Poverty Bay Standard. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY AND SATURDAY MORNINGS. Thursday, February 19, 1882.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1037, 16 February 1882, Page 2

Poverty Bay Standard. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY AND SATURDAY MORNINGS. Thursday, February 19, 1882.

The speech delivered by the Chief Wi Pure in Porter’s Hall, on Saturday afternoon last, was in many respects a remarkable one. The views put forth that the Maori chiefs should have power over their people were of a typical character. Holding the position that IVI Pure does among his race, having natural intelligence of a high order, possessing in such a marked degree that power of dissimulation—considered by Lord Chesterfield so necessary to persons desirous of succeeding in a refined state of society—and being, as he undoubtedly is with his people, a leader among men, we should have been surprised to find him outside the ranks of those advocating an aristocratic form of society among the Natives. And how is such a condition of things to be brought about, or maintained? Simply by the adoption of the principles Wi Pere himself propounded. Let the chiefs have territorial control, says Wi Pere, let a protective policy be inaugurated. Do not give to each individual Maori the freedom of dealing with his own piece of land. The Maori people had in the past to rely upon their chiefs, let not that custom be discontinued. Thus in effect spoke AVi Pere. Did we propose to treat this subject from a sentimental point of view, there is much in what AVi Pere enunciated that would possibly merit our support. The writer remembers on one occasion when the Hawke’s Bay Chief Te Hapuku—a

thorough old chief of the cannibalistic era —after hanging about the Supreme Court all day to give evidence in some land dispute where “ a slave ” was contesting his right, returned to his

kainga, and in tones of ineffable disgust at the machinery of European law courts, jumped into the centre of his whare and while his eyes flashed their ancient fire, he held aloft with quivering hand, a greenstone mere. “ This,” said the old Chief, “ was the Supreme Court in my days, this did all the work of the lawyers, the policemen, and the judges.” And verily it did. But the time has gone by for that. “ Old times are changed, old manners gone,” and an aching void is left in the minds of ambitious Natives. The young men now growing up, cannot with safety to themselves assert their superiority over their fellows, as did the Chief's of old—by physical force, even death, if the passing whim so dictated. On the other hand, the I transient state through which the | Native youth are passing, is in too early a stage to permit casting off 1 altogether their Maori associations, so as to enable them to cope on equal terms with their Pakeha brethren and become thoroughly- Europeanized. Viewed from its purely sentimental aspect there might be experienced a tinge of sympathy for the descendants of a long line of aristocratic Chiefs, suddenly, and through circumstances over which they had no control, placed upon the same level as those they were taught to consider their inferiors. But the reflection is an idle one. The inevitable must bo faced. Where the inexorable Pakeha plants his foot, it availeth little to attempt to withstand his progress. The coloured race must succumb. This truth pointed out byscience, melancholy as it may be for the Maoris, cannot be disguised. AVi Pere should contemplate tl.e position from a practical point of view. He will doubtless recollect that some years ago in Sir Donald McLean’s time, the Chiefs of Hawke’s Bay had as near as we can recollect in 1866, and subsequently vested in them large tracts of land on the lleretaunga Plains, and other parts of that district. The chiefs got control of these lands. And how did they administer them ? Did they look after the interests of their people ? Assuredly they did not, A few Chiefs like the late Karaitiana Takamoaxa, who died worth thousands of pounds, obtained the lands in their own name, and squandered in billiards, liquor, and racehorses the inheritance of hundreds of their people, of whom many of the latter died in squalor and misery in some dilapidated whare, with scarcely a blanket to cover their emaciated forms. Coming nearer home, -where the Natives in a different manner placed their lands in the hands of trustees, what beneficial result has accrued to the Natives? What account can the trustees give of their stewardship? Shall they too be weighed in the balance and found wanting? Recent facts, perhaps, may hereafter furnish a reply. The general welfare of the district, and the salvation of the Maori people, depend upon tne individualization of their land. When the title to a block of land is investigated, in declaring who are the owners thereof, the law says in effect that every one of those owners possesses a portion of that land. Then why not go further, and define that portion. Is it, forsooth, as AVi Pere argued, that if each Native bad bis particular portion allocated he would recklessly dispose of it; therefore subdivisions are not to be made. The time has arrived when a self-reliant policy in regard to Native lands should be established; when the protective spirit too long fostered by paternal governments in the past should be wiped away; when the Maoris should be treated assentientbeings, and not as suckling babes. They are keenly capable of guarding their own interests in the way of ordinary commercial transactions, and equally so in regard to land, where a special safeguard is provided. Above all, AVT Pere must not be unmindful of the proverb of his ancestors, when they affirmed in the days of yore, that in this district “all men were equal— Ko Turanga, tangata rite.”