“The Press” In 1864

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30405, 2 April 1964, Page 12

“The Press” In 1864

THE PRESENT ASPECT OF NATIVE POLICY Are the Natives British subjects in all senses of the word? When did they become so? Was it by treaty? Or by conquest?. Or how? Have these questions ever been treated of by competent authority, and answered? Now that we are carrying on a war against them, in what light do we view them, or *-ather, in what light does the law view them? Are they subjects in rebellion sgainst their lawful sovereign, or members of an independent foreign community, and so entitled to the belligerent rights of hostile powers? ... It is not to be disguised that the great majority of &the colony are quite satisfied

with the legal despotism under which we live—quite content to hold their lives and liberties, as they do at this moment, at the will and beck of the Ministers of the day. The slaughter and spoliation of the Native tribes is going on steadily according to due process of law, and by the consent of the white population of the colony. We have long ceased to argue against it; t v ' only argument that will now avail is that of time th. avenger, and that eternal law of humanity which visits the sins of the fathers upon the children. ... A proclamation in the Native tongue signed by Mr Fox, has fallen into our hands, which we publish in another column, together with a transla-

tion, for the general faithfulness of which we can vouch, though not for the entire accuracy of every word. . . . This proclamation is a document for prolonging the war, for spending more money on Auckland, for colonising the North, for borrowing on our credit, and preventing us from borrowing on our own—for all these results follow from a continuance of the struggle. It is a plan for continuing a pitiless struggle to gratify commercial voracity. Yet it must go on; the time is not yet come when the South will awake to the fact of the extent to which it has been gulled and plundered to fill the pockets of Northern eon-tractor^-but it will come ere long.