Marlborough Times. FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 1881.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume III, Issue 276, 26 August 1881, Page 2

Marlborough Times. FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 1881.

Oxk of the most interesting documents we have received from the Government Printer this session is the one furnishing particulars of the census of the Maori population. It is also, from a humanitarian point of view, one of the saddest, showing, as it does, that a race of mankind is rapidly passing away. The census taken in 1878 showed a total population of 43,597, but this number was probably greatly under the mark, as exceptional difficulties were experienced in obtaining returns. This year the work was undoubtedly much easier, and the returns show an apparent increase of ’>o2, the total now being 4-1,099, of which number 24,370 are males and 19,729 females. The excess of males over females is alone sufficient to indicate that the race will, ere another generation has gone, be considerably reduced in numbers.

Even presuming that the increase shown of 502 is an actual one, it is so very small as to bear out the statement that the race is stationary, and its powers of multiplication arc failing. It is very evident that Macaulay’s New Zealander sitting on the ruins of St. Paul’s will not bo a member of the aboriginal race, for if statistics arc at all to be depended upon it is safe to assert that before many generations have passed away no representative of the Maori race will be living. As among other savage races, the spread of civilization means his ultimate disappearance from the soil. From his inherited qualities, his mode of life and careless habits, lie is terribly susceptible to the vices of civilization, and the acquirement of these vices is, unfortunately, his first lesson and his first achievement. The very intellectual capacity he is credited with, and certainly possesses, is itself an element in his destruction, as it enables him to acquire greater proficiency in vice than would otherwise be the case. With each generation the acquired diseases of the race increase in virulence, and the physical state of the Maori of to-day is vastly inferior to that of his progenitors of half a century ago. To illustrate this we have only to compare the account given by Captain Cook of the healthy condition in which the natives of these Islands wore found by him, with the accounts given by the enumerators in the reports which accompany the documents under notice. It would seem, indeed, as though the Maori had almost fulfilled his part in the scheme of creation. As the Little Gentleman in “ The Professor at the Breakfast Tabic ” says of the Red Indian, “It is simply a provisional race. Exhaled carbonic acid for the use of vegetation, enjoyed themselves in scalping or being scalped, and then passed away, or are passing away according to the programme.” It is very plain that the conditions of life and society which accord with the welfare of the Europeans do not harmonise with the constitution of our aborigines. The Taupo enumerator supports this in a portion of his report where he says, referring to the natives round Tongariro—“These natives, although very obstructive to, and jealous of, Europeans, seem much more industrious and live better than those at the northern end, who have been brought more into contact with Europeans.” “Thenatives about the northern and eastern end of the lake ” he says, “ have barely cultivated sufficient food for their own consumption, and some years (particularly 1880) not even enough for that.” The old days, “ when wild in woods the noble savage ran,” were more in consonance with his nature than these times, when work is necessary to enable life to he maintained ; and, handed down from his ancestors, he possesses an ineradicable distaste for labor, in the sense of steady practical application. As a lord of the soil, an idler who cares little for providing for the future he is without a peer, hut labor is altogether opposed to his instincts, and contact with a pushing and provident race ensures his obliteration, which is further hastened by the adoption of all the lower forms of vice introduced by the pioneers of civilization. Nearly all the enumerators particularise disease of the lungs as being the most common complaint, and this may be accounted for, strange as it may seem, by the natives having adopted the European costume. In former times when the “ mat ” was his sole covering, or even when the European blanket was considered full dress, it was an easy matter to lay either aside on entering the wharc. But the European dress entails a little trouble in removing, and when wet the indolent native prefers to dry it as he stands or squats before the fire, which doubtless accounts to a great extent for the prevalence of lung diseases. Altogether the reports of the enumerators furnish a melancholy record of the degeneracy of the Maori race, and prove that time will settle the “ Maori question ” for ever.