The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1881.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 3, Issue 891, 5 October 1881, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1881.

The Hall Ministry have been consistent in their dealings with the Natives. They have, while endeavoring to promote the peaceful -settlement of European settlers on lands which weie formerly native territory, endeavored to be scrupulously just and liberal towards the Maories who had any claim upon them, The Ministry, perhaps, hoped by their fairness to satisfy the Native race, but this is almost an impossibility. The Maories were the original owners of all the soil in Now Zealand. Some of the mure aged members of the race remember the time when the white man did not own a single foot of ground in their territory, and even the young men hava heard from their fathers lips the same story. It is not too much to say that the Maories, as a race, never will be satislied, Though conquered, they will always remain discontented, and whatever concessions may be made to them no sentiment of gratitude will ever induce them to regard with favor even a benign Ministry like the present one. If the Hall Ministry has made a mistake in dealing with the Pariliaka party it has been in endeavoring to reconcile it to the existing state of things instead of regarding it as helplessly hostile. We believe that the Ministry will yet have to declare in emphatic terms to Tu Wfirn the supremacy of the Queen, and insist upon its being acknowledged, The Natives of Pariliaka are now so hemmed in by the Government troops, and by a cordon of settlements, that any hostilities which may break out ought to be an affair of a week. A feeling is growing in tin colony that Te Wiiiti and his followers want onu short, stern lesson, which will be ths "drop-scene" ot the Native difficulty. The colony would sooner sue this lesson given than maintain.for an indefinite, period a standing army round Pariliaka. We can well understand that the Ministry, upon whom a "rare responsibility of "shedding human blood" rests, may well shrink from any step which may involve a sacrifice of human life. We do not, however, hope that the Native difficulty din bo ahsilntely solved by other means, and there is this consolation, that in the event of hostilities, the rebel Maoris being so weak, and we being so strong, the loss of life would be almost nominal, The colony is maintaining a small army of soldiers, and however averse we may be to see them use the deadly weapons' with which they are armed, it must be "borne in mind that our military force is not a mere plaything—a thing kept for show and not for use. We feed, pay, and arm the colonial troops on the ■understanding that they will, when occasion demands, risk their lives for the good of the colony, and if this service should be demanded from them now, the request would not be an unreasonable or an improper one,