THE WEEK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 213, 8 September 1877, Page 2

THE WEEK

This ha3 been quite an uneventful week with the limpet Ministry now in office. Noue of their opponents have insisted upon their regaling themselves upon humble pie, so that they have had an opportuity of changing the diet on which they have of late been so accustomed to fare that it must have become sickening from its monotony. However, what with one thing and another, they have had a pretty lively time of it, and, as even a worm will turn, so ha* one of their number been so sturnj with the attacks made upon him that he has retaliated in kind, and the House now presents the dignified picture of a legislative body whose leaders on both sides are fighting, not over a certain Una of policy, but with one another on personal matters, each trying to make out that the other is, or has beau at some time in his life, an unprincipled scoundrel, who has turned to account the position in which he has been placed by his Queen or his constituents to advance his own private interests. Sir George Grey has been pretty free with his accusations against the Ministry, and now Mr Ormond turns the tables by stating that Sir George had " prostituted his position as Governor "to enrich himself. Can it be that our public men are really such rogues as they try to make each other out to be, or are we to accept the alternative suggested by one of the Maori members iu the House last night that they are "all liars?" So we— by "we" I mean the people of New Zealand— are to be called upon to pay £500 to Mr Russell of Hawke's Bay, and an additional three or four thousand to the lawyers and others engaged in the late Waka Mao i case, a jury having decided that the Government, that is those who represent us, and for whose actious we are responsible, hare grossly libelled one of our fellow settlers. There can be no mistake about the Government being the guilty parties. There is the libel printed in an official paper surmounted by " the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown "—this being the word picture of our childish days for the Royal Arms— and terminating with the imprint "By authority: George Didsbury, Government Printer, Wellington." That we are liable then for the damages awarded by the jury and the costs of the trial there can be no doubt, ao that we hare yet another reason for being grateful to Ministers for the manner in which they are conducting the affairs of the country. It is quite a new phase in colonial experience, this subsidising a journal to blacken the character of one of ourselves, but New Zealand is a progressive country, and is generally allowed to be far in advauce of her contemporaries. And she is maintaining her character very well. It is to be regretted, I think, that criminal proceedings have been commenced agaiust Mr George Jones for only doing as the Government had done before him. It would have been more satisfactory if the actiou had been a civil one, as the damages (if any) obtained by the Government as plaintiffs might have been devoted towards meeting the expenses incurred by the same body as defendants in the case just tried. I have frequently wondered what the natives thought of the numerous religious differences that prevail among the Europeans so that I was rather pleased to receive the' following, which purports to be a free translatiou of a Maori's letter on what has recently taken place iu the colony: — Friend the Pakeha. Greeting. These are my words. The Maoris are sorelv puzzled with regard to the action of the Europeans about the Bible. When the pakeha first came to New Zealand he told us that our Gods were false ones, and that they could not do us either harm or good. "Our God," he said, "is the true one, but he is so overpowering in His majesty, so dazzlingin his glory, and possessing so keen a sense of justice that no man can by himself or of his own merits approach or even behol i him." Then said the Maoris, " What is the use to tell us of such a God when we cannot get near him to speak to him?" And the pakeha replied, " There is the sun shining in the heavens. You cannot look at it with your unprotected eye. But if you provide yourself with a pieoe of glass and darken it with smoke then you can gaze through it on the sun, and your eyes will not be hurt by Ins brilliance. The sun is like unto our God and such a medium as the darkened glass has he provided between Him and us, and from the name of this medium have we taken the title of '• Christians," of which we are so proud because it includes everything that is great and good. And we listened and believed, and then we asked, " Oh pakeha what are we to do to get this darkened glass so that when we come to your God we shall not

be blinded and destroyed by the flre of his countenance ? " Then did the pakeha place into our hands the Holy Scriptures, and he said, " Read this book and pray to our God and he will help you to obtain that which you want." And again we asked, " How are we to pray when w,e do not know what to say? " But the pakeha soon smoothed away this difficulty, for he showed us the Lord's Prayer, and said "That is the way you ought to pray." All this we did, but now our hearts are full of grief because the pakeha has been deceiving us, and telling us to do that which he will not let his own children do. This is the reason why we speak so. When Mr Bowen brought the Education Bill before the House he said that it was to make the children at the schools read the Bible and say the Lord's Prayer. Then there was an outcry that the Maoris cannot understand. Like the cry of a weka uttered oa one hill and taken up by another weka on another hill it has gone through New Zealand from Otago to Auckland, and tha white men who first told us about the Bible say " We will not let our children read that book in school." Therefore are our hearts troubled and we say "If the Bible is not good for the European children it is not good for the Maori." Friend Pakeha listen to my words. When the European came to New Zealand the Maori was like a kaka that is grovelling in the dust and trying to gain his sustenance from what he can find on the earth. Then from high up in the skies there came to him the melodious songs of other kakas (the Europeans) that: were flying overhead, and tha words they sung were like unto these —"Come up here. Quit the dark earth and soar towards the heavens where the air is brighter arid purer and everything •is clear and radiant and bathed in the sunHght of the gospel." Then did we spread out our winga aud fly upwards and upwards, but as the distance betwiea us became less the warblings that we had heard from below had lost their sweetness and sounded harsh and discordant in our ears, and instead of harmony we heard bickerings and wranglings, and unseemly strife, and the cause of all thi3 we found was the Christian's Bible that the pakeha told us was to make us kind and forgiviug and charitable one towards another. And now do we think that he was making fools of the Maoris by telling them to be guided by -what they read in a book that he will not let his children look at lest it should do them harm. This is all. From Henere llori. lam not altogether surprised at the difficulty in which the Maori finds himself. F.