South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2702, 16 November 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1881.

The conduct of Te Whiti during the course of the proceedings of the last few weeks, and especially within the last few days, proves him to be a most extraordinary man. Here is a man who has lived almost apart from the direct influence of European civilisation,whose age is such as to indicate that his early life must have been passed in the savagery of old New Zealand, and that he must distinctly remember it and all its traditions and actual memories of bloody feuds and endless wars and cannibalisms, and yet whose conduct is a model of peacefulness and quiet dignity, Tohu, we understand, has spoken violently, and counselled more than once an appeal to force as an

arbiter between the Natives and the Government ; but Te Whiti’s voice has always been raised against the employment of violence, although he has certainly counselled a passive resistance to what he deemed an unwarranted aggression upon the rights of the people. Even if he be set down as a lunatic, he is not the less ah extraordinary man, under the circumstances in which he has risen to so prominent a position. One would suppose beforehand that a Maori fanatic—fanatacism implying more or less of insanity—would exhibit some characteristics of the race in the past, would be of extreme violence, and the more so as the nets of his enemies closed around him. And yet the very contrary is the case. If he is sane, and has acted only after a consideration of the circumstances he found himself and his people placed in, his conduct, looked at without reference to the trouble it has given and the expense it has caused to the colonists, must be admitted to be wonderful in a man of his antecedents 5 if he is in any degree mad, that his madness should be so manifested is even more wonderful. No one, we think, after reading the full accounts of his behaviour during the past few days, could wish to see this noble old savage severely punished, and if a pledge were given that the peace and security of the settlers should not be again endangered, and that the questions in dispute should be legally enquired into, no one, we are sure, would greatly object to his being set at liberty again. The evidence given against him in the Magistrate’s Court at New Plymouth does not appear to be of a very damaging character. The words quoted by witnesses as having been used by Te Whiti on different occasions are not of a very violent nature, and their value as evidence of a desire to stir up ill-feeling and create disturbances between the two races seems to depend a good deal upon what land was referred to by him. The Maori “ prophet ” has been captured and placed in durance vile, but he has not been conquered, and his share in recent events will cause his name to be remembered in that distant future when a representative New Zealander shall fulfil Macaulay’s famous figure of speech.