Mr R. STOUT on MAORI PRISONERS

Patea Mail, 3 August 1880, Page 3

Mr R. STOUT on MAORI PRISONERS

The ex-Attorney-General’s organ, the Echo, puts the Opposition view of the Maori Trials Act thus :—“ We regret that the House of Representatives should have passed the Maori Peace Preservation Bill. If the Bill becomes law, it will be a standing disgrace to our statute book. [The Bill is now law.J Let us state very briefly what has led up to the passing of the Bill. The Grey Ministry in 1879 found that opposition was likely to be offered to the sale of the Waimato Plains. It was also discovered that the Maoris intended to as. sert their claims to land that had been confiscated and sold by the Government to Europeans. Knowing that the religious fanaticism of Te Whiti and his followers might lead as Hauhauism had led to war> the Ministry determined to mass all the available armed constabulary on the PlainsThe Maoris, however, did not fight. They asserted their claims by going on the confiscated land and ploughing it. This was done without any violence, and was in law a trespass. Is some instances the Maoris may have brought themselves under the penalties of the Malicious Injuries to Property Act ; in others they were guilty of forcible entry. At worst, their offence was trivial. They were arrested, and we believe that in the arrests little discrimination was made. All near the ploughing were taken. The Grey Government determined to allowed the law to take its course, and those arrested were to be tried and sentenced, the sentences being imprisonment and being bound over to keep the peace. Others were arrested and not immediately tried, they being committed by magistrates to take their trial before the Supreme Court. The Ministryjnow introduce a Bill that gives them the power to postpone the trials for twelve months more. The position is therefore really this —men against whom there is only the charge that they committed trespasses in assertion of what they believed to bo their rights, arc kept twelve months in gaol awaiting trial, and are then to be kept another twelve months without being permitted to protest against the injustice of the Parliament. Are men to be punished on suspicion without trial or evidence ? Are they to be kept fur ever in gaol because if liberated they may commit a breach of the peace ? These acts are relics of barbarism. Were they enacted by a civilised nation now, the world would ring with the injustice that was perpetrated.”