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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1339, 7 August 1883, Page 3

The Wanganui Herald says Sir George Whitmore made a good hit in the Council on the hand-shaking with Te Kooti. When Te Kooti offered to shake hands with the Native Minister, the latter should have placed his hands behind his back and said—- “ You shall benefit of the amnesty : on a principle of general policy you shall not be prosecuted for your offences of the past : but do not suppose a that blood-stained hand like .yours, stained with the blood of children, concerned in outrages upon women will be grasped by me. Do not suppose that your hand can be shaken by a Minister of the Crown in New Zealand.” This is very well put, but, if we remember rightly, the Native Minister walked over to where Te Kooti was sitting, and offered his hand to the blood-thirsty scoundrel. Sir George Whitmore made an appropriate quotation from Marmion. “ Sir (said the gallant member), there is, in a poetical work written by a man who would be regarded as a greater poet than he is regarded, had he confined himself to poetry, an expression which describes my feelings in this matter, — My manors, halls, and bowers shall still Be open at my Sovereign’s will To each one whom he lists, howe'er Unmeet to be the owner’s peer ; My castles are my King’s alone. The hand of Douglas is his own, And never shall in friendly grasp The hand of such a Marmion clasp.” This is the right view to take it. Policy might require the amnesty, but the hand of Douglas is his own, and ought not to have been extended to one “ unmeet.”