MASTERTON.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3154, 28 March 1879, Page 2

MASTERTON.

This day.

The Native Situation.

The Wairarapa daily paper of this morning publishes the following as authentic :—The Hon. J. Sheehan when at the Paribaka meeting demanded tho surrender of Hiroki, and this was refused. Mr Sheehan then explained to the natives the course he was about to pursue respecting the "Waimate Plains, and was engaged doing so for about half-hour when Te Whiti, in violation of the p:omise he had made before the Native Minister began speaking, interrupted him, and made one of his most violent and fanatical utterances, characterising the act of the Government as one of theft, and accusing the Government of being the murderers of McLean, and not Hiroki. After the Native Minister had left Parihaka, the same day a meeting was held by the natives, and Te Whiti decided that the surveyors should be turned off three times peaceably, but that on the fourth time they were to do as Hiroki did. Accordingly a party went down on Monday and removed the survey camps, as already reported. The motive for Te Whiti's action is perfectly plain. For the last seven or eight years he has deluded the people by assertions of prophetic and even godlike powers. Each year at his annual meeting he stood pledged to do various wondrous miracles ; this year he was to have raised the dead, to have restored all the confiscated land, and to have ascended to Heaven with Sir George Grey. None of these things came to pass, and his speech at the late meeting was one of the lowest and most hesitating he has ever been known to deliver. As a consequence, the people begin to murmur, and numbers have left Parihaka in disgust. To save himself he has thrown himself into the bands of a more violent party. So far as the Government are at present advised Titokowaru is not a consenting party to any of these violent measures, and it is

believed that the Government will take the necessary steps to vindicate the authority of the law.