The Waikato Times.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 741, 17 March 1877, Page 2

The Waikato Times.

Equal and exact justice to all men, Of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political # # # # #

Here shall the Presi the People's right maintain, Una wed by influence and unbribed by gain.

STTURDAY, MARCH 17, 1877.

An Auckland correspondent of the " Brisbane Courier," so far from observing the maxim " nil nisi bonum de mortuis" has coward-like waited for the death of one of New Zealand's foremost statesmen to say that which he would not have dared to have said if the slandered man had been still alive. Writing of the late Sir Donald McLean this literary assassin says : Sir Donald McLean died worth £18,000 a year in landed estate. People say he defrauded the Maoris,- and bought a good deal of his estate with some of the vety large sums of secret service money he was entrusted with, and which he always refused to account for as to the manner of its disposal. But the very people who say this (mind you I don't) are the very people who measure other people's corn by their own bushel, and would have done themselves what they say Sir Donald did. I myßelf recolleut when our dead Native Minister was a bush laborer, and supplemented his weekly earnings by killing wild pigs and converting them into the very choicest dairy fed pork. He learned the Maorilanguage while engaged as I have mentioned ; and — well, he died worth eighteen thousand pounds per annum, derived from over 150,000 acres of Maori land," So wicked a slander comiog from New Zealand should not be allowed to remain uncontradicted where its contradiction would receive the widest circulation, and where its perpetrator would receive the reward due for so dastardly an attack on the character of the late Native Minister — namely the S uprerne Court of either Queensland or Auckland. In the pei son of the late Native Minister the character of the New Zealand Government is assailed, and there are few, we take it, whether admirers or otherwise of the policy ot the late S r Donald, who would begrudge tin expenditure of tho accessary costs from ihe public

treasury in criminally prosecuting the writer, or, if the " Courier,' refused to give up trie writer's name, that journal itself for the scandalous abuse of free criticism, which the above paragraph exhibits Were Sir Donald alive, he might well laugh to scorn the contemptible attacks ofan unknown scribbler, but it is due to his memory tbat the refutation of the above charge should be prompt and sweeping. As we have said, meu have differed here as to the merits ot his policy, but never has such a charge as this been ever so remotely insinuated by even the bitterest of his political opponents. If large sums were at his disposal in the form of secret service money, it is well kuown that the expenditure of the Native Department, unauthorised by the Parliament, was equally lavish. And to the fact that it was so we owe to-day the peace and prosperity of the Colony and our position in the North Island. Humanly speaking, we owe all thi3 to the late Native Minister. He came to the helm of native affairs in 1869, when the ship of State was almost on the rocks; war raging in a portion of the North Island, and a general war between the two races imminent. The accession to office of Mr. Fox as Premier, and Mr. McLean as Native and Defence Minister, produced a calm in the native mind, which the policy of Ihe latter made lasting and secure. Then followed the great colonising scheme of the Public Works Act of 1870 — and how much, not merely of the success, but of the possibility even, of carrying out this scheme, do we not owe to the late Native Miuister?. Without peace, and a prospect of its continuance, the Colony could not have borrowed a shilling. There are those, doubtless, who may say that they wish that it could not ; but much as it may t be the fashion to pretead to look at our colonial debt as a burden unproportionate to the advantages received for it, we doubt if a careful balance of the two will not leave much iu our favour. We do not say that the expenditure might not have been more fairly apportioned, and the money less extravagantly expended ; but we do say, that the New Zealand of to-day is out of all comparison — stronger, wealthier, and more stably prosperous- than the New Zealand of seven years ago. And to the policy that then bought and paid for peace, we owe the fact that now the Colony can command peace. It enabled INew Zealand to carry out a policy of colonisation which, if it has cost millions, has rendered impossible the expenditure ot other millions, the costlier loss of blood, and the stoppage of colonisation, which, at any moment, up to the last few years, a conflict with the natives might have brought upon us. To it we owe, that since its inauguration our increase of population in the North Island alone is equal to that of the entire Maori race j that instead of merely occupying the seaboard, our roads and railroads pierce almost to the centre of the island from various points; and that instead of having provoked the whole native race into a state of sulky isolation, we have learned tne value of the maxim Divide et impera, and have established sound and friendly relations with very many of tbe tribes. We speak here merely of the outward and visible signs of progress of a public nature showing on the face of the country, and in the JNorth Island alone — we say nothing of the immense work of colonisation which has been going on pari passu in the South — and we ask, Has not Sir Donald's policy done much ior us ? for* without it this could not have been, 'ihe Stafibrds and tbe Richmonds, who, till the Ministry with which he came in superseded them, ruled with the sworJ rather than the secret service money-bag, and would have probably cost the Colony as much in plunging itinto and extricating it again from a savage internecine warfare ; and should we have been left then as now, with our flocks and herds and cultivations, our roads and public works, an increased population, and the general signs of prosperity everywhere to be met. s_"et the man to whom we owe so much of this, whose cares of office, no doubt, hastened his death while yet in the prime of life, is to be vilely slandered in his grave by some nameless scribbler ! The Government of the Colony has a duty to perform to itself and to its late colleague, and friend and foe alike of him who has passed ' away from among us will join in approval of their vindicating his memory by the public prosecution of his detainers. I