A MODEST DEMAND.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 694, 6 August 1870, Page 2

A MODEST DEMAND.

(From the Wanganui Chronicle.) Major Kemp is certainly a most modest and unobtrusive man. He recently visited the Empire City, for the purpose of urging upon the Premier and Mr M'Lean the propriety of releasing the whole of the Native prisoners now in gaol at Otago, and letting them return to Wanganui. His idea is that they should be distributed amongst the Wanganui tribes, who would in a certain sort of fashon become as sponsors for their good behaviour Major Kemp and Mete Kingi, our worthy and respected brown skinned M.H.R., have been trying very hard to get the Government to consent to this nice little arrangement, but we believe as yet they have received no definite reply from the Ministry. We fervently trust that the Government will have the moral courage to altogether refuse the request made by Major Kemp, and his compatriot Mete Kingi. We certainly had enough of trouole in catching those Maori prisoners, whose amiable weaknesses were displayed in a desire to tomahawk settlers, violate European women, and dash out the brains of innocent children. Well we caught them at last; tried them with all due formality; sentenced them to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and afterwards remitted this terrible penalty to a moderate period of imprisonment. Unler those circumstances, it is rather too much for Major Kemp and Mete Kingi to ask us to set those miscreants at liberty, before they have served out the full period of their sentence. Some philoMaoris will, no doubt, raise a cry that those prisoners are gradually dying off under the restrictions ol their confinement. Be it so. The sooner they die off the better, and society in general will be very greatly benefited by being rid of such people. At all events, we don't want them back in Wangauui.