Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Wednesday & Saturday SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1881.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 907, 8 January 1881, Page 3

Poverty Bay Standard.

Published Every Wednesday & Saturday SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1881.

“ We shall 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''

It is to be hoped that the new Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, will not re-enact the humiliating scenes, with the same inconsequential results as have hitherto attended the interviews and diplomatic relations between the Queen’s representative and the head of the house of Maoridom. Matters seem to be tending in that direction, when we find that the very first act to which His Excellency has committed himself is an attempted negotiation for fuller intimacy with Te Whiii, a subject so to speak, of the Maori King. Our readers will have observedin our recent telegrams that Captain Knollys, the Governor’s aide-de-camp, was dispatched with a letter from Sir Arthur Gordon to the rebel prophet, inviting him to go to Wellington—Wellington, above all places in the Colony! Wellington, wherein several batches of his (in a Maori sense) persecuted brethren were confined in gaol; and to meet a Governor who is hand and glove with a Government who hold these men in bondage without bringing them to trial. What a farce. ! Te Whitt’s sarcastic, if not insolent reply, as rendered in English—“ the potato is “ cooked,” is all that could have been expected; and if he had added a synonym to our “ put that in your pipe “ and smoke it,” it could not more aptly and amply exemplify his meaning. A good deal is endeavored to be made out of the fact that the Government sanctioned this course. If so it does not redound to their credit; neither is it in accord with their past conduct and relations with Te Whiti. To as great an extent as they dared to, they have ignored the old man ; at any rate, as far as we remember they have not stooped to parley with him beyond what was proper and dignified. But now we have the authority of the Wellington Post for saying that the Governor lent himself to this first act of official degradation at the request and on the express advice and suggestion of Ministers. Whichever view is taken of the position, we are on the horns of a dilemma. If Ministers did advise His Excellency to this rash act, they have stultified themselves; if they were consenting to it merely, they stand compromised before the Colony ; and if the Governor did it on his own responsibility, he has rendered himself ridiculous in the eyes of the settlers, and contemptible in the estimation of the Natives he professed to conciliate. If it should be this latter, it would appear to open up a new phase of our relations with Home Rule and Maori Government. At present we are in the dark, and probably shall be for some time, as to the exact instructions Sir Arthur Gordon received on assuming the Governorship of New Zealand, and in what relation he stands with regard to the Colony of Fiji in virtue of his capacity as High Commissioner of Polynesia ; but it is generally surmised that His Excellency is acting on specific instructions from the Imperial Government, in reference to Native matters in the future ; and that, as in the other Colony, the Maoris are to be considered first, and the European settlers after. It is impolitic to be hasty in forming adverse conclusions ; but, certain it is that, if a personal, Autocratic rule is to be introduced once more in opposition to Colonial considerations and wishes, and Parliamentary Government, the sooner the matter is made clear to the people the better.