Penalty for Sedition.

Patea Mail, 24 February 1882, Page 3

Penalty for Sedition.

We understand that the Government have decided to deduct 10,000 aensof land from the reserves promised to natives on this Coast; this deduction being a penalty for the disloyal behaviour of tribes who were till recently assembling at Parihaka, thereby causing trouble and expense to the Government.

Five thousand acres are deducted from the Parihaka block, and five thousand will be taken from the continuous reserve, which had been promised to the natives on the Waimato Plains. A meeting of natives from the Plains is expected to be held to-morrow at Hawera, when Mr Parris will probably explain the intentions of Government respecting the reserves. Opunaki reserve is in a different category. It was given, or promised, long before the Parihaka trouble became serious ; but os the land had not been transferred to the Natives with legal completeness, there is a question whether the Government will consider it good policy to make the forfeiture apply to that block the same as to later reserves. We believe this point has not been decided.

It appears to us a wise and necessary thing to enforce the forfeiture of some portion of the lately promised reserves, by way of penalty for disobedience and sedition.

Those promises were conditional on good behavior ; and looking now at the great expense and political inconvenience caused by the Parihaka sedition, the forfeiture of ten thousand acres is a light penalty. A lesson must be taught, and we only doubt whether this lesson is severe enough to have a wholesome lasting effect. The propriety of making an equivalent deduction from the Opunaki block is a separate question, the merits of which need fuller investigation