high-handed, that these things are being done because something like them was threatened. When we find fault with •* Sic jubeo,” we are crushed with “ Sic volo.” There are arguments against both, but nobody cares for them. We are further told that it would be madness not to take the lands of the Maories now that the dispersion is complete. We are, in fact, asked to believe that the Natives, who have bad one overwhelming proof of European superiority, stand in need of another. If the Government refrains from robbery the Natives will mistake justice for weakness, and go to war accordingly. According to this reasoning, the only correct thing to do is to massacre tljo whole native population. That would be a proof 'of strength which no Native would think of resisting. But, we are informed, the Commission recommended that by a certain time all promises to the Natives must be at an end, if not accepted. Now, the Commission is a capital authority for facts When it lays before us a collection of facts we accept them with thankfulness. With opinions, however, it is different. But even if it were not so; if the Commissioners in their opinion about the necessity of determining promises were not opposed to reason and justice; if promises, that is to say, are not promises, but something else; if, in a word, the Commissioners’ opinion is right, the expression of that opinion, as quoted for (he benefit of all men who

aro Bfiorilcgionfl enough to doubt the wisdom of Ministers, does hot ootor the whole case. The lands of the Natives who remained in rebellion wore confiscated, and are undoubtedly the subject of the Commissioners’ recommendation. But the Opunako Block and the Stony Eivor Block have never been confiscated at all. They long ago passed out of the region of promises, As soon as tho Representative of the Queen, and the Queen’s Ministers, informed tho owners by proclamation that their lands were safe from confiscation, every question about these lands ceased. The only thing left for the Queen’s Representative and her Ministers to do was to keep their hands off those lands. That is just what they did not do, but that was unjust. Mr Bryce and his colleagues are taking advantage of that injustice, not only to put their hands on these lands, but to take them by force. There is but one word for such conduct. It is “ spoliation.”