SPIRIT V. LETTER.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 198, 22 March 1865, Page 3

SPIRIT V. LETTER.

There was a case brought before the Supreme CoUrt in the present sessions, which is deserving of a little notice. Pita Te Hori, the Native Assessor at Naiapoi, was indicted for obtaining money under false pretences. There was no doubt as to the facts of the case. He had sold a horse belonging to Mr Lance to an Englishman, knowing that it was not his own horse, and had been paid £ls for it. On the face of it there could not be a clearer case of peculation; yet the Grand Jury threw out the bill, and the Judge told told the prisoner that he left the Court without a stain upon his character. Such was the external appearance of the case, but we are allowed to have a little more insight into T e jjori j 8 a chief of high blood amongst the tribes in this Island. He has been the Native Assessor, in other words, the magistrate for many years, and has also been a very honorable and friendly man, desirous of maintaining the law amongst the natives in this part of the country. On three or four occasions lately Pita has been so uufortunate as to have horses pounded, owing to their having strayed. They have been sold in the usual way without his knowledge, and he has not even received, as we are told, the price of the horses when sold, except in one case, when he got £4 — about a fourth or fifth part of its value. It is easy to conceive how puzzling this sort of justice must be to a man who is imbued with a natural sense of right and wrong. The pounding system is an admirable one to those who are habituated to it. Pita Te Hori, it seems, could not reconcile with any rules of natural justice that he should be punished for the casual straying of his horse by the loss of it altogether, and its sale to another man. He resolved, therefore, to try whether a Maori could not sell a European's horse out of the pound, as the Europeans had been selling his. He selected a horse belonging to Mr Lance which had been pounded, but had been taken out and put into a neighboring paddock. The chief took a European friend down, and, showing him this horse, said it was his, and that he would sell it to him for £ls. The bargain was struck, the money was paid, and the purchaser took his new horse away. Within a few hours the horse was claimed. The purchaser went to the native, who admitted that the horse was his, but that he wanted the case to be tried; and it appears that he nad in the meantime told the Rev Mr Stack what he had done, saying that he did not want to keep the money, but wanted the case to be tried; whether Europeans could sell his horses whilst he could not sell theirs; and the next day he paid the money back without demur. In the case of an Englishman such a defence would have been absurd.

The case is one of considerable interest, because it explains to us, who here in the South have very little to do with natives, how easily the ideas of the two races may come in conflict, and what gross injustice may be done by straining the law to the full force of the letter without due regard to its spirit. The Grand Jury have acted in the spirit oi the law. * * * * Twelve or fourteen years ago, Pita Te Hori's horses and pigs roamed about the country at will, and he had never heard of a pound, and had probably not the slightest conception of the meaning of English law. It cannot be supposed that he has a very perfect conception of it even at the present time. * * * We have instanced this case of Hori's as one in which a misunderstanding existed which it required a comprehension of the motives and feelings on both sides to clear up. To the Maori the Europeans seemed to be doing a very great wrong. To the English the Maori appeared to be committing a very heinous crime, and yet it was not so on either side. The English were only carrying out a most beneficial la-v; the Maori was taking a peculiar and yet not unnatural mode of finding out if there were not some legal remedy for his losses. Yet how easily might a judge and jury in that case have sent Pita Te Hori to prison. * * There is nothing which should so constantly be kept before the mind in dealing with foreign—especially half-civilised—peo-ple as the necessity of understanding them—of being quite sure we know what they mean and want —and of not acting until we do know it. In the North the habitual tone of the Europeaus and of the public press is, not to endeavor to find out what the natives mean, but to insist that they really mean what it suits the popular fancies or interests to think that they mean. Dr Livingstone, in one of his charming speeches descriptive of the races of Central Africa, speaks as follows :

" I should like to answer a question that is very often put to me, in the belief that some of you may wish to put it to me now. The question I allude to is—' What sort of people are those who you wander amongst ?' Now, I should like to tell you that they are very far from being savages (cheers.) On the sea coast they are rather bloodthirsty, especially those who have been engaged ir* the slave trade, but when you get about 300 miles into the interior you meet with a people who are quite mild and hospitable. It is the duty of each man in the village to give every stranger his supper, and to show him every hospitality which lies in his power. These people are not engaged in hunting, as most inhabitants

of this country think they are, but are employed in cultivating the soil, having different kinds of grain, equal to what is grown in this country. They also manu-

facture iron, melting it from the stone, and very excellent iron it is. I brought home with me the last time I was in England some of the ores, and the iron was manufactured into an excellent Enfield rifle. The quality was exceedingly good, and equal to the best Swedish iron. They also manufacture a very superior quality of copper also articles of earthenware and basketwork. When we first go amongst this class of people with the idea of men being savages, it is rather singular, but 1 believe true, that they rather believe we are the savages (cheers and laughter.) They do not understand where all the black people who are carried away go to. Thousands are taken away annually, and you cannot go anywhere without meeting with slave parties. The men carry what are called slavessticks, with a fork at the end of them, which they fasten round the neck of the captives, so that it is impossible for them to get at the other end by which they are tied to trees throughout the night. The people I am now speaking of imagine that the white people eat them (laughter.) They look upon us as cannibals, and we look upon them as savages (renewed laughter.) Now, if we are to take an impartial view of both, we should find that they are better than each

imagines the other to be." Can there be any lesson better worth while laying to heart than this—that in the opinion of large portions of mankind the Europeans are regarded as savages and cannibals ! Of course we shall say it is very absurd; but is it ? Thousands and thousands of these Africans are driven down to the coast to be sold to Europeans. What for, no one ever comes back to tell. Really, if we think of it, it is quite natural that they should take us for a race deficient in supplies of animal food, and requiring to import it. from more populous climes. But the lesson is obvious. If this intelligent people can be under such a mistake, may not we fall into similar mistakes about people of whom we know very little, and whose feelings and objects we take very little trouble to penetrate. —Press, March 8.

To the man of capital there are fine chances for investment in the Wakatip district. Property is offering at such ridiculous prices that purchases in a couple of years must return not only a tenfold interest, but far more. A supper was given on Monday exening at M'Beath's Hotel, to Mr Williams, who i 3 leaving for the West Coast. The affair was one of those semi-public, semi-private ones that are so pleasant. The table was a magnificent one, and the

wines required no praise: and, altogether, the evening was spent most pleasantly. Wages on the Okitiki have fallen to 6/ per week on the diggings, and 4/ to 51 in the township and on the beach. The ' Canterbury Press' has lately had a series of articles on the effects of the goldfield dis-

' coveries on the West Coast. We give one or 1 two, as they show how much more liberally dealt with is the subject than the goldfields of Otago were. On the one hand we find liberal • breadth of views, in our own case, intense sel- ; fishness and greedy rapaciousness: "The situation of Canterbury at this moment is one of great uncertainty and keen expectancy. But we would wish to point out that if no road is ever attainable to the West Coast, and if no gold escort is able to get through to bring the gold to our banks, still this Province will be the largest gainer by the new goldfield. The real ultimate benefit to Canterbury will arise from the fact that we have at present the best investments for capital which offer anywhere in New Zealand. Whether the gold goes in the first instance to Nelson or to Christchurch, the largest portion of it will meet with permanent investment in this Province. Of that we rest fully assured. If we consider how largely this Province benefitted by the Otago goldfields—how the price of our stock rose, how it was sold to supply the diggers, how the proceeds were expended in land, filling our exchequer, and were again poured forth amongst our laboring population in employment on public works, we shall easily understand how fresh goldfields so much nearer to us will produce a similar result. Let us not, therefore, be downhearted ; even if we cannot attract the gold directly to Christchurch, we shall still reap the larger share of the profits. We do not underrate the importance of making Christchurch, if possible, the channel for conducting the gold in fertilising streams over our plains. The advantage of making our capital the mart for the gold is immediate and considerable. There is always a certain portion of the savings of a gold-mining population squandered. It is lodged in the bank. The bank uses it as the basis for increasing accommodation to its customers. The fortunate depositors draw on it, and the shops, and notably the public-houses throughout the town feel the inspiriting influence of the golden shower. To any channel through which a stream of gold flows, a large portion sticks, and the local trade is largely stimulated. All this immediate benefit we shall lose if the gold is deposited elsewhere. We shall lose that, but no more." Favorable accounts still continue of the Mataura diggings. The ' Southland Times' says:—"We continue to receive, on the whole, fair accounts from the diggings on the Mataura. They have certainly proved of great benefit to Invercargill in relieving it of a little of the surplus labor which has been hanging about since the suspension of the railway works. We have it on the authority of several who have visited the diggings, that coarse gold has been discovered in one ot the gullies, and one of our informants assures us that a spur of one of the hills has proved auriferous. Should this last report be verified we may expect these diggings to be of a more permanent choracter than has been hitherto supposed. There are, we must confess, some on the Mataura diggings who have been unable to make ' tucker/ but these are the exceptions, and a proportion of them are totally unacquainted with digging Operations, which may account for non-success. Last week the Bank of Otago purchased 100 ozs on the ground."