PUBLIC MEETING.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume I, Issue 17, 1 February 1845, Page 2

PUBLIC MEETING.

A public meeting was held on Saturday evening last, at the Britannia Saloon, near the Aurora Tavern, to consider a Memorial to his Excellency Sir Gerrge Gipps, the Governor of New South Wales, praying for protection against the natives of New Zealand. The large room of the Tavern was densely crowded- long before S o'clock, the Jiojie for holding the meeting, soon after which the Hon. H. W. Petre was called to the chair. The chairman stated the reasons for calling the meeting to be the extraordinary state of things in the settlement, and generally throughout the colony. He believed the position of the colonists of New Zealand to be without precedent or parallel. By a course of conduct, equally unwise and cruel towards the colonists and the natives, Governor Fitzroy had transposed the position of the two parties, and thus rendered each injurious to the other. He had made the savage paramount to the civilized man, and ! by so doing had placed the colonists in a state ' of jeopardy from which there appeared no means of escape, except by assistance from strangers. Therefore it had been resolved to memorialize the Governor of another colony and in taking this extraordinary step it behoves them lo be peaceable, orderly, and unanimous, so as to show their enemies tha^ a united and resolute mind actuated them all. (Loud cheers.)