To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Straits Guardian.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume I, Issue 7, 23 November 1844, Page 3

To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator and C ook's Straits Guardian.

Sir, — It cannot have escaped the attention of a discerning public, the position, unfortunately awkward and distressing, in which some may find themselves now placed in relation to an important branch of our judicature, the commission of the Court of Requests, — held by a party who, waving the enquiry as to his possession of the requisite virtue, probity and honor, has doubtless had cases left in his hands in the capacity of attorney, previous to his present appointment — the prosecutor is here, by a transition eminently adverse alike to the spotless integrity of the judgment-seat, and the dispensing an impartial justice between man and man — elevated to be the Judge of his own case, and vested with a power secured by the entire spirit of the British Constitution, from the hopeless encounter with which, at once odious oppressive, and unjust, human nature shrinks as from an unclean thing. A. case having been left by a party now gone from the colony iv tbe hands of the quondam attorney, now Commissioner of Requests, and sympathy must attend him, who being called to the bar of this Court, finds himself confronted with and opposed to the unnatural and repulsive combination of Prosecutor and Judge in one person, who, spite of all nominal devolutions of the power of attorney, sees his bona fide prosecutor sit in judgment against him, and having not the means of appealing to a purer aud more hopeful tribunal, observes with despair his real prosecutor in the exeicise of an absolute power over his liberty, and any property tliat may ever be his. I do not mean, Sir, at present to reprobate Governor Fitzroy's choice of a Commissioner, which I hesitate not to believe was formed without the reflection on tbe part of his Excellency that it was possible to become the medium of one-sided justice. Nor, as tomorrow is but the first Court day, have I any data of proceedings by which to measure the propriety of his Excellency's choice. But the circumstance alone of an attorney in full practice, and doubtless not destitute of clients being suddenly converted into a Judge, demands at the least that a watchful and scrutinizing eye be directed towards the proceedings of his Court for a time, and at the object of this communication is to draw public attention more closely to the duty of observation, Mr. Commissioner Hanson will pardon the assurance that not the least watchful | observer will be A Colonist.

The Ojibbeway Indians. — The Ojibbeway Indians are great chiefs in their own country ; and they have been admitted to a private if not a confidential interview with our Queen. Yet these illustrious strangers, with a degree of condescension for which the public cannot be sufficiently grateful, exhibit themselves daily and nightly for the small sum of one shilling ; and affably accept of any present — trinket, drink-money, or piece of dress or fufniture — presented to them as an eleemosynary gift. Nay, so ready are trey to comply with the custon of the country that they-permit themselves to be paraded through the streets in an omnibus — some inside, some outside — all in full costume, to stimulate curiosity, in the same way that the Beefeaters of a wild beast show, or the corps dramatique of an esquestrian company, are inarched through a country-town at the fair. Now, bating that they are foreigners and called chiefs, wherein do these outlandish exhibiters of grimaces differ from the tumblers with whom they have just been compared — or the Highland dancers and bagpipe-players in Stsre Street — or the unemployed or run-away ,prentices who may be seen any day in some by-lane or alley enacting Jim Crow, the Indian Juggler, &c. ? Their performances are quite on a par — to bring in as many sixpences (as possible ; and for anything that constitutes the warrior or ruler, turn our c tree t performers adrift in a common or game-preserve and they, will in time rise through the grades of sheep-stealers and poachers, to, the grade of combined bludgebn-men either inrdefence or aggression, which is about the .utrabj3fc_ptogress that any Indian, trjbe. appears, to hay.c

made" in" the noble arts of venery, war, and gotfenrtnerit. . ' - - A rational member of the Aborigines Protection Society (if sach a character can be imagined) might disapprove of encouraging these Indians to exhibit themselves for hire and chance presents. " This is worse "he might say, " than depriving them of hunting grounds and expelling from their favourite haunts, as the Americans have done with the Creeks and Chickasaws. It is adding but one to their limited ideas, and a debasing one. It is encouraging them to jump and scream before people who they know are laughing at them, for the sak« of "gain ; it is stimulating their avarice and extinguishing, their self respect ; it is making these athlets of the wilderness moral Sampsons to shake down the temples of their own souls." All this is true; and yet people flock to see the war dances and hear the war- hoop, because it gives them a livelier idea of the delightful horrors they read in Cooper's novels. They may, however, at the same time learn a useful lesson. These poor fellows, who are jumping, grinning, and > whooping for their amusement, are neither better nor worse than the " Princes of the Niger," whom Sir Fowell Buxton would subsidize — 'than the Caffire chiefs at the Cape with whom formal treaties are concluded — than the New Zealand Rauparaha, whose savage violence and massacres are palliated because they are "high spirited chiefs," and say, can they be dealt with in the same way as civilised governments ? Yet men who would think the world turned upside down were universal suffrage 'granted to the people of England, gravely talk of holding diplomatic intercourse with beings who both morally and intellectually are below the first chimney-sweep you may pick up on chance. — Spectator.