MAORI MEMORIES.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 332, 13 January 1937, Page 7

MAORI MEMORIES.

Our First Debt. Maori enumeration differed only | from the simple decimal system in that their computation was a division ! icr multiple of their digits. They ac- j i quired .a ready and useful knowledge ; i of financial prospects, because of the | I simplicity of their analysis; ' but we | ! ignored or underestimated the value | jof their criticism, which only one m j j a thousand of ns could really under-1 | stand. We could not then even trans- i i late/their words. llt was a wise old Maori critic who i originated the 'historic statement I that the directors of the New i Zealand Company got drunk on I a theory, but the early settlers got j I the headache. I As every settlement was bitterly | handicapped by the then huge debt of I more than £200,000 said to be owing i to the company, the directors offered I to cancel it on payment of that sum iin cash. In 1856 a Bill was passed I by the General Assembly for our first I loan, the nucleus of our present inI cubus which is multiplied a thousand ' times. I This loan was accepted as the re- , | sponsibility of Nelson, Canterbury. | j and Otago on condition that none ol i their revenue was to be used to put-I chase land in the North Island. In 1858 the London Times reported this landfall as being divided among the directors of the .New Zealand Company, and remarking, "Never was there a more satisfactory mee'ting, or | more unanimity in complimenting. ea,ch other on their usefulness, and j denying the charges of rapacity so | often urged against them.’’ There seems to be no record of a. dividend having been declared to i those who lost their all in this finanj cial adventure. Not even the biting ; humour of “Punch” was directed i against these directors, who were acI claimed as the founders of Wellingi ton, Wanganui, Taranaki, Nelson. ■ Otago, and Canterbury, and glorified, i perhaps justly, with having saved | New Zealand from being a French i Colony. lln the House of Lords a notable ' speaker said: “Never was there a I greater job than this, in and out of i Parliament, in England and New Zealand, men were indignant at the aiI rangeniont. The Colonial Secretaiy gave a quarter of a million of public •money to the Company, imposed a I debt of another quarter million on ’ j the colony, and a burden of £IOO,OOO ■on the land.” . . > | In reply Lord Grey hinted tha.t Gibj bon Wakefield was a false guide td I the company.

Reforming the Maori. /n 1851 there were 26,700 white ettlers in New Zealand, the males jeing in excess of their prospective nates by nearly 4000, and to make j natters worse, 2150 soldiers in gay init'orms, many of whom were bacheors. On the other hand, quite a Himber of our farmers annexed Mairi women Maori fashion, most of them it least in prospect, land ladies. I Auckland had the greatest pbpnla-, lion: Taranaki the smallest. In every! Trace the Maoris were as live to one, j and, fortunately, on friendly terms. I Sixty Jews had already arrived, all but one were in Auckland and Well- | ington. that one was a. labourer among the thrifty Scots in Otago. Two-thirds of our- people above ten years had learned to read and write. Otago was the best educated, Auckland the worst. Seven Quakers were at Auckland and one at Canterbury. Auckland excelled in cultivation;'Nelson grazed the most sheep. Our men and women were in the prime of'lite. About 40 in every thousand had reached 60 years. In England they were nearly double that number. , Outside the census, were the Maoris and over one hundred "retired” white men advisedly living in secluded huts on the riverbanks or lakesides. In nearly every instance driven thus, to be immune from the lure of liquor, at a distance from the civilised world. A British medical o;cer found among them the brother-in-law of a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, gentlemen who kept racehorses in England, a brother of a Colonial Governor, men once well known at Cambridge or Oxford, officers of rank, priests without gowns, and sons of Belgravia. In some huts well-fingered copies of Virgil, Homer or Horace attested their scholarly tastes. With these men of artistic tempera nient, whose very generosity had led them astray, the Maori people becalm | sympathetic and helpful, benefiting in ! turn by absorbing the ethics and pililo I sophies of a higher civilisation. I With the gold rush to Australia j came the imminent danger of a fam | ine in New Zealand, for wo had ex ported there every available bushe jof wheat. Happily our hermit gentle .men had taught their apt Maori pu I pils the virtues of work and thrift Iso there came to the settlers firn ! stores of Maori-grown food at a criti Ical time. Our derelicts had revealei to us the absolute necessity of sav in gmen’s bodies before attemptin: to rescue their souls.