MISSIONARIES AND MAORIES.

Auckland Examiner, Volume IV, Issue 274, 20 June 1860, Page 3

MISSIONARIES AND MAORIES.

From the Nelson Colonist of June sth we take undergiven letter addressed to the Editor of the New Zealand Advertizer.

Wairarapa, 13th May, 1860.

To the Editor.—Your views, and the matter you bring to bear upon the Maori rebellion question, can hardly fail to be highly satisfactory to every experienced colonist. It has long been known and well understood that the missionaries are exersising an undue influence (as a body) in matters not spiritual, that materially affects tho progress of colonization. The Press has bowed to that Missionary influence, Governors and statesmen are not only led but misled by it, and it is only since the outbreak at Taranaki that a portion of the Press has dared to speak openly respecting the dominant party. For full thirty years the puling cant, and howling fanaticism of Exeter Halt demagogues have been brought to bear upon a generous and misguided public. The trial, the danger, and hardship of missionary life in New Zealand has been drawn in such thrilling strains, and heart-rending sketches, that tears of gold have fallen from the rich, and the poor half-starved widow has “ given her mite,” and for what ? Has it been to raise the heathen cannibal from the dark abyss to a state of Christian civilization ; if so, it has failed, for the Maories, as a body, have less moral principle than they had twenty years ago; and all those who had any business transactions at that time with Maories, and are not interested in giving false color to missionary labor, will admit the fact. The Maories twenty years ago provided themslves with clothing and food by their own labor, and their physical and ethical position as a body being superior then to what it is now, I ask what have the Maories gained by mission labor 1

This requires no answer, as it is patent upon the very face of their every day transactions, were they not, as it were, forced by their location in the midst of a civilized community to consult the laws of modesty. They are less decently clothed, less cleanly in their general habits, less honest in their transactions with the pakeha, and less respectful in their bearing than they were twenty years ago. Then once more let us enquire what have they gained? Habitual indolence, sloth, intolerance, a crowd of horses and a wretched horsemanship. Little more The missionaries gained their influence over the Maori race by bribery ; they bribed them to be Christians ; and the Government following the instructions of the missionaries, are bribing the Maories to be British subjects,— not full blown ones if full grown ones. The missionaries have an ideal ethnography that the Maories are a race of over-grown babies that arc not capable of being let out a shopping without the attendance of a careful nurse; and, what is worse, this race of babies are never to come to an age capable to manage their own business. The mission-ridden government has appointed Maori nurses in the shape of Protectors, Native Land Commissioners, Interpreters, in fact a whole swarm of useless officials, whose

only hope of retaining office is by keeping up a discordant feeling between the two races ; and as the Maori finds the bribes diminish that enabled him to live in luxurious sloth, lie becomes restive, and the big baby springs into a man, a warrior, a rebel, a murderer ; yet in the ideal ethnography eliminated by the mission theocracy, he is still to be treated as a baby, with whom we are to be more than ordinary civil, or there is no knowing what mischief he may do us.—Reader.