The Daily Southern Cross.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XIX, Issue 1955, 22 October 1863, Page 2

The Daily Southern Cross.

iuceo nod imo. " If I have been extinguished, >et there rise A thousand beacons from the sptrk I bore."

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1863.

The general experience of mankind leads them to shrink from raising expectation to any high pitch on any subject, knowing how apt such a course is to lead to disappointment. Every ono knows how flat, stale, and unprofitable many a thing has appeared to him when he has fairly grasped, to the knowledge of which ho had looked forward as a fit object of desire and ambition. If there exists one subject on which beyond all others tho public mind of the colony lias been kept upon the tenter-hooks of expectation, it is the cession of the Waitara block to the natives by the present Government. Nor is it to be wondered at that it has been so. At any time, and under any conceivable circumstances, the stcp3 taken by Sir George Grey, with the advice and consent of at all events part of his Ministry, would havo raised a perfect furor of mingled wonder and indignation. Happening as it did, immediately after tho open renewal of hostilities by natives to some of whom, there can be little doubt, it was surrendered, it was not a thing to be wondered at that it excited indignation and utter surprise, but it would have been matter not only for wonder, but for shamo, had any other feelings been tho first to show themselves in British colonists under the circumstances. The Ministry made no move to explain the difficulty, and for months the public were left utterly in the dark, to grope, as best they could, their way to some solution of the enigma which should not be utterly disgraceful either to the moral or the intellectual qualities of the men in power who had done the deed. Gradually, and in various quarters, explanations began to be attempted having the appearance of being more or less the results of at least a partial knowledge of the facts of the case. Some treated these with the boldness becoming journalists who have learnt something, and wish to make what they know as oleav as possible to the public : others took the course of making a great mystery about theso facts, stating next to nothing, but as it were supplementing their defective knowledge by a scries of Lord Burleigh nods, which might mean much, and committed the performer to nothing. Under such circumstances as these it cannot be wondered at that public expectation has been kept at a very high pitch on the Waikato question. Nor can we feel surprised that the revelation of the darkly-hinted circumstances of horror and disgrace has a very flat and disappointing eflect when plainly put before us in an unvarnished statement of the facts. The whole mystery of "Waitara is now in our hands ; we arc in the same, or perhaps even in a betfer position for judging of the jfoyco oj 'J;hp circum? stances than tho Ministry were when tho cession was made, as wo havo no sudden surprise to warp our minds, and the benefit of a knowledge of after events to clear up some dark points. And we now deliberately say that, knowing all there is to know on the subject, we do not change our opinions in tho smallest degree upon tho main question of the right or wrong of the cessiQ«.*Qf the Waitara block at the tinio when, and in the manner in which ifc was made,. Some of our Southern contemporaries cvi: dently drew the information which thcyniadp public some months ago on this subject, from excellent sources. For all practical purposes^ the views of tho Canterbury Press' and tho Otago Times, as to the reasons which induced tho surrender of tho block, were correct enough. It was not. for any ono grand and conclusive flaw which had boon discovered in the title ; it was not becauso William King was proved to havo boon n Maori ilampden, nobly standing up for clear and inalienable rights of his race, that Waitara was yielded up by us, but because the minute difficulties and contending statements were so raapy ; because there was some apparent hard^ shipto ono mau, and some more than su'spedteel deceit on the part of another man j because tho claimants of Waitara seemed on the whole more respectable, or less disreputable, as the case may be, than those i\ ho would sell it to us ; aud because in a word, tho whole thing was a nuisance not worth the trouble of an investigation, which

might; lead to more bloodshed and was neither practically nor theoretically worth the risk. These were the real causes if we read the " Papers relative to the Waitara" aright, why ouv rulers were anxious to be rid of the whole business. In this anxiety they cut, and wo cannot wojfder at it, the gordian knot. They deternJned to wash their hands of the whole troublesome business. So far reasons on both sides seem to bo so equally balanced ; the little to be gained by holding it, seoraed so nearly balanced^ by tho much to be risked by doing so, that it remained a queation on which difference of opinion was all that could well be brought against any one deciding one way or the other about it. It .seems to us, however, all-important to observe that there was no absolute question of right or "wrong involved. The old mana claim appeared to be virtually given up by King, and a new «laim of a far inferior kind substituted. By their own account they had, as a favour, been allowed to live on the Waitara block, because of their dread of old enemies if they ventured upon their own land ;<aud they now, as it seems to us, claimed in a characteristic and most ungrateful manner, a property in that land where they had found a place of safety, and from those peoplo who had hospitably received them. It might, it is true, h>ve been more judicious, as it would havei looked more generous, had we never interfered with the ' Waitara block, but for this H We can scarcely blame ourselves, as King managed by his haughty and rebellious demeanour to render it all but impossible for the late Governor to treat him with any courtesy, or even to understand tne nature of his claim to tho laud. Any claim upon our generosity was utterly aud f for ever done away witli by King, we should say, when ho rose in rebellion against her Majesty, and was instrumental in destroying a flourishing settlement, and in procuring the barbarous' murder in cold blood of many settlers. It is useless to say that Ihaia and Tcira in some sort acknowledged his claim. Men in whose probity we had not, it would seem, tho smallest faith, might have been supposed capable, as the event hns proved, of trying to get rid of both claimants to their land. From reading the papers carefully we can make out no claim in justice upon us to withdraw from our purchase. Policy, then, was the only reason that really existed for such a course ; and policy might, when that course was first decided upon, have seemed, or actually been, a sufficiently good reason. Was it so when the proclamation was issued ? Was it so, in any sense, when the bodies of those brave men who were bxiteherecl on the banks of the Wairau stream were hardly buried out of our sight ? Was it so when there was every reason to suspect that some of the claimants, to whom we were about to surrender the block, hud taken this plan to hasten our deliberations? These are the questions which seem to us in the face of all the facts to stand out plainly as those which ought to bo asked, and which it will be hard to answer in the affirmative. The Waitara block was a mere bagatelle — the principle thus involved was a vitally important one.