BANQUET TO MR BRYCE.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1026, 25 April 1883, Page 2

BANQUET TO MR BRYCE.

[PER PRESS ASSOCIATION.]

NEW PLYMOUTH, This day

■ The banquet last night to the Hon. J. Bryce was very numerously attended, and it was past midnight before it came to a close. The Mayor presided. Mr Bryce spoke several times during the evening in replying to various toasts. In responding to his own health being drunk, he spoke for nearly three quarters of an hour defending the policy he had adopted in Native affairs. He spoke to the Colony, but it is impossible to give even the substance of his remarks in a brief, summary. He sympathised with settlers in their complaint at being slandered by the southern parts of the Colony, but said that those who wrote the slanders neither knew the district or its people. He referred to a book recently published in England called History of New Zealand in which it stated that during 1869 he (Mr Bryce) murdered women and children. He had not seen the book, but should take steps against the slanderer. He asked them if they ever heard of him doing such a thing, which he publicly denied, and branded the author of the book a liar, slanderer, and a coward. He referred to some remarks of the Into Bishop Selwyn who wrote in defence of the European settlers’ treatment of the Native race. Mr Bryce then reviewed what had been done by his Government in the settlement of Native affairs, and showed that he acted as any other man would have done toward Te Kooti, if they had been placed in the same position. He praised the conduct of the Native chief who had taken part iu releasing Messrs Hnrsthonse and Newsham, and said if the amnesty proclamation had net been issued, would Te Kooti have acted in the noble manner he bad done? He said that the King Country was now opened to Europeans, and there would be no further obstruction to surveys, roads, or railways. He said that the difficulties which had arisen at Cambridge had

been through the legal profession prolonging cases in some instances till the costs had absorbed the whole value of the land in dispute. He concluded by saying that the time would come when the Maori could be trusted as any European would be —when they would be governed without any special laws, or have other than European Courts to apply to. In replying to the toast, “ The Ministers,” Mr Bryce said in reference to Major Atkinson’s “National Insurance” scheme, that although the Mayor was a little premature, a century too soon perhaps, yet a scheme for the relief of poverty, something similar to the one proposed, would, in time, he generally adopted throughout the world he believed. In proposing the Mayor and Borough Council Mr Bryce said that, although a Wanganui man, still he was a New Zealand colonist, and the prosperity of one place was of as much interest to him as any other. Mr Hursthouso, in responding to the toast, said he was under a debt of gratitude to the chiefs Te Wetere and Tc Kooti, who, had they been European friends of his, could not have treated him in a more thoughtful and kindly manner when' ho was released from the fanatical Maoris who had tied him and Newsham up. Major Brown, in replying for the colonial forces, said that Governor Gordon knowing he (Brown) had left the colonial service as Native Commissioner had sent an aide-de-camp to him in hopes of obtaining grounds to bear out the assertions made against the Ministry regarding the treatment of the natives, Imthc had declined to satisfy him. Although ho (Brown) was a loyal subject of the Imperial authorities, yet he considered bis loyally was due to the colony first.