FIJI AS A CROWN COLONY.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 129, 28 March 1901, Page 1

FIJI AS A CROWN COLONY.

Mr W. Fillingluun Parr, writing bo the Timas, severely handles a correspondent vyim, confessing hi? ignorance about Fiji, assorts'' that the petition for annexation to New Zealand vyas a “ put up job” by Mr Scddou .for his self-glorification’, “ I assisted,V says Mr Parr, “in a similar petition nearly twenty years ago, and I believe the settlers have never once since thought it .impossible fhat they would ,bg annexed.” Mr Parr shows that there is no doubt about the Governor’s injudicious words, for the latter’s warning to iho native-.' not to have anything to do'with New Zealand, ‘'as the white men there had stolen most of the land of the Maori and would also steal theirs,” uas not only spoken but published, in the native newspaper’, Na Mata’. Mr Parr calls attention, to a letter in the Fiji Times from Mr Durness, an old settler, stilting that twenty acres of the native land of Raid Raid had been let by ’ the . Fiji Government, without consult ing the native owners, for £lO a year (rather more than a penny an acre), and that tho natives bad in consequence begged Durness to let them plant their food on his land. “ How does this conduct of tbo Government of Fiji,” asks Mr Parr. com pane with" the G o vernor’s unjust charge against the Govern merit of New Zealand ? If your correspondent is an Englishman and wishes for a novel experience, I advise Lim to go and live in tho Crown colony of Fiji. In a very lew years he will only he too glad, to sign any petition that would alter; bis state of existence.”