COLORED PAUPERS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 225, 22 November 1888, Page 2

COLORED PAUPERS.

About the coolest thing we have heard of for a long time—and we have heard of many impertinent proposals—is a letter which has been received from the Native Office by Mr H, McKay, Secretary of the Cook Hospital and Charitable Aid Board. It is as follows: — Sir, —I have the honor, by direction of the Hon. Mr Hislop, in the absence of the hon. Native Minister, to inform you that, after careful consideration, the Government has decided that for the future indigent persons of the native race who require eleemosynary aid or free medical attendance must look to the local bodies, who are in receipt of subsides to provide for charitable aid, to meet their requirements, and that such bodies must be held responsible to provide what may ie necessary. I am to add that if cases are brought under notice of the Government in which the local body is neglecting to fulfil its responsibility in this direction, the necessary provision will be arranged by this Department, and the cost deducted f rom the subsidy due to the local body. lam also to add that should it appear that the burden thus cast upon any local body in any yeaf is out of proportion to the rates received, in respect to Native lands or subsidies, special application may be made to this Department, if such body has fulfilled its duty with respect to the sick and the indigent, and the Government will consider m such ease whether any special aid shall be given. lam further to say that the Minister hopes that in all eases of Maoris of means, an effort will be made to recover from them in the same manner as if they were Europeans, any money expended for their benefit.—T. W. Lewis, Under Secretary. There is a something indefinable in this letter which comes to us as a great surprise, and possibilities present themselves to prove that we do not yet know how rotten is our whole system of government. The Government have locked up the lands of the Maoris, and virtually made paupers of them, and now they want to shunt them on to the Charitable Aid Boards for relief 1 The Maori .that has property cannot dispose of it, and now both he and the lazy, skulking fellows who will not work while they ean live upon the labors of others, are to be thrust upon the taxpayers already crushed down by almost unbearable levies. Here on the East Coast, for instance, there are vast tracts of land lying useless, and likely to remain so until better laws. are ensured, and now we have the Government trying to create one of the vilest systems of pauperism that can be imagined. It is an ugly word to use, but it is better to make the fact plain, and to convey that force which is not to ba attained by mythical language. Can anyone apprehend what it means if the local Charitable Aid Board is compelled to find sustenance for all the lazy Maori landowners between the East Cape and Wairoa ’—the Maoris are actually to be educated up to the idea that they aie to be dependent upon the Charitable Aid Boards for support, and that it is honesty to retain their own property and live upon that of their less fortunate white brethren. We hope the Board will strongly resent this sort of thing. The immediate consequences may not be of much moment, but they may lead to the most lamentable results in the not very distant future,