THE FUTURE OF THE MAORI RACE.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 4, Issue 192, 24 May 1860, Page 3

THE FUTURE OF THE MAORI RACE.

{[From the Taranaki Herald .]

There exists in these islands among those whose education and position should furnish riper judgment, a party 'who are striving, in season and out of season, to arrest the rapid decline of the- Maori race, by other means than those sanctioned bv the Government of the Colony, and indeed by means antagonistic to and subversive of that Government.

- At the head of this party, every Englishman must regret to think it, stands the name of Uishop Selwyn, a man whose claims to respect comprise many that all classes gladly admit, whose energy and singleness of purpose are known where the English name is known. '

But this high and well earned reputation cannot blind us to tlie fact that his course in Maori politics is ; fraught with disaster, unless the energy of our Government rises to the proportions of his own. : We would meet Bishop Selwyn, if possible, on ground as high as his own. We would briefly state, though for the hundredth time, how untenable, on any ground of first principle, as well as on more practical ground of expediency, is the position of the - ultra missionary party. The rights of-ifian will;riot entitle the knot of semi-savages who, according to the views of the ultra-missionaries, are the great, landholders of this island, to cut off the world from participation in the fruits of this wilderness, which should he a garden. - Put the extreme case. Assume the whole world filled as some corners of it are. Is it said any rights of man entitle the Mama to blockade the coasts against the teeming,- s/arvingv millions that would flow from other lands to these vacant hills ?

We leave the treacherous ground of inherent rights, and ask, Does any contract support the ultra-missionary view of this warfare ? The waste parchment of the Waitangi treaty, if it could support anything, would be on the other side. They rely, then, neither on inherent rights nor on musty parchment, but on. some necessity or expediency, of the case. .[Perhaps they think it will be for the gopd r _ 6f the Maori that he should repudiate the aufliority of the British Government, and organise' themselves as a nation to begin.a new life of independent progress. That the keen-eyed, earnest missionary, among. his flock, his scholars, his linguistic studies, on the bank of some-great stream, far from the glare and heat of a do-

dream is not strange—is amiable and beautiful. But supposed the-past could be retraced, that the foot of the white man had- not trodden that river hank, his ship had not floated on its stream, does experience lead us to hope that this dream can he realized ? Was it thus that the nations of the old world arose from the dust ? Can any single instance be pointed to of a race self-elevated from barbarism, without the rude shocks of collison with other races of' different'characteristics ? Has the experience of the Tahitian—-nation shall we call it? encouraged the hopes of tho enthusiasts of Hew Zealand ? Or shall we turn to the still closer relatives of the Maori in the Sandwich. Islands? Can we save the subjects of Potatau from the contaminations that have debased those of Pomare below the savage state ? Can we shut out commerce and its. attendants by shutting, out British Government? shut out.the lounging Pakeha-Maoi because we shut out the British. Colonist ? These gentlemen, if they know their own minds, know they do not hope it. They have translated their wishes into their tnoughts; but they never have been able, and never will be able, to save their clients from these evils.

No; it is through toil, and struggle, and subjection that the higher levels of national, as of individual life, have been attained: there are no royal roads to positions such as these.

We may be referred to the Christian religion as an element new in its connection with a race placed as are the Maories. This is not so ; hut if it were, it affords little hope. Self-will is at the bottom of the struggle for national life. Christianity is not a discipline that cherishes this ; and can hardly be said to he easier to submit to than human Government. Is it easier to adopt the restraints of a high, pervading, spiritual law, or to submit to those of one bounded...by the narrow limits of expediency? The Christian burthen is light when taken up , hard indeed to take up. And without disguise can the ultra-missionary party say that the Maori or any considerable part of the race has taken it up. Experience and a priori probability are then in utter opposition to the hope that our Maori neighbours should establish themselves as a nation if left alone.

And though it may he a wrong in an ultramissionary sense, it is not the less a fact that the foot of the white man has been planted on these shores, —his ships do float on these streams. It, ia an impossibility to remedy this evil or good ; mid the attempt to prop and develop the peculiar barbarous institutions of the Maori resolves itself into one to establish in the narrow compass of this island two independent nations, whose territorial boundaries interlock on all sides. Can this be the design of these gentlemen ? Is it a probable—a hopeful design ? We will not weary our readers with any illustration of the absurdity of the conception; it is the way, if carried out at this moment as far as it could be carried out, to secure the extinction of the weaker race. And what a price for the stronger ? “ Blood and treasure,” as the hackneyed phrase goes, we could spare, perhaps there are higher things than these, hut we imagine that the rifle tenure of property implies a moral condition that, even in a white population, might awaken the pity and sorrow which seem to sleep in these gentlemen except for the darker race. We would not yield to these gentlemen one iota in the interest for the noblest race of savages that the earth has shown in historical days, but they are savages. They are not fit to be at this moment, pushed into the social position of great proprietors, of legislators, of kings. The race must pass through the discipline of labour and subordination, must be trained to European habits and language before a hope can be fostered in the unheated imagination that even a remnant can be left to tinge with their peculiar characteristics the great race that lias set a friendly foot beside them. It is not the spirit of covetousness. It is beeause we cannot help regarding the Maori race as fellow men, because some of them are closer to us even than that word implies, that we would desire to see, without a day's useless delay, the British flag on eveiy pa through the islands ; British steamships in every creek—-British towns from north to south, and let us add churches where the English tongue is heard, near every stream, lake, and hill, of this beautiful land. /On these grounds we deprecate as destruc-. tive of the very end they aim at, the illadvised attempts of Bishop Selwyn and the ultra-missionary party, to check the active prosecution of the hostilities now going on. i'et the intelligent Maori once feel, that resistance is hopeless—let one unquestionable blow be struck —and we have the end of bloodshed, and a hope lights up that the Maori race absorbed into the finest body of men who, since the Pilgrim fathers, have left the British shores, may live in history as the one fortunate race of barbarians to whom contact with modern civilisation has proved life and blessing.