“AT LAST.”

Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 121, 15 February 1879, Page 3

“AT LAST.”

(From the ‘Auckland Free Lance.’) Native affairs are the great Kew Zoalam! mvstery, and, just, at present, we have wo great medicine men engaged in managing them. The savings and doings of Tawhiao, ov whatever Ids last name may he, are chronicled, morning and evening, in Auckland, with all the solemnity of a Court journal, and we have only to be thankful that we arc spared the infliction of a daily record of the colors of his majesty’s mat, or the state of preservation of hismost gracious majesty’s well-worn blanket. As for Ee'wi, his sayings and his silences are recorded by most of our contemporaries as if the fate of nations depended on what that venerable savage had for supper, whether he was pleased or angry at what the Government said or did, or did not or said not. Now we don’t grudge our ’Contemporaries the full flavour of flunkeyism which is to be got out of recording the doing? of Maori kings, prime ministers, or hugs- This sort -ofthing is dear to the souls of some people, and it would be cruel to deprive them of it ; hut there may be too much even of a good thing, and we ianev the ■public have had nearly enough of this sort of thing. In a certain sense, no doubt, the Maori king and Rcwi may he , '■considered important persons, but their j real importance is mostly of our own j making. "WV have heard a great deal j ■about the pacification of the country by j Sir George Grey’s meetings with Tawhiao, I but we have a strung suspicion that it is j all bunkum. The game is too much in j the ‘‘heads, I win, tails yon lose” stage | ■for our table. This constant interview- | ing of sulky savages suits their dignity j Very well we suppose, but what has it | ever done for us ? When Sir Donald] -McLean did it, Sir George Grey and air. I Sheehan denounced the whole business | as folly and something very like treason, j because protected murderers were at the meetings. Now Sir George Grey and Mr Sheehan do exactly as their predecessors did—the same folly is doin' over again, the same murderers with two or three new ones added are at their meetings, and we are expected to consider it the i the saving of the country ! This is just | a little, too strong for onr stomachs, and | it is surely time a little common sense | took some share in the proceedings. | What does all this interviewing mean, j and what will it end in ? Our own im- j pression is that it means just the same now that it meant three years ago. It means the unlimited flour and sugar, blankets, and saddles, in the first place. It means tall talk by the Maoris and fencing by the Ministers. .It menus the ■attempt to make the so-called king and •some of his chief follower? pensioners on the cob nv in the hope that they will value their pensions more that the excitement of a shindy with the settlers. This may be all very well in its way, hut it is neither new nor statesmanlike. Sir George Grey may wear Sir Donald McLean’s cast off political clothing with more dignity than its late owner could assume, hut it. is ungrateful to forget to whom it belonged originally. (if course we shall be glad to see the raiment worn to some purpose by the present proprietor. We shall rejoice to hear of anything being actually (lone by means of all this eating and drinking and speechifying, but we confess we don’t expect it. 'When we see the Maori potentates do something beside eating and drinking and speech-making, we shall begin to believe ; when we see the lands now shut up and under the bar opened and sold or leased to the Government, and in the hands of the working settler, wc shall begin to see the end of the native difficulty, and, what will be almost as good, an end of official bunding. So lav it is just as well to admit that nothing has been done. Certainly we have had no disturbances, but fortunately, that is no Vmv. thing. On the other hand, wc have not gottenve to make roads over the King Country ; we have not got liberty to survey a line of railway ; we have not a right to buy or lease land in the interior ; we have not even got Tawhiao to accept a subsidy, salary, pension, or bribe, whichever we choose to call it, as the price of his general goodwill. In the mean time we are spending a deal of good money in making a lot of savages think their goodwill essentia; to our

ven- existence. The result of tins may be felt bv and bv in a wav we shall not like.