THE TREATY OF WAITANGI.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 29, 4 February 1928, Page 8

THE TREATY OF WAITANGI.

To-morrow may be rightly regarded as New Zealand's birthday because on February 5, 1840, was commenced that great meeting at the Bay of Islands which resulted in the foundation of this country as a civilised State. The method of procedure was in its way unique. The native chiefs wcra asked (in no way was pressure brought to bear) to cede their country to the Queen so that she might protect them against the wrongdoing of her own subjects by the operatiou of her own laws, which were unenforceable outside her Dominions. The natives, a strong and warlike people, had quite force enough to protect themselves, but lacked the initiative and cohesion necessary to make that force effective. The document by which this cession was to be effected and which we know as the Treaty of Waitangi was not drawn up by some learned constitutional lawyer, but by a naval captain, assisted by a man of moderate attainments, a civil engineer by profession, and its translation into the native language was done by a clergyman who had had but an ordinary education and had never been in a university, with the help of his son, a youth of little more than twenty. Yet that document so well represented the intentions of the English Government, and the translation was so accurate in its rendering of all those ideas, so foreign to the native mind, that both still stand unquestioned by the most learned authorities from that day to this. The success which attended that meeting is writ large in our country's history. Though later wo were forced to fight it was against but less than one-third of the natives, but the task was so difficult, even when we had established our rule on a firm basis, that one trembles to think what the history of our land would have been had we been forced to conquer the country inch by inch against a brave foe who were past masters in their own way of warfare. It would h.avc been a story, of raid and counter-raid, massacre and counter-massacre, and, considering this, we ought to remember with gratitude the work of the men, undistinguished by any great force of intellectual attainment, who by their courage and honesty of purpose brought about that peaceful cession which laid the foundation of a settled Government in New Zealand —THIRD GENERATION.