SUBJECT PEOPLES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 156, 3 July 1936, Page 6

SUBJECT PEOPLES.

THE ETHICS OF GOVERNMENT. (Bv J.C.) The late Sir Frederick Chapman, the venerable judge who died lately in Wellington, was a man of broad humanitarian views. The lifelong study and practice of the law did not freeze the genial current of his soul. In his lawyer days in Dunedin he wrote a serial history of New Zealand, most of which was published in a newspaper of that time; it did not go into book form. In a resume of the colony's history he expressed his sympathy with the Maoris, who strove to preserve their nationality and their land. "If Englishmen," lie wrote, "eoukl occasionally be brought to face the fact that since the institution of their nationality and language no permanent English community has ever passed under a foreign yoke, they would be better able to understand how impossible it is for a dominant race to do complete justice to a subject people, and how hollow is the pretence that impartial justice is rendered to such people. The strong natural sense of justice which animates Englishmen, and their intense respect for the rights of property, have doubtless helped to a vast degree to counteract the evils of domination and disparity; but if we could view the question from a national Maori point of view we should find much to approve of in the principle of the Land League." Anti-Land-selling League. Chapman was referring to the establishment of the Maori Anti-Land-selling League by the Taranaki Maoris in 1854, when a great meeting of the tribes was held at Manawapou. The leajrue had for its general object the preservation of the Maori lands —no more land was to be sold without the general consent—and the institution of self-government, through the medium of. tribal councils. The pakelia jurist found "much to approve of" in this agitation for self-determination, in spite of the fact that the Maoris generally had voluntarily accepted the British supreme authority. I never heard Sir Frederick Chapman's opinion as a jurist on the peculiar position in Samoa; but his view of Maori natural riglrts could be applied with even greater force to Samoa, where a sovereign race had been passed from one Great Power to another, by virtue of the strong hand, without consulting the people's wishes in the slightest. His words I have quoted fit the "island situation very well. The one point of difference is that the Ma.oris were strong enough to make a stout fight for their national liberties, whereas the Samoans are an imarmed, , peaceful, patient race, whose sole hope of freedom lies in trusting to the "strong, natural sense of justice" which, as Chapman believed, animates British people. Their hopes now are centred, with an intense longing, on the new Administration's policy, which is to be decided upon after the present visit of the New Zealand Government delegates.'