PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY, JULY 20, 1880. MR PARRIS'S PROCEDURE.

Patea Mail, 20 July 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY, JULY 20, 1880. MR PARRIS'S PROCEDURE.

Mr Parris’s reasons for adjourning the business at the Patea Native Lands Court have now been explained. Observers could not understand the ostensible reason put forth, or left to be inferred, for closing the Court. Certain natives questioned Mr Parris’s right to sit without an assessor. We understand he had endeavoured to obtain a suitable assessor, but had failed. Still, he opened the Court and commenced the business. If it was right to begin a case without an assessor, it was right to end it without one. Such is, in fact, the law. As soon as the native objection was raised, Mr Parris gave effect to it by closing the Court. He gave no reason for doing it, but left all observers to infer that he had bowed to the native objection. It is this bowing to native objections, when they are groundless, that we protested against, in discharge of our public duty. The difficulty which natives find in dealing with Government officials is that the natives never know what the paitenas win stand to. xneir experience is that official pakehas abandon any and every position, if natives only refuse to comply with the official demands. That

is the fatal weakness in the policy of the present Government, as it was in a worse degree with the previous Government. Official knowledge of native peculiarities is valuable in its way, but .give:us firmness", give us straightforward decisiveness, instead of those nambypamby anxieties about native susceptibilities. The natives want to deal with officials who know their own minds. Mr Parris has been unfortunate in seeming to fall into the usual official weakness while at Patea. He is an officer of excellent intention, and is much esteemed for his personal qualities. But did he take a right course at Patea ? Did his official action jn adjourning the Court in the manner he did, make a favorable impression on the native mind or did it not? Unfortunately, no. It is to bo regretted that Mr Parris did not announce, in adjourning the Court, that he was doing so in compliance with a telegram just received from Governnicnt, instructing him that Judge Heaphy was coming directly to Patea, and that Mr Parris’s duties on the Plains weie of more consequence than his continuing for another day or two at the Lands' Court. That would have intelligible reason.