THE POVERTY BAY DIFFICULTY.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 12, Issue 976, 8 September 1868, Page 3

THE POVERTY BAY DIFFICULTY.

Sic, — Recent events, coupled with Mr. Ormond's able and luminous speech on the policy of the present Government, have drawn the attention of most thinking men in the Colony to the unsatisfactory posture of affairs on the East Coast. Some settlement of the matter is admitted to be an obvious necessity. Strongly as Mr. Ormond has put the case, the facts much more than bear him out. The staunchest supporters of Provincialism will concede that in this instance one of its evils has had a most glaring illustration. A petty feeling of jealousy on the part of the Auckland Government, on what it chose to consider an infringement' of its territorial rights, has been allowed to keep a large (and what might have been by this, a flourishing) district in a state which renders it a disgrace to the whole Colony ; a wound which exhibits signs now of inclination to fester and poison the prosperity of the Were the advancement of the whole Colony a matter of interest superior to a mere question of Provincial rights, the petitions which have been forwarded to the House from the natives of the various settlements on the East Coast, and from its scattered white settlers also, would have confirmed the Government that the interests and the wishes of all tended in the one direction. There are men amongst the settlers as competent to form a correct judgment as any member of the General Assembly, the possession of a seat in which does not necessarily carry with it the gift of wisdom to the sitters, and the feeling is unanimous that there is only one method possible to the solution of the East Coast embroilment. Their opinions have no weight, although the knowledge of the matter possessed by these men is ten times greater and sounder than any possessed by members of the Government, because, forsooth, although all their interests are at stake, it is no business of theirs to have opinions. The conduct of the Government in this particular reminds one of the story of a King of Spain who lost his life froni the suffocating fumes of charcoal. It was not his business to know he was suffocating; it was not the business of the Lord-in-"Waiting to open the door and let the fresh air in j the honourable flunkey whose special duty it was to open doors was absent, and it wasn't anybody's business to seek him ; and so the King died for want of a little common sense. The Government wont assist the Superintendent of Hawke's Bay to settle the difficulty because the scene lies in the Province of Auckland, whose Superintendent wont open the door to the Superintendent of Hawke's Bay because he fears to compromise the dignity of his Province, and so Look to it you whose business it is ! We're perishing ; our state getting worse and worse daily ; and there will shortly be nothing left but to bury the corpus delicti and write its epitaph : — Sept., 1868, perished the East Coast, one of the finest districts in New Zealand, after a lingering and painful sickness, brought about by chronic mismanagement, hastened in its latter days by the culpable imbecility of its doctors, who persisted in quarreling amongst themselves instead of administering proper remedies to the sufferer. There are three methods of dealing with the matter — by annexing the district to Hawke's Bay ; by creating it into a native county ; and by handing back to the natives all their lands, to settle as they best can — withdrawing all European settlers, all Government officers, and erecting a line of blockhouses, at intervals of 5 miles apart, along the 39th parallel of latitude. The question is essentially a native question. There is but one man in New Zealand can deal with it, and he ought to be allowed to dictate his own terms. The shortest and best method would be annexation to Hawke's Bay. Take a line from the Maungaharuru range, through Waikare Moana, above Puketapu, Ruaki Turi river, to the source of the Waimana stream, and follow that stream down to the Bay of Plenty. This will comprise an area of 2£ million acres, and contain the main elements of present and future Maori trouble. If it be made a county, take the boundary from the mouth of the Mohaka river, and get rid of the present absurd line which, cutting through lengthways the military settlement lands at Wairoa, leaves the settlers along the line with their potatoes growing in Hawke's Bay and their cabbages in Auckland. ' It is the earnest appeal and heartfelt desire of all the inhabitants that the annexation should take place ; and if the Government refuse to press the House to make it, they will be deservedly entitled to the reproaches and execrations of those upon whom more immediately will fall the terrible consequences of further procrastination. Mr. M'Lean has the future welfare of the colony deeply at heart, but he would not be true to himself and to our interests if he did not insist that, whilst accepting of the responsibility, he also obtained the unfettered control, with the method whereby he consents to administer adapted to his own wishes. The Government will restore confidence, cause the bruised flowers of prosperity again to raise their drooping heads, the gloomy shadows of fears, doubt and despondency to vanish, by frankly and cordially giving that support to that gentleman, which he is clearly entitled to demand. Do this, and Permitte div>s cetera, gui simul fcjti'avio'e ventos aiquore furvido I'eprcßlianU'S, nee cupressi Nee vetcrcs agilantur orni.— Horace. — lam, &c, Echo.