PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, THURSDAY, JULY 29, 1880. HOW TO STOP FENCING.

Patea Mail, 29 July 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, THURSDAY, JULY 29, 1880. HOW TO STOP FENCING.

There are two ways of stopping the Maori fencing of the new highway through Parihaka country. The Minister for Native Affairs and his sagacious advisers are pursuing one way, that of making war on an enemy that does not want to fight, and is content to offer a protest and be taken prisoner. Is there not another way, simpler and more in accordance with every-day habit ? The conditions are these. A new highway is just opened by a mob of. Government servants, through native country closed previously to the Queen’s white subjects. That country was part of the land confiscated as a punishment for the last war. Thfe Government arc therefore the nominal owners; while the real claimants are the natives who were permitted and encouraged to return to the land after the war, and resume their old position. Occupation begets a right, in equity ; and the right ought to be recognised. It lies on the Government to do that in such a way as not to give to native rebels more than the circumstances reasonably require. Bribery by large gifts of land should be stopped. Rights of occupation within certain areas should be recognised, with due regard to native necessities, and with a wise outlook towards future white settlement. These being the conditions, how is it that the Government find themselves at war with the Parihaka natives ? Is it not a fact that our Governments, one and all, refrain from using force where nothing but force will avail, and that the present Government are making a military demonstration with 800 armed men, when only some eight or ten Maoris are putting up fences to protect their wheat crops ? Suppose the Government had sent 200 armed men to the Plains, and said to the natives : “A highway must be made along the coast for the use of white men and Maoris alike; but Maori settlements of every kind shall be protected, by fencing in any portion that may be cut through by the road, so that cattle shall not be able to stray into your cultivations from the high road.” Would that have met the present case ? The Maoris have a good and proper plea for fencing their sown lands, where these have been thrown open to trespass from the highway. But our wise rulers, instead ot bringing their minds down to the level of things as the are, must lay out their maps and settle the native difficulty by drawing lines on paper. It passes all understanding that politicians who would give land to rebel natives with so lavish a hand that the white settlers stand agast at their actions, should yet be so indifferent to the every-day requirements of the natives as to cut a road through their plantations, and then, while giving them any amount of land for nothing, should yet refuse to recognise the necessity of having sown corn protected by fences along an open highway ! How is it that officials put aside their common sense when they get into office ? How is it that they insist on spending a pound to save a penny ? How is it that they always manage public business on principles that no man adopts in private affairs ? Ye wise rulers ot the land, tell us why you think it is better, or cheaper, or easier, to take Maori fencers as

prisoners, and keep them in gaol untried for a whole year, may be more, than it would be to set your 800 armed idlers to work putting up fences along the highway where native plantations have been cut through ? Is fencing too mean an occupation for your armed gentry on the Plains? Are they above that sort of thing ; or is it that you who govern us are superior to these plebeian considerations of daily life ? Now gentlemen politicians, do tell us, for the people in these parts, who have to bear the brunt of your blundering, who have to protect their homesteads from fanatical natives whom you pamper one day and goad to madness the next —the people here on the frontier want to know, for heaven’s sake, what you are about.