KINDNESS BUT FIRMNESS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3252, 3 December 1881, Page 4

KINDNESS BUT FIRMNESS.

Dr. Buller, at his meeting at Karori, urged that the natives should be treated with Mndness but firmness. As showing the value of the latter, he instanced a case where 500 natives came down the Waitemata Harbour to avenge the disgrace oE a chief who had been fined for stealing a pair of boots. Several of the influential chiefs went to Government house and represented their case to Colonel Wynyard. Ho received them kindly, but told them that if within an hour they were not all gone from the harbor, the guns of Fort Britomart would fire on them. The deputation left, and another one immediately after visited Government House and asked for another hour's delay. " No," ■was the reply ; " begone within the hour or we fire on you," and the 500 natives disappeared without delay. That tribe was, said the doctor, ever afterwards our friends and allies, but had they not been firmly dealt with they would probably have sacked the City Of Auckland. As showing their extreme selfishness, he stated that when he was commissioner at Foxton, carrying out the "flour and sugar policy," a native came to him and said he was starving. Dr. Buller went to the store and ordered a bag of sugar and bag of flour, when the Maori looked at him and asked, " Well, but who's to pay me for taking them home ?"