Letter to his Excellency the Officer administering the Government.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 94, 23 December 1843, Page 9 (Supplement)

Letter to his Excellency the Officer administering the Government.

Auckland, August 16, 1843. Sir — In the interview with which your Excellency favoured us on our arrival, you did us the honour to offer to forward with the memorial to the Home Government from our fellow colonists at Nelson any observations we, as publicly deputed to make known their sentiments, might think it advisable to make upon the various subjects therein adverted to. The principal object of the memorial was to represent simpl v the unprotected state of the settlers as regards the various dangers which must arise, generally, from the inefficiency of the Executive to enforce the laws against the aborigines of these islands, and particularly from the possibility of the perpetrators of the late massacre at the Wairau being allowed to escape with impunity.

And this representation they endeavoured to make in such a manner as to avoid the appearance of being actuated by any feelings of hostility towards the Colonial Government (none of which in fact do they entertain), or by any inclination to make the late awful catastrophe an occasion for the declaration of opinions or discussion of matters of less vital and absorbing interest both to themselves and the colony at large. It appeared, however, to your Excellency that one or two almost unavoidable allusions required some explanation. We will, therefore, revert at once to these points, and state as clearly as we are able the sentiments of our fellow colonists thereupon. And first with respect to the question of Land Chums. Now, that it was the duty of the Government— almost a necessity under which it lay— on taking possession of these islands, to assert its right of preemption and step between the natives and all purchasers of land, we are quite ready to allow: and the New Zealand Company were to be put upon the same footing as nil other purchasers. We may confidently leave to them the assertion of their rights; their interest* they will not fail to look after. But, with respect to ourselves as purchasers from them, we must express our opinion that it cannot by any means be rationally maintained that, in case of, their failure or inability to fulfil their obligations to us, we have no claims upon the Government for redress. Whether or not the case may ever arise, we do not pretend to foretel ; but the mere possibility of its occurrence may make it worth while to state our opinion. We decidedly hold that it would be a duty imperative on the Government, under the circumstances of the case, either to force the Company to do justice to those to whom they have cold land, or, were that impossible, to take upon itself the performance of their contracts : for the Government cannot be considered an indifferent party, not implicated or concerned in the transaction. The national importance of such an undertaking as the systematic colonization of distant lands— the publicity of til transactions entered into in carrying out such a system, and the length of time they require— above all, the numbers of the individuals of all ranks interested in it, and whose welfare in so high a degree depends upon it— all this renders >*»cumbe»r on any Government worthy the name, a more than ordinary vigilanco over all the details of such operations, the possibility of iv ignorance of which cannot exist, and makes it liable to a more than ordinary responsibility for the consequences they lead to. And all this applies with greater force where a Company has been especially authorised and chartered by Government to sell land for colonization — a Company constantly expressing in public documents its desire to be considered as the Government's principal colonizing agent, the Government meanwhile appearing to accept with approbation these expressions and offers.* Surely, then, there arises in the mind of the public a feeling that the faith of the Government is pledged to secure performance of such a Company's obligations—to see that a numerous body of its subjects'gets something in return for immense sums of Money intrusted to that Company, chiefly because acting almost under Government's authority, certainly with Government's concurrence and sanction. And as it would undoubtedly have been the duty of Government to have put a stop to the Company's proceedings had they been unjust, rash, or over-speculative, so, by suffering them to continue, Government becomes bound to exert all its authority, to do all in its power to prevent injustice, loss, or injury resulting from those proceedings to such of its subjects as are affected by them. Such a case as we allude to we hope may never arise ; and yet it is far from impossible that it may. The very principle of obtaining land simply by purchase in one the wisdom of which is questionable, when required to be carried out with natives so extremely tenacious of every opportunity of acquiring property of any kind as the New Zealanders undoubtedly have shown themselves to be. Rut if this system is to be maintained, surely nil that the strictest justice inculcates is that an equivalent be given for the land estimated at its previous value to the natives themselves, not at its value to the European purchasers, arising wholly from the capabilities it affords for the employment of their capital and skill. To the natives, the greater part of the country is in fact worth nothing, and had no chance in their hands of ever becoming otherwise. Its worth to them is the only standard by which the " strict justice and good conscience "of the case require that it be estimated. The wisest men have agreed that the rights of aborigines to land, of the capabilities of which they cannot avail themselves, are not to be considered of any great value or entitled to much respect. And if common sense and justice declare these lands to be worthies^ to the natives, surely, when we reflect upon all the advantages they themselves must eventually derive from colonization, carried on with a due regard to their real interests — and one principle of which in the present cote is the reserve of more lands for the natives than they can possibly cultivate, and tor which a high and artificial value is given by the neighbourhood of civilization— the least that can be expected of » Government carrying out the principle of acquisition by purchase alone, is that it would facilitate by all the means in its power the transfer of the lands to the white settlers. But. certainly, it is little less than madness— fittle less than on ab, solute dereliction of its duties to its own natural subjects— in dealing with grasping and avaricious native*, everywhere to exhibit a morbid and ostentation* sensitiveness to native rights ; a sentimental scrupulousness about depriving them of possessions the value of which to them is a fanciful chimera, j and has been instilled into them perhaps principally by this j very exhibition. But this we think the Government has ' shown, and is showing, in its mode of dealing with the land claims at present in New Zealand. In this, Mm other matters, we think that the pernicious influence of eea of an c*. aggerated and mistaken philanthropy, which overlooks entirely the nearest and natural objects of its exercise, nay, even the ultimate and highest benefit of those on whom it lavishes 1 it* strained snd uncalled-for sympathy, is very clearly apparent, i The ill consequences of this parade of excessive regard for the natives, as well as of the slowness and delay incident to legal tribunals before which opposing claims are brought for decision, have already shown themselves. Already, according to your own avowal, your Excellency has felt, evenhltlw Gow*. ment settlement at Auckland, the difficulty of tatting purchases from the natives, owing to their exaggerated ■deal' of the value of their lands, their acknowledged cupidity, tod tbair consequently exorbitant demands. And, if this #ystem be aUowad to continue, the result must b« either ths tmposaibility of purchasing land sufficiently extensive fot etdgßtasoJj

operations at nil, or the abstaining from such purchases until the difficulty of selling them shall hays taught the natives moderation in their demands; and a conMderable time must elapse ere this be effected. Either, then, those operations mmt be totally abandoned or ruinously retarded. With respect to the Nelson Land Claims, we may observe that our fellow colonists were perfectly willing to give the Government all TeasonaWe time to effect their settlement, and that the motives which caused them to be alluded to in the memorial were the very furthest from any desire unnecessarily to carp at and criticise its acts — in any way to impede its progress to a «atisfiictory arrangement of the matters in question. Your Excellency well knows that no spirit of jealousy, no desire of systematic and c iptious opposition, exist* among the settlers of Nelson, either as respects the Colonial Government or its settlement at Auckland. But, in accounting for (he length of time these land claims have remained unsettled, your Kxccllency wai pleased, in defending the Home 'Government from an implied censure in the memorial, to lay the blame entirely on Colonel Wakcfield's refusal to fulfil his 'engagement to complete the Company's purchases, entered (nto (according to your Excellency) near two years ago. And this power accorded him of completing the purchases was insisted on by your Excellency as a great fat our conferred on the Company, and withheld from other purchasers. Now we can scarcely agree with your Excellency in regarding in the light of any very extraordinary favour, a permission to buy over again lands wliich the Company had previously imagined paid for, and their own; for which sums of money had certainly been given ; the value of which had, in the mean time, been infinitely increased by the enormous outliy of the Company's capital in founding the settlement at Port Nicholson ; and the repurchase of which had undoubtedly become more costly and difficult, owing to the peculiar feelings exhibited and tone adopted about native rights, animadverted on above. And even with the additional value given to these lands by the outlay of their own capital, t le sum for which your Excellency affirmed that the purchases could be completed appears enormous, when the reserved tenths are taken into account, as well as the quantity of useless lands obliged to be taken by the Company to bring each of their blocks into the shape of a parallelogram. With this question, however, we do not wish to concern ourselves at present further than to express our opinion that a different mode of estimating the value of native land* and of dealing with native rights might have procured the earlier settlement of the Wellington claims, on which that of our own immediately depends. Next as to the conduct of the magistrates in undertaking the late fatal expedition. So much has been saiJ upon the subject that, unwilling as our fellow colonists at Nelson were to weaken their assertion of their clear right, as Hritish subjects, to that protection which is implied by the general enforcement of the law in a British colony, by mixing up with it the question of the propriety or impropriety of the late attempt to enforce it, we cannot refr.un from stating what we know to be their sentiments upon the matter in question. The charge of rashness which has been made against the magistrates we cannot allow the justice of. Your Excellency, we were glad to perceive, avowed your opinion that themtues are British subjects, and amenable to British laws. This we conceive to be the only rational opinion on the point. Was. then, the law to be put in force upon the late occasion ? We think it decidedly was. As magistrates, it was their duty to enforce it, perhaps irrespective of the policy of «o doing. Yet, that good policy required it, we are clear to maintain, and will endeavour presently to show. As for the charge of rashness— the characters of most of them, the long and anxious deliberation given to the question by all of them, arc sufficient to rebut it. Air. Thompson (the police magistrate) had expressed his opinion long before on the impolicy of overlooking a similar outrage at Wellington ; the occurrence of the present outrage was one of the results of the former having been overlooked, and a strong confirmation of the correctness of his opinion. Captain Wakefield's character is too well known to require defence against such a charge; a man of prudence and caution, which would have amounted almost to a fault had it not been combined in a rare degree with cnergv and vigour when the time for action arrived. And the mild and unexcitable character of Captain Encland, another of the magistrates, was equally notorious. But as there was no rashness in their determination to enforce the law, so was there none in their mode of attempting it. The men they took with them were sufficient in numbers, and ought to have insured success. That they were not tried and disciplined men (which was the fatal and only, but unavoidable error), who but the Government that left tbe executive without a regular force to back them is to blame ? They were the best men that could be procured. And, in all human affairs, if any thing is to be attained, some ri»k must be run. This wa< precisely a case in which at least success would have been universally allowed to have justified the attempt, and what possible means did they neglect to insure it? Moreover, as the collision depended immediately upon accident— the magistrates having given no order to fire at any time— so the very order to advance was rather a defensive than offensive step on their part. They were in the act of retreating across the creek to their men when, as Mr.Tuckett •ays (whose evidence— as well from hi* station in society as his known feelings, as a member of the Society of Friends, towards the aborigines — is particularly to be relied on), Captain Wakefield '' observing, as he (Air. Tuckett) supposed, some offensive movement on the part of the natives, suddenly and otherwise unaccountably changing his purpose, ordered the men to advance." And this in the confusion of the affair is the only evidence on that point to be had. And in taking this defensive step a gun was accidentally discharged, and followed immediately by a volley from the natives.

But we leave this question to come to the much more Important one of the measures to be taken by Government with respect to the native* concerned in the subsequent massacre. That they were guilty, even according to the written letter of the law. we are perfectly certain. Their forcible expulsion of the white man from disputed land — their actual resistance of a warrant (rightly or wrongly issued matters not) in numbers and with arms, after a determination to that effect previously and deliberately made and openly avowed— above all, their cool massacre of disarmed and unresisting men when they had got them into their power — these •re things no ingenuity, no sophistry should be allowed to wren out of the sphere of the law's cognizance and condemnation. Nor let us be accused of prejudging the case. Prejudging is hurtful and reprehensible where doubt' exists. Where a crime is certain, committed in oped day, in the presence of many witnesses— where its perpetrators, as a body, are notorious — prejudging, if so it can be called, is not only harmless, but inevitable— the necessary result of the circumstances of the case. But if it be answered that we have no right to pronounce an action a crime at all, till it has been weighed and sifted by the slow machinery of judicial procedure — till it has been pronounced upon by legal authority — we are free to declare that we cannot admit of any such objection. Knowing the uncertainty of the law, and its accommodating suppleness where so many motives may combine to impel even conscientious men to influence its action, we cannot pledge ourselves implicitly to abide by its decision. For there is yet a truer standard and a more unerring tribunal to resort to. We appeal to the human heart itself— to the statutes of a higher Legislator, written thereon in clearer characters ; to tbe quick perception of right and wrong implanted by Heaven in every bosom ; and, tried by these laws and before this tribunal, we declare the action in question to be a savage and revolting murder. And we confidently appeal to the commou feelings of all civilized mankind— to the wide voice of human nature itself wherever not sunk into the lowest barbarism — to confirm our verdict, and pronounce that punishment should be inflicted on the guilty. It is lamentable indeed that such appeals should ever have to be made, ruch standards require to be retorted to, from the possible decisions of British law in the present age. But we know full well that no system of laws, expressed, as all must be, in general terms, can be so accurately worded, so nicely adaptive Co every particular occurrence, as not to leave for those who them loopholes enough of escape from the infliction of dangerous punishments or the perlormance of expensive and onerous duties. And in applying the British law to .all lha minutest details of a transaction between British .subjects and natives in so anomalous a position as tbe New Xcsjacders, in a case like the present, w< know a thousand .such opportunities may present themselves, in discrepancies between actual and required facts, forms, and relations. The conduct pf the magistrates and constables may be rigorously criticised ; joip« flaw discovered or formality found wanting, « hich may be mode to take all the subsequent proceedings out . of the hands of the jaw. This form or that, this or the other conventional item ia the ceremonious process of legally resorting to force, may have been overlooked or omitted. AH that iwas needfcl may have been done to explain to the natives the .nature of the authority to be asserted, and the criminality and seriousness of resisting it, but some formula or other, which ■voilii bare been to them utterly unintelligible and mere mummery, may not hive been observed. Ana then the murdered sen tic to be held guilty— ta« murderers excusable ! li it incredible such shifts should be retorted to, to evade the of enforcing the law and punubiog the murderers ? , Indeed we cannot think so, when we. reflect bow the notions ,of a perhaps welUmeaniog and conscientious, but certainly 'ill- judging and mistaken philanthropy maj coincide with and bs at hflM -to justify the natural inclination of * Government towardsWbe most convenient and supineet policy. At all •vents itls undeniable that tbe fear of some such mods of escaping the difflculty of enforcing the law being adopted is widely abroad; and, as being bound to express here the opinions of tbe majority of ths Nelson settlers upon all this affair, w» should m very imperfectly doing so ware ws to feka po oottM of the existence of such * wspictaa. And it

i» one object of the memorial to declare in the strongest termi and deprecate with the utmott earnestness any iuch line of proceeding on the part of the Government. For the consequences of »uch a specious avoidance of the assertion of the law would he ax disastrous as nn open abandonment of it altogether. Judgres may indeed shelter themselves behind ingenious subtleties and stiff unyielding technicalities • and ministers may hug themselves at tha satisfactory accordance of their policy with prescribed formula*, constitutional maxims, and factitious duties; nevertheless, it is still sober truth and an absolute certainty, that the consequences of an outrage afrainst the truer law of nature unpunished and unatoned for— or of the neglect of duties imposed by common senseand common reason on those who govern for the common good will not be averted or avoided because the crime may have been palliated or explained away by legal subterfuges, the neglect justified 1»t considerations of state convenience. The unpunished maiftocre of Englishmen by savages, in the present cose, will he followed on their part by an increased disregard for Englinh laws and a greater contempt for the English character. Impunity giving them boldness, they will proceed to furthsr outrages. Nor can it lie supposed that retaliations will not follow on the part of the white men; that they will always be, ns at present they arc. too weak or too patient to take into their own hands the defence of their lives and properties, the vindication of their rights and avenpement of their wrongs. The first bodies of emigrants to a land where aborigines exist, having been brought up to the exercise of the arts of peiice and wholly unaccustomed to those of war, are generally unable to copo with nations of warlike ravages. But if insecurity exist for any length of time among such settlers, the necessary consequence is that the succeeding generation is from infancy inured to danger and necusromed to arms ; and. as history has oftrn shown, in such case the most warlike and energetic race of suvag* s will fall before the progress of the white man. We assert, fearless of contradiction, that such will inevitably be the case in New Zealand, unless the vigorous assertion of the law. interpreted by common sense and common justice alonr. restore the feeling of security among the whites and something of the goodwill that previously obtained hetwern the two races. And the certainty of the consequences alluded to, proves that such an enforcement of the law as will insure its being respected, is as surely the wi«r«t policy a* it ia the truest philanthropy. We desire the civilization of the natives as ardently as any ; hut we maintain that this is the only way to brinir it about. It is idle to ohject the strength of the natives. Time and impunity will only add to that strength. If British lnw is over to prevail in this British colony, it will have to be asserted by force in some case or other, sooner or later : and the earlier the enforcement be attempted, who can doubt that the chance of success is the greater? White mttn or New Zealander, British law or Maori custom', savagery or civilization, one must master the other. And that the triumph of the laws of civilization can be attained without some employment of force, we cannot believe to be possible. Whatever "the absolute excellence or relative superiority of any system of laws— as the very first requisite of the existence of all'lawis restraint, and as thn more perfect and enlightened thn law. the greater the restraint it imposes on individual will and individual passions, so it is certain that the laws of the most civilized must be precisely the most intolerable to a savage race. When the masses of the most mlishtcnrd nations will not submit to the best laws of their wisest Governments, unless hacked by physical force, in addition to what is a product of civilization alone — public opinion, can we rationally expect such submission where nrithe.r of these motives thereto exist in the savage and untamed New Zealanders ? And their very superiority to many other savage races, snowing itself in a greater desire for the possession of at least the physical enjoyments and advantages civilization has conferred upon the white man, will nnlv make the temptation to infraction of the laws more irresistible. Therefore we hold the idea of the general yet altogether peaceful establishment of British law in these islands as utterly vain and visionary. We believe the only possible way of securing its establishment at all is by making it respected as soon as pcssible. And, without fear of it. we look for no re»pect for it from a savage nation. True policy nnd true philanthropy point out the same path to be pursued. Every (lunger feared to be encountered, and cverv ill consequence desired to be averted, by the most timid and temporising policy, the most tender and plausible philanthropy, will only be exaggerated and rendered more imminent by neglecting to do in the first instance what must be done after all. Thus we have endeavoured, decidedly yet dispassionately, to express to your X xeellency. to be laid before the Home Government, the sentiments of our fellow colonists at Nelson on the subverts alluded to in the memorial, and the reasons on which their opinions nre founded. And, as your Excellency appeared to agree with mon the necessity of establishing the British law on a firm footing in the«e islands, we may be allowed to express a hope that your Excellency will use c cry endeavour to obtain that boon from the Home Government. »nd to forward the wishes of the Nelson settlers on this tbe most important object prayed for in their memorial. We have tbe honour, fee. D. Monko. Alfbcs Domztt.