FIFTY YEARS AGO.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXI, Issue 15332, 15 June 1910, Page 4

FIFTY YEARS AGO.

(From the " Lyttelton. Times" of Wednesday, June 14, I 860.)

Any lengthened interruption of trade will bo as keenly felt, by the Natives as by the Europeans. During the last twenty years they have acquired a lilting for European manufactures and other articles of European production or importation. They have yet to realise a stoppage- of the supplies they have so long enjoyed to feel the pinch", and we are fully persuaded that so long and so' ardently have they been engaged in lucrative and satisfactory trade relations with us that no war would long find favour or su, , ort, even among the most pugnacious oi the tribes. — (From the " New Zealander.")

Hero we say, without hesitation, that the more this (the Native) question urges itself upon us, the more we feel the tie which binds the two islands together for purposes of Government to bo unjust and impolitic towards both. Next month a session of Parliament of Now Zealand is about to commence; the most important part of its work will bo the decision of a question in which a majority of the members are deeply interested, a largo majority only so by the tie of sympathy. On this question parties may bo formed, and the Government of the whole colony perhaps changed, perhaps impregnably strengthened. How can the North submit its all-important question to be settled in one way or another by the vote upon it of men, however conscientious, still ignorant and uninterested ? And how is it to bo expected that the South will consent to nave its most important questions set aside, disregarded or contemptuously dismissed, because a greater question in which it has no interest occupies the whole attention of the Government and the House? How can its consent be quietly given to a perhaps long-continued taxation for purposes not its own ? On what principle can the South be said to bo constitutionally governed by a Ministry either forced into offico or forcibly retained in office for their Native policy, when, perhaps, in every other respect the same men would not be tolerated for a week in office ?

But this is not the time for urging a. soparative policy. The very facts which, when only anticipated, formed the strongest ground for argument in favour of separation are, now that they really exist, themselves the best reason why tho discussion should for a while cease. Since tho Native question has bo some important, it behoves those who have to consider it, bo they Northerns or Southerns, to prepare . to perform their duty without hesitation.