MEMORIES OF PARIHAKA.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume L, Issue 8918, 6 November 1905, Page 6

MEMORIES OF PARIHAKA.

(Dunedin Star.)

It is twenty-four years ago this month I since the famous expedition bo Parihaka took place, when the power of the Prophet Te Whiti was broken down, and the colony was saved from a very serious native difficulty. It is remarkable how many myths have already grown up around this memorable event, showing not only how soon details fade out of the public memory, but also how difficult it is to keep historical records free from inaccuracy. An illustration of what we mean is contained in an interesting series of articles recently contributed to our columns by that veteran exparliamentarian, Mr William Hutchison, who was a members of the House of Representatives at tbe time the Parihaka expedition took place. Mr Hutchison, in some interesting reminiscences of Sir Arthur Gordon, revives the mistaken idea that the Hall Ministry purposely took advantage of the absence of the Governor from the Colony, while he was on a visit to Fiji, in order to issu« the proclamation against Te Whiti because they feared if they waited for his return he would not agree to it. Mr Hutchison does not beat about the bush in giving this version of the affair. After referring to the absence of the Governor, he continues : —

It also happened at the same time that a happy or a daring thought occurred to Mr Bryce. "Here is the opportunity," one may suppose Mr Bryce saying to his colleagues "for a prompt settlement of the Te Whiti difficulty. Let us take time by the forelock — make haste in the absence of the Governor — and by a 'ooup-de-main' effectually get rid of the needless scruples which surround this

question."

Mr Hutchison then goes on to describe the enrolment of the settlers and the assembling of the armed constabulary and volunteers in front of Parihaka, and adds tbat "Sir James Prendergast, then Chief Justice and legally Deputy Governor, readily lent himself to the intrigue or outrage." When an armed force numbering some 2000 had been gathered around Parihaka, Mr Hutchison, further tells us : — "One fateful day a rumor got into circulation about noon that the Governor's steamer had been sighted off the coast. The rumor led to the immediate calling of a Cabinet meeting for six o'clock the same evening, and its business had not formally concluded at ten o'clock when the ripple and the splash of the steamer could be heard ploughing is way up the harbor. There was no time for further deliberation— it. was neck or nothing. Sir Jameß Prendergast at^mce signed the required proclamation, a proof of which had been in type to be ready for immediate use, and the meeting hastily broke up. . . . The proclamation was not worth the paper on which it was printed. With the Governor in the vicinity of the capital no other officer is authorised to sign documents, but history is sometimes made [Mr Hutchison should have said written] in this irregular way."

Mr Hutchison even remembers the weather on this occasion. "It was a beautiful night, almost weird in its solemn stillness among the encircling hills." And he pictures Mr Bryce starting off for Parihaka with the proclamation "while Wellington slept," and the Governor on board his steamer wondering why the Government Buildings were lighted up. It is a pity to spoil a story so romantic and picturesque, and told in such a convincing style. For the most part, however, it is , at variance with the actual facts of the case. Mr Bryce did not make the suggestion alleged to his colleagues, for the simple reason that lie was not then a, member of the Ministry. He had resigned some months before because they would not agree to an expedition against Te Whiti, preferring to exhaust every other means of arriving at a> settlement. While the Governor was absent in the South Seas the natives became so menacing, and the settlers bo excited and aroused by their paddocks being ploughed up and other outrages committed, that the Government agreed that in order to avert actual collision it was necessary, without further delay, to accept Mr Bryoe's policy. They therefore requested him to join the Ministry for the purpose of carrying it out. Mr Bryce was sworn in, and the proclamation was signed on the night before the Governor's return, but it is untrue that Ministers knew his steamer was off the coast, and hurried to get the proclamation signed on that account. This point is definitely settled by the following extract from the cross-examination of the Premier, Sir John Hall, by Sir J. Gorst in the famous Bryce-Rusden libel trial : — Sir J. Gorst: Now, was Mr Bryce sworn in as a member of the Executive Council on the 19th of October at eight o'clock at night T Sir John Hall : I believe that is the date. Were you not aware at that time Sir Arthur Gordon was hourly expected in the colony? — No, distinctly not. That has been stated very untruly very often, but it is an absolute untruth. Baroa Huddleston: You say upon your oath thpt it is perfectly untrue? Sir John Hall : I knew that he might be back, but not that his return was to be hourly expected or even was daily

expected

And so goes" Mr Hutchison's pretty imaginative story of the news of the arrival of the Governor's steamer off the coast, and the plash of the water agaiast its bows in Wellington Harbor reaching the Cabinet ro»m where the Ministers were sitting. Sir John Hall explained in his evidence that Sir Arthur Gordoa not only knew the state of affairs at Parihaka when be left the colony, but his private secretary, who remained in Wellington and was in constant communication with the Governor, was kept fully informed of the progress of affairs and the increasing menace «f tha position. Sir A. Gordon bad told Sir John Hall that the private secretary would send him neoesary information. Sir A. Gordon's sympathies, it is well known, were with the natives, but

we have good ground for stating that he never made any complaint to his Ministers of the proclamation having been signed in his absence. Xor is it at all likely that he himself would have taken the responsibility of refusing to sign it had be been in the colony when Ministers resolved to recommend its issue. The position was ao serious, and the feeling among the settlers was so strong, that it is practically certain that had the Governor' rejected the advice of the Hall Ministry no other Government could have been formed willing and able to carry out a policy of non-intervention. What ac(tually took place was attended by the most satisfactory results, not only to the European inhabitants of the colony, but to the natives themselves. The force gathered by the Government was so overwhelming that the natives recognised that resistance was useless, and so Che suppression of the disturbance was carried out without the shedding of one drop of blood. Justice was afterwards done to the natives by the recommendations of the West Coast Native Land Commissioners, Sir W. Fox and Sir Dillon Bell, and the countryside, where a few European settlers in 1861 -held their farms in fear of their lives, is now one of the most prosperous districts in the whole colony. The settlement of this thorny question is one which, in our opinion, will ever redound to the credit of the Government by whom it was effected. The Premier, Sir John Hall, we are gkwJ to say, is still with us, hale and hearty, and so is Mr John Bryce, who still resides at Wanganui. Mr B. Oliver and Mr W. W. "Johnston, less prominent member of the Ministry, are also living, but Sir Harry Atkinson, Sir Frederick Whitaker, Mr William Rolleston, and Mr T. Dick have all passed away. So quickly is history made in the colony that the Parihaka expedition seems already to belong to the "dim and distant past." Nevertheless, the debt of gratitude which we owe to those who steered the colony through such troublous times is one that should never be forgotten.