MAORI CUSTOMS AND ENGLISH LAWS.

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume IV, Issue 6, 15 August 1857, Page 1

MAORI CUSTOMS AND ENGLISH LAWS.

To assist our Maori friends in forming a correct judgment as to the advantage or otherwise to be derived from the general introduction and establishment of English Law among them, we would invite them to look a t the past; we would remind them in how many instances they have, with advantage to themselves, substituted that which IhePakehahas brought for that which they possessed before bis coming. The Maori had his religion and his imaginary deities, the Pakeha brought his religion and the knowledge of the true God. The Maori had his own garments and the Pakeha brought bis. The Maori had his food and the Pakeba introduced his. The Maori dug fern roots and snared rats, the Pakeha brought potatoes, wheat, and pigs. The Maori had his stone axe, and the Pakeha brought his axe of steel. The Maori had his

Ko, the Pakcha brought I)is spade and h>s plough. The one carried the produce of his cultivation on his back, or worse, made his wife carry it ; the oilier brought his horse and his cart, and made roads upon which they might travel easily. The Maori had his canoe, the Pakcha his ship. The Maori his stone for pounding the tern root, the Pakeha his mill. And so the Maori had, and still has, his old Customs and Laws, and ihe Pakeha has his. It is for the Maori to judge which are likely to serve him best. The Maori has seen that the religion, the clothes, the food, the plough, the cart, the ship and the mill of the Pakeha were better than what he had or could procure, and he has accordingly possessed himselTof these things. If he be wise, he will in like manner endeavour as-soon as possible to possess himself of the benefits of the English Laws which he sees are effectual to preserve order among the Pakehas and to do for us what he is beginning to see must be done for him before he can become either civilized or prosperous.