THE STANDARD. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1873.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume 1, Issue 29, 22 February 1873, Page 2

THE STANDARD.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1873.

“ We si tall sell to no man justice or right: We shall deny to no man justice or right: We shall defer to no man justice or right.”

The answer which the Government has sent to Mr. Greene, the Chairman of ■the Compensation Meeting, in answer to a Petition forwarded recently to -Wellington, may be regarded more as dhe expression >of a mere truism of Parliamentary proceedings by the Undersecretary, than an ultimatum from the Cabinet. We were not at all unprepared for such an issue to the memorial the sufferers from Native outbreaks in this district made to the Governor; but we were quite unprepared to find that, so far as is contained within the four corners of Mr. Cooper’s reply, the memorial does not appear to have been entertained by the Government at all, much less seen by the Governor. Right or wrong ; whether the memoralists have a good case .or. a bad one, it would have been far more -satisfactory to them to .know that their prayer had reached the car of him for whom it was intended. The memorialists are fully aware of the action taken by the House of Representatives in 1867; but that action, —led, if we remember rightly, by Mr. Cracroft Wilson, in a pitched battle between Southern and Northern men, —had its base line on the -questions of moneycompensation anterior to that date. It is true that it was intended to have a prospective, as weH as a retrospective effect; but neither the House nor the Government had, up to that time, been called upon to witness such exceptional sufferings as those which the Poverty Bay settlers have endured uncomsince; and it was in full view of tins knowledge that they directed their attention to the fountain head—the constitutional representative of the supreme power in the state, not that they entertained an idea of the Gover-

nor being able to set aside the deliberations of Parliament, but that having taken that step, with a hope of receiving a graceful expression of sympathy from his Excellency before he left the shores of a country, in which, he has said, he will ever take a warm interest, —* a country which has been deluged in blood during his administration, Poverty Bay included,—it would fortify their Ultimate and constitutional appeal to the House itself to consider their prayer on it own merits, and not by the light of by-gone woes, which, however severe the tribulation borne by the sufferers, have no parallel to those sustained on this coast. The principle of granting compensation in this case, cannot be decided negatively by the arguments adduced in 1867; and we do not think even members from the South considered they were passing a decree which should bind, in the meshes of a Mede-and-Persian law, the future political history of the country. There can be but one opinion as to the reasonableness, equity, and good conscience of the moral claim the petitioners have to make at the hands of the colony. They fought for, and stood by, the Government through times of peril; they have aided, side by side with our Native friends, in making a common defence at much personal sacrifice, and their recompense should at least be equal. We believe that the great influence possessed by Mr. M'Lean both in the Cabinet and in the House can be brought to bear on the subject of this Petition. He has done all that has been done, while Government Agent under a Ministry which did not appreciate because it could not control him, towards restoring peace ; and if only as a fitting termination to a noble work, in which he has taken a conspicuous part, we advise the Petitioners to throw themselves unreservedly into his hands, not as a member of the Government, but as a member of the House of Representatives.