The New zealand Herald AUCKLAND, WEDNESDAY, JAN. 29, 1868.

New Zealand Herald, Volume V, Issue 1311, 29 January 1868, Page 2

The New zealand Herald

AUCKLAND, WEDNESDAY, JAN. 29, 1868.

SPECTE.MUE AGENDO. " Give every man thino ear, but few thy volcij; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy iudmnent This above all,—To thine own self be true ÜBU "-" k, And it must follow, aa the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

So far as human judgment can discern, there seems to be little doubt but that to an endeavour to check the operations of natural and economical laws by legislation, must be traced our troubles, our debts, our taxation, and the enmity between the two races. What may have been the motives which prompted the policy which has had such disastrous results we know not, but we cannot say that it was dictated by far-seeing and enlightened statesman or divines. ° It commenced in violation of laws which cannot be violated with impunity. There seems to have been a desire to protect the native inhabitants of this country from coming too closely in contact with the civil isrtion -which had come to these shores. They were to -be hedged in, to be fenced oft' so that close and intimate contact between' the two races should be an impossibility. But this was, in fact, simply sowing tho seeds continued separation, of ill feeling and uncharitableness, which finally culminated in war between the two races who had been kept asunder as much as possible, instead of being permitted to mix together as much as possible. A bridge to join the two races should have been constructed, by which their union could become more complete, instead of a gulf of separation in the shape of a marriage law, by which it is provided that a Maori woman marrying a European forfeits her right to any land belonging to her own or. to any other tribe to which she mav then be or afterwards become entitled. And yet if she li7es in adultery with a European her claims and those of her children are not affected. Surely thie law is a disgrace to the statute book of New Zealand I A calm and dispassionate \iew of the past must produce the conviction that the laws affecting marriage and land, are the very root and cause of the evils that, like a black cloud, have overshadowed and yet do overshadow this fair and beautiful land. Man has stepped in to do that which his Maker, in His wisdom, has not thought fit to do. We look in vain for any general commands that nations and people • of different race and lineage should not intermarry. The Jews nnd the nations cf Canaan are special exceptions. But

our legislators,, witfl a -want cf wisdom marvellous and incredible, ha7e forbidden those to come together and form matrimonial alliances which Providence in its wisdom had brought together, though previously existing at different sides of the globe we inhabit ° The marriage of the white man with the native. woman was and is still practically forbidden. Pains and penalties arc attached to the fulfilment of the most sacred ties that bind the human family together.. Our statute book punishes the man who unites himself in honorable and lawful wedlock, and he must break the laws of God, and do violence to his conscience and his sense of right and wrong, before he can i>3ace his children in the same position they would occupy were they born in wedlock. And the children of a marriage between an Englishman and a woman of the native race aro punished because their parents choose to live in the "honorable estate of matrimony," rather than in a state of concubinage. The virtue and morality of their parents is thus made the pretext for punishing them, a higher law than that of New Zealand is reversed, and the virtues of the fathers descend in punishment on their children. Violence is thus done to the feelings of the natives themselves by the inevitable results of our bad law. Need there be wonder if the Maori scoffs at the missionary, and at the religion of tho missionary, when the coreligionists of the missionary enact such laws as that to which we are referring. And have the divines who have endeavoured to christianise the heathen around them done their utmost to oppose that marriage law, and to point out its injustice, impolicy, and the evil results which flow from it.

This marriage law has had a direct tendency to keep separate those whom it would have been the highest wisdom to unite. It has prevented the union of the two races. It condemns the natives to herd with one another, propagating children after their kind, ignorant of the British language and of tho literature, sacred and secular, enshrined in it, which would have been as lamps and guides to lead them from Maori darkness to the full light of civilization. This wall of partition, built between the two races, was a closing of the door of improvement against the native race. It shut them out from influences which would have raised them somewhat in the scale of civilization, and which would have elevated their children—as experience has proved where intermarriages have taken place—to the level of the children of the European. Why, then, say that a barrier ' shall exist which shall prevent close and intimate contact between the natives of those Islands and the more refined, and educated, and Christianised race which have come to thorn.

Intermarriage between the two races would have done more to civilise and Christianise, to sow the seeds of peace and good will among the two races, to bind them together with strong and powerful links, than any other act either of statesmen or divines. If marriage between the two races had been encouraged instead of being practically forbidden, we should have had hundreds of families with friends and relations among both races. These would have beon links to bind in firm bonds of amity and good will the pakeha and the Maori. The population would have been largely increased. Each such marriage would have been a light illumining a dsrk place. It would, as we all know, spread largely the English language; it would break up the communistic habits of the natives ; education and refinement would spread ; the titles to land would have years ago being individualised to a far greater extent than they are at the present moment, and the produce and wealth of the country would have been vastly increased. As it is, wehavelefttheblind to lead the blind. We have prevented the spread of unpaidmissionariesscatteringtheinselves through the land, and the result of our im-wisdom is now seen. "We sowed the wind, we have reaped the v/hirlwind of war, a burden of debt and taxation, enmity between the two races ; a desire on the part of large sections of the Maoris to have nothing to do with the Pakeha, but to live outside the influence of civilization ; while increase of population has been checked, as also of production and of trade and commerce generally. It is evident that the sooner the statute book is purged from all these exceptional laws, and there is only one law on the statute book for both races, for all the subjects of the Queen in these Islands, the better it will be for both races.