TE KOOTI.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 280, 7 November 1884, Page 3

TE KOOTI.

[communicated.] I see by your telegrams last evening that Te Kooti really contemplates visiting Wairoa. I am not in communication with Te Kooti the same as the hon. Mr. Ballance is, but if I was I would give him a bit of friendly advice. I would tell him that if he desires to sojourn still longer upon the face of this sublunary sphere, it will materially assist him in that direction to give the East Coast a wide berth. There is such a thing as vengeance, and the human heart has been known to pant after that sort of thing. In Poverty Bay human nature is much the same as it is in other parts of the world, and Te Kooti will belie his reputation for acuteness if he gives way to any fondness for fooling round here. There are people here who remember the days of ’6B. To them, the memory of that time awakens the saddest feelings, and Kooti’s visit would reopen wounds that while life lasts, will never be thoroughly healed. Still, it is no business of ours. Thanks to Mr. Bryce, Te Kooti legally has as much right to walk up and down Gladstone Road, as any other man. And he knows it. He may come at any moment and saunter into Sergt. Bullen’s office, with a copy of Mr. Bryce’s Amnesty Act in his hand, and demand the protection that the police can afford him. In fact there are several of Her Majesty’s subjects in the Bay, whom he could demand to have bound over to keep the peace towards him, if he only knew what they said about him. All that Mr. Ballance can do is to advise him to keep away, and if the ex-rebel declines what then ? Kooti has never done me any harm personally, so I am not actuated by any private motives in thus writing to you. But there are others in the Bay differently situated with respect to the pardoned rebel. Mr. Bryce, when shaking hands with the murderer of women and children in Poverty Bay, should have made one condition namely, that he (Kooti) should never visit this district. Nor indeed would it make much difference if Mr. Bryce never came either.

[Telegrams this afternoon state that Te Kooti has abandoned his intention of visiting the East Coast.—Ed.]