Native Meetings from an Australian Point of View.

Thames Star, Volume x, Issue 3182, 1 May 1879, Page 2

Native Meetings from an Australian Point of View.

It is only fair and just to presume that New Zealand Ministers know what they are about in running about from one to another great native meeting, all of which seem to end in nonsensical futility, and with no efFeot save a very increased tense of importance to the native stump: orator who has arranged them. We some time ago drew attention to the extraordinary proceedings at some of these meetings, where the Premier, Sir George, Grey.was reported to bare gravely made speeches which read just like pages out of the novels of Fenimore Cooper and. the rhapsodical orations of Hawkeye or the Last of the Mohicans. Recent papers give accounts of " the great Farihaka meeting," which, we are told, as an item of novel intelligence " proved a complete fiasco." The particulars supplied indicate the shape the fiasco this time assumed. It seems that some thousand • of natives assembled to see a prophet named Te Whiti raise the dead and remedy at a stroke all of the grievances of his people. Instead, how* ever, of doing this, Te Whiti delivered an incoherent and mystical harangue, and the meeting was over. Eegrets were expressed for the absence of the Native Minister, but Mr Sheehan did not arrive till the meeting had ended, when he, too, had an interview with the prophet, by whom he was snubbed and insulted. Eeally, constantly taking part in savage absurdities of this sort hardly seems the

way to maintain the prestige of ooveri> ment in the minds of the native race. And now we are told by a later telegram that the Governor is to be taken to another " great King meeting " accompanied by Sir George G rey. Sir Hercules Robinson is not likely to be taken with his eyes open into a position in which ho would necessarily be made to look ridiculous, but it is impossible to repose the same confidence on the discretion of his .onstitutional adviser, Sir George Grey.— Australasian.