South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, JULY 30, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2299, 30 July 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, JULY 30, 1880.

The more lire Native Department is examined the more interesting it becomes. The revelations of the Native Commissioners have been surprising in the extreme, but every day brings new .surprises. Fraudulent vouchers for such delicacies us pain-killer, wizard oil, and tombstones, arc but small affairs, contrasted with the results of later explorations. The department is apparently a dark cavern and every recess has its skeletons. No cabinet exhibited by conjuror has ever developed so many mysteries. The latest disclosures are the most ’startling of all. In reply to questions, the Native Minister has furnished the colony with a slight sketch of the career of some of the officials appointed to his department. One of these gentlemen, Alex. McDonald, who lias been promoted to the highly responsible office of Native Land Purchase Agent, at Otaki, was sometime since convicted and sentenced at the Supreme Court, Wellington, for stopping (ho mail coacli and shooting a horse. The Minister naively added by way of apology for the employment of an ex convict that “he was a man “ capable of rendering good service in “ the position to which he had been “ appointed.’’ There can be no doubt of it. A man possessing the fortitude and recklessness of a highwayman can hardly fail to be a valuable acquisition to the Native Department. Mr Me Donald’s experience as a colonial Dick Turpin and a gaol-bird have eminently qualified him for the post of a Native Purchase Agent. Anything cleaner, or more respectable than an ox-convict would, be a white stain on the department. Tiro other individual whose career received prominence was one Edward Francis Harris, who is gazetted a Native Interpreter under tlie Native Land Act in the “New Zealand Gazette” of January- 29. Mr Harris did not qualify himself by stopping a mail coacli and shooting one of the horses, but he proved his fitness for office by undergoing, in 1809, a sentence of six years’ imprisonment for forgery. llis application for the appointment, we are told, was accompanied by “a reeom- “ inundation signed by- the Judge of the “ Native Land Court, a resident magis- “ trate, one or two justices of the peace, “ and others, supposed to be respectable “ persons, residing in the district where “ Harris lived.” To bo complete it ought to have been signed by the Governor of the Gaol in which Harris was con lined, the Crown Prosecutor, and the victims of his forgeries. An individual with Harris’s talents is never likely to suffer from want of influential recommendations. Than their manufacture nothing could bo easier, and we have no doubt that bad a testimonial from the Governor been essential to his appointment it would have been produced on the shortest notice.

Wo have no doubt that a good many self-righteous people will deprecate these appointments. Because such experts in their way as foot-pads and forgers llourish in the Native Office, they will probably urge that an office so corrupt—so inherently vicious—should be swept away altogether. But supposing we got rid of the plague what would become of the latent talent of our gaols ? Would not the services of the undergraduates in crime,—such enterprising persons as Butler, of Dunedin, for instance —be lost to the colony ? Is it not satisfactory that after our criminals have passed through the primary penal institutions of the colon}', there is a higher school —a sort of black university—in which they can form a professorial board and exercise their special gifts without the slightest risk of getting into trouble ? Viewed from another aspect, is not the preferment of rogues aud vagabonds to offices of trust in the Native department, just the very thing to elevate the Maori character ? If a raid on Maori land is contemplated, who is more likely to make a good bargain than a good desperado like McDonald? A person whohas the pluck and dare-devilry to stop Her Majesty’s mail and shoot a horse is eminently qualified to purchase native lands. If he fairly represents the land purchase agents in the employ of the Government, is it not astonishing that any money should find its way to the original owners of native estates. The nice sense of discrimination which led to the employment of a courageous criminal as a land purchase agent, is also traceable in the appointment of the sneaking vagabond to the milder but equally important office of interpreter. A man who could impersonate another, aud raise the wind by forging

his neighbor’s signature is admirably adapted for such an office. In such a place of trust, a conscientious individual who might refrain from twisting, torturing, and lying bald-headed would be completely- lost. If not lost in confusion, his services would bo lost, and he would probably be deemed incompetent. Altogether the native office is a Held of usefulness for expirees which, at a time like the present, when poverty is driving people to crime, the colony 7 could ill afford to lose, and, we presume, no immediate attempt will be made to abolish it. The authors of these recent appointments have evidently done their best to keep up its reputation, and if popular feeling does not interfere, the Native Department will probably continue to prosper on the spoliation of the colony.