PUNISHING THE FENCERS.

Patea Mail, 28 September 1880, Page 2

PUNISHING THE FENCERS.

The sentence of two years’ imprisonment with six months’ guarantee of good behaviour to follow is a severe punishment for 65 victims of Parihaka fanaticism. This sentence would be excessive in itself if no qualifying condition attached. Wc hud that condition in Judge Shaw’s “ caution” when he said the length of the imprisonment would depend on the peaceful conduct of those Maoris they left behind. In other words, we presume the natives are to be liberated at the earliest date compatible with the political object the Government have in view, that of subduing or conciliating To Whiti as the head of the West Coast tribes. Strong language of condemnation is used by several journals. They condemn the special powers of the Act, the harsh inhumanity of the sentence, and the perverse blindness of Ministers who are responsible for these things. Those journals have a party object to serve. They want to pull down the Government. This journal will not make common cause with political freebooters. We object to the special powers of the Act as being a machinery necessary and convenient for forcing a bad policy on the colony, but not required for preserving peace, nor for executing the ordinary purposes of law. We do not object to this West Coast Settlement Act as a Ha/l-Atldnson measure. A good measure should be welcomed from any quarter, and a bad measure should be opposed and condemned because it is bad, and for no other reason. The professions and practices of political cliques are abominably insincere, and he is a poor slave who gets drawn in and duped. It is surprising and pitiful to see how many journals in New Zealand arc mere tools of political cliques. Those which are subject to no financial leading-strings might bo expected to take an independent and patriotic course. In their case the motive may be right, but it is the force of bad example or the want of experienced sagacity that loads to these deplorable exhibitions of pernicious advocacy, whore argument is supplanted by vulgar abuse.

This Act for dealing with the West Coast as a proclaimed district is an unfortunate necessity of the situation. The present managers are short-sighted bunglers, and they need special powers on the principle that a manager who. does not know the art of managing human beings must have a harsh code of penalties to enforce his arbitrary dictation. How few men in authority are able to govern by moral force ! There must be a happy combination of vigor and conciliatory tact. An order once given must be irrevocable—if it be right. The right should be ascertained by careful circumspection in advance. If, for example, Mr Bryce had been duly informed that the West Coast road would cut through native cultivations, it would be criminal folly for him to carry that road through cultivations without trying whether a moderate detour could not be made; and if not practicable, he should have taken pains to make known that the cutting through native cultivations was a Government necessity, in which care would be taken to fence in the cultivations as the road progressed. A colonial duty and a moral obligation was lying on Mr Bryce to treat these native cultivations as those of a European taxpayer would be treated in similar circumstances. Did he do this ? If not, will any reasonable person tell us why not? Is it not a fact that Mr Bryce provoked To Wbiti in a manner which was morally unreasonable and politically stupid ? Having compelled the Prophet to stand on the defensive, it is childish to lay the blame of this fencing on Te Wbiti. The real culprit is Mr Bryce. He is imprisoning these 65 fencers, besides those other fencers taken earlier, for a crime which lies at his own door. This is the price we pay for employing incompetent politicians to manage a delicate operation with wise prudence. They go at it like a bull at a gate, and then call for special powers

to compel the natives to yield to a treatment which is stupid in the inception and criminal in execution. —*