LIQUOR IN THE KING COUNTRY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 10, 6 October 1927, Page 12

LIQUOR IN THE KING COUNTRY

Sir, As an abstainer from spirituous liquors except tor mediiinal purposes or fur recuperative restoratives, my entry into this discussion is, and has been, purely one of truth, no matter whom it may affect. Pursuing this line, I protest witn all tho vehemence of one intimately conversant with all essential details of Wahanui’s petition to the Parliament of his day that intoxicating liquors be excluded from the Rohe Potae, against the letter of ; "Bore Josephs, a Maniapoto," of Wellington. Firstly: What credentials did Waha. nui produce before Parliament that he was delegated by the Maniapoto nation to speak for it? I knew Wahanui, also that he was a chief of a section of that nation. Further, that the only individuals of that section whom he could engage to be a puissant mouthpiece for were his immediate blood-relations, outside of whom he had no more authority than any other chief, and any innovation, any change from a status quo, must be proposed to an assembly of all the chiefs, and be adopted by them as an issuance of one and all before any change from a status quo became law. This was Maori law—it is the white man’s law, and that of common sense. To my personal knowledge no such assembly of the chiefs to discuss the exclusion of spirituous liquids from the Rohe Potae was held. Te Moananui and Nga Tokowha, two inland chiefs as influential in their section as Wahanui was in his, assured ma that no meeting was held at which this matter was discussed. That when they heard of Wahanui’s assumption to plight their troth for them, Nga Tokowha, indignant at the memory, cried: "he _ngehengelie no te iwi, me i koro kua tikina (the nation was tired of war, else wa had cone for him). Of course the war ho referred to was that with the pakehas, whom their young men, joining the Waikatos, had fought, and no house in the Rohe Potae but mourned a member slain. The absurdity of “Roro Josephs screed magnifies it beyond the realm of farce. His claim trenches on the borderland of an autocracy—nay. political atrocity, when he (or she?) implies that Wahanui’s illegal assumption of prerogative can deprive us—the major race—of its inherent British privilege io decide and elect what it deems best for us.— I am, etc., w H< Otorohanga.