NATIVE AFFAIRS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 18, 27 May 1871, Page 2

NATIVE AFFAIRS.

.// [Taranaki News.] It is satisfactory to find that we may pretty confidently look forward to an early termination of native difficulties. Glancing south in this province from New Plymouth to Wanganui, we have roads making and bridges building, and all the works proceeding without obstructionsj and much of them performed by native labor. This quiet may, it is true, be said to grow very naturally out of the advantages such arrangements bring to the natives themselves, by supplying their wants and gratifying their appetites, and is no guarantee for its permanence. We think otherwise, and that the advantages and comfort derived from improved communication, when they see that mutual convenience is its only object, will have permanent hold of them. How this has been accomplished it may not perhaps be convenient to inquire into too closely. - Any other course would in all probability have involved disturbances obstructing all progress in this direction—if it did not again light the torch of war, than which no, greater calamity could occur, as it would put this province out of the pale of possibility of benefiting by the means of progress, which the financial arrangements of the Colonial' Government have brought within its * reach. We must then be content to condone the past for the security of the future, however unpalatable such a course may be to some. Northward between the Waitara and Mokau, we learn that affairs are looking much more promising, and we hear Mr Parris went in that direction yesterday with the object of attending a meeting to that purpose. Should this be accomplished, the quiet of the whole province may be said to have been secured ; and if Government accepts the Superintendent s recommendation regarding a supply of land,! will be open almost immediately for the oc-' cupation of emigrants. The operations against Te Kooti in the north have recently been prosecuted with great vigor and success by the native force under Ropata, although with great suffering to him and his followers. The hiding place of the fugitive, for so he must now be called, was discovered, and although the bird had flown, the whole of his kaingas . together with the cultivations and all the food collected for the sustainment of his people have been destroyed. Te Kooti himself escaped with only some eight or more followers. *The account given of Te Kooti’s hiding place as well as the articles, which in his apparently precipitate flight he lett behind, will be read with interest. The manuscript book of prayers, and revelations expecially, go to prove how much fanaticism has had to do with all the mischief he has perpetrated, and, with power renewed, would still perpetrate; for the frenzy will only die with the man. But what wonder that a savage should become so affected when every age teems with examples of equally mischievous enthusiasm amongst, communities calling themselves civilised.