The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY). MONDAY, MAY 19, 1879.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5658, 19 May 1879, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY). MONDAY, MAY 19, 1879.

- <■ <( Honorable Legislative Councillors, “ and gentlemen of the House of Ropre- “ sentatives: I congratulate you on the “ fact that peaceful relations have at last “ been established with the Waikato and “ Ngatimaniapoto tribes “ There is now a fair prospect that before “ long European enterprise and settlo- “ ment will be welcomed by these great “ tribes, and that they will gladly avail “ themselves of the advantages which “ roads, railways, and telegraphs will “ bring to their magnificent terri- “ tory In consequence

“of the disposition thus recently manl- “ fested on the part of these natives, you “ will be asked to consider the question “ of extending the North Island trunk “railway from Auckland to Tara- “ naki Several long

“ pending questions, out of which more or “less ill feeling has arisen, have been “ finally and satisfactorily settled. The “ question of the survey and settlement “ of the West Coast of this island has “ been firmly taken in hand. One large “ block has been surveyed, and will “ shortly be open for sale, and the im- “ mediate survey of the Waimate Plains “has been ordered. A

“ largo extent of country will be “ open for sale and settlement.” Thus, at the instance of his responsible advisers, spoke his Excellency the Governor at the opening of the session of the New Zealand Parliament on the 26th Jnly last.

We need not tell our readers that a Governor’s speech on such an occasion is a Ministerial manifesto; that the document is concocted in Cabinet, and that the Governor is invited to deliver it, and does deliver it upon the responsibility of his constitutibnal advisers the Ministers, who are accountable to Parliament and to the country for the truthfulness of the words, which, so to say, are put by them into the mouth of her Majesty’s representative. Were these words truthful at the time they were spoken ? There is abundant proof now available that the words were not truthful, and there is sufficient ground for the inference that Ministers, when they advised Lord Noumanby to utter them officially in presence of the representatives of the people and of the members of the Legislative Council in Parliament assembled, knew that they were not truthful words, and that her Majesty’s representative at their instance was unconsciously lending himself, and the authority of his high position, to a political party fraud. It is ■with a deep sense of pain and a feeling of profound regret for the tarnished honor of New Zealand public men that this conviction has forced itself upon us.

It has long been tho desire and the practice of the leading politicians in this colony that purely native questions should be discussed and dealt with on broad principles and in a statesmanlike fashion, and that’they should be lifted as far as practicable out of the arena of mere party politics. Sir George Grey, as leader of the Opposition, was the first to break through that salutary practice, and his virulent personal attacks upon the late Sir Donald McLean, and upon the native policy which he represented, unfortunately appear to have imposed upon himself, when he attained to the position of Premier, the necessity of doing something very startling in order to justify his adverse criticism, and to exhibit that personal influence and authority with the natives of which he was always boasting, and which his vanity led him to suppose that he really possessed and could exercise upon occasion. His first encounter with tho Waikato Kingites at the Whakairoiro meeting to which, as it now turns out, he was invited by, Major Te Wheoro, a well paid officer of the Government, and not by leading chiefs of Waikato and Ngatimaniapoto tribes, as he said—must have shown him the true state of the case as regarded his own influence and as regarded that prospect of achieving a party triumph by means of it, which was his real object; if he had had prudence then ho might have been spared the pain of such an exposure as that which has recently been made at Kopua, and the people of the colony have been saved also from the danger and the humiliation into which his vanity and egoism have now recklessly plunged them, No Government in New Zealand has ever been placed in such a contemptible position before the native people, and it would be well if evil consequences from the folly and dishonesty of Ministers can now be prevented even by their early expulsion from office. The labors of the last seven years in the cause of peace have, as we see,- been completely frustrated, and a very large section of the native people, a section who now command the sympathy and would obtain the active support of .the large majority in the island, have been driven into open defiance of or passive hostility to the Government. Te Whiti’s

late speech at Rarihaka and Tawhiao s late speech at Kopua will read strangely now in juxtaposition with those passages in the Governor’s speech with which we have commenced this article. Tb Whiti told the Honorable Mr. Sheehan, the Native Minister, that he was a “thief,” and that he ought to be tried himself before he demanded that the murderer Hikoki should be surrendered to j ustice. This is what Tawhiao, the King, was pleased to say a few days ago publicly before thousands of Maoris, his guests and sympathisers, and in presence of the Honorable Sir George Grey, ex-Gover-nor and Premier of this colony, who had forced himself into the presence of the Maori potentate, after having received a very significant invitation to stay away from the meeting, and to rest himself at Alexandra : “Listen!’ TawHiAois reported to have said. “ Listen my “ancestors, listen my parents, listen all “ the tribes from the North to the South, “ the people, the chiefs of the island. “ Potatau was the parent of you all, the “ chief over you all. Rewi is another. “ I followed Potatau. These are my “ supporters. All the island is mine. “ Everything rests with me alone. On ‘ 1 ‘ which side is Rewi V Rewi presently, for answer, arose from amongst his people, walked across the open space, and sat down by Tawhiao. “ I will not conceal “ my thoughts but will throw them before you that you may all hear. The 11 Queen sent a letter telling Potatau the “Europeans were coming, and he re- “ plied, keep them away. I say, listen “to me while the sun is shining. Listen ‘ 1 to this word. I will not permit Grey “to manage these things in his way. He “is sitting there now. Everything in my “ island rests with me. I will not have “ anything to do with Grey. I will not “ consent to his management. Lai figlit- “ ing be kept away. I will not hear of “ it. There shall not be fighting in the “ Waikato ; there will not bo any fight- “ ing about leasing or selling land, be- “ causa these things I shall cause to cease. “ I will not permit these things in my “ island.” This is the result of eighteen months of labor on the part of Ministers, their under secretaries, private secretaries, lying agents, male and female, and of their ardent supporters and toadies on a subsidised Press, from Mr. McCulloch Reed downwards to the late and present editors of the “New Zealand Herald.” The Honorable Colonial Treasurer will be able—but probably not willing—to tell how many thousands of pounds of the money of the people of this colony have been wasted in a futile attempt to prove that Sir GeorgeGrsy was, as he pretended to be, a Maori “Ariki” of enormous power, and in the “ great” efforts by which relations so entirely friendly have “at “ last” been established with the Waikato and Ngatimaniapoto tribes, and with the people ot the Waimate Plains.