KOROHEKE'S CURIOSITIES OF DOWNING-STREET LITERATURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6566, 2 December 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

KOROHEKE'S CURIOSITIES OF DOWNING-STREET LITERATURE.

t • 3 We who have lived here from the earliest ■ days, who have veritably seen this city rise from out the fern wilderness, and tea-tree scrub, and the flax swamp, which once made the conjunction of (now) Queen and Short- ■ land-streete a somewhat impassable barrier 1 for pedestrians, and an utterly impassable one for four-footed animals ;—we who have lived ■ through the times from those days to these present days, have sometimes a dittieulty in ' realising we actually live and breathe and ' have our being iu the midst of the surroundings which have now overtaken us; —we, 1 who once knew all men, and women, and ■ very nearly all the children by head-mark ' who dwelt on Waitemata's shore, sometimes feel as if we were iu a dream, and had lost our personal identity, as we walk up Queenstreet's thoroughfare, and from oue end to the other eannot.sv.ot one ktiown-to-us-faee of ; either sex, old or young ;—we ask ourselves can it be we have lived to see such marvellous changes—who saw the first raupo huts erected by Tangata Maori for us, followed by rough, unplained, weatherboard houses of such small elimensions we could barely turn round in them. And now we look upon structures rising before us ornamented with columns of polished granite. Now, instead of taking us best part of a day to scramble through the fern to Newmarket, every fifteen minutes an omnibus takes us there in as many minutes. A merchant— we ouly called each other storekeepers iu those days—can now sit in his office and telephone up anyone he wants to speak to, lazily sitting in his chair. Return post from England then only took some nine months, and at that thought pretty smart; letters often took that time to reach us. Our " dailies," to use an Irishism, were only one "weekly," about half the eize of one page of the Herald, and at that not easily tilled with matter. We did not reejuire a society journal to rake up every little tittle tattlo and parade it before all creation ; we knew everything about each other, and sometimes a little more, for humanity is ever the same, and will not be restrained, but delighteth in much talking, so that ever and again it runs a little riot, aud wags its tongue just a little overmuch, and theuitis comforted, which is more than those are, generally speaking, who have been the subjects of discussion. But after all, socially, we are only doing in a very big way now what we did in days of yore in a very small way. Helens of Troy assume every possible shape from queens to beggars, aud all men are possible fools when his particular "woman" is the commodity he lias set his heart upon, and desires to possess it, auel the oleler the man the bigger the fool, more's the pity when senile juvenility is the part played. The " young folks " having to go through thu accepted ordeal don't count, and we almost cease to call them fools, they are ouly so much human nature going through its accepted paces. In those long ago, days also as a Government we behaved just as badly as weelonow. Weovcrranthe constable, and got very heavily into debt for those days of the colony. But who could have believed the resources of "the Emjiiie" could have been strained by lending us a .-€-0,000 note from Downinestreet, we who have since booked up as many millious from British money-lenders ? But such is the fact, as tiie following ciiriosity in literature decisively proves : —Lord Stanley to Governor Fitzroy, in a despatch dated Downing-streeC "27th October, IS44—(extract therefrom) —"In your despatch No. 11 you make a pressing application for assistance from this country in clearing off existing debts of the colony, which you estimate at about £20,000, and iu defraying the necessary annual expenditure. The Government of New Zealand has already been warned not to place any further reliance on lanjc and undi'Jhied wasixtuHcc from the funds of this country, and considering the more than ordinary resources possessed by that colony," &c, &c. "More than ordinary resources" —how rapidly these must have been developed to make the colony self-supporting in four years after its first settlement! Here was moral Downinj»-strcct eloing lecturing finance, and making wry faces about helping the colony aloag with a £-JO,COO, as if it wero stupendous magnanimity, and coolly ignoring the fact that treble that sum had been plundered by Downing-street in robbing the early claimants of their land. Little wonder astute Tangata Maori became suspicious of the Government when he came to know that, of the land he had sold to the early missionaries anil others, ouly a fractional part was doled out to their early friends, and the Government coolly appropriated the balance ! Tangata Maori said, "If the land we have sold docs not belong to the persons to whom we sold it, it cannot belong to the Queen, who never bought it ; it ought to be ours—it ought to come back to us—that is tahae-ing (stealing) the land." A most natural inference— ami a most just decision and judgment in such a nefarious transaction. But this Downing-street morality is evidently a traditional immoral policy which pertains to it, for, after two.scorc years, Downiugs'rect repeats the gross olicnc';, and again perpetrates the deliberate plundering of the early settlers of Fiji. If only "our boys," as represented by the sous of tho Downing-struet ollicials, had Icon but early settlers in Fiji, in what a different light—through what a different coloured pair of spectacles—would not all matters Fijian have been seen? Why. if any private person had acted as diel the Queen's Government in New Zealand and Fiji, the dock would have seen the criminal standing arraigned before the law. We wonder whether Sir Arthur Cordon, in his hearing of the "land claims," followed suit with Sii George Gipps' unique and liberal treatment of tiie .Now Zealand claimants, when he sent Godfrey and Kichmond dov.-n from Sydney, when we were a dependency of New .South Wales, to he our lirst Laud Commissioners, and who were armed with such strange powers that it was only too palpably seen the one iilea was simply con- ; location by law. Or why shut the mouths of the claimants by the extraordinary device, that, after a given number of words being set down in evidence, a charge of a penny a word was extorted ? "To such base use" was irresponsible power . exercised under sanction of Ifowning-street. Passingstrant;e, this I ; on r.ing-streetobliquity of vision, but it is alw ays a ;,inall comfort that the scales which obscured 'lie eyes of ISU have somewhat dropped off, and that the " interests of the Empire" can he more ! ekarly seen, embracing a more liberal policy , than counting JC'2O,OOO, "a large and undefined " assistance to the last new jewel ill Her Majesty's Crown. If Downing-street still plays the part of the Land Kobber, it now sees its way to grant some "assistance" to the colony in which it has been playing : the robber, though that is but s-nuill satisfaction to the robbed. It will not bo diilicnlt to find some "curiosities in literature," dateil from the . Uawiiing-ntrcct of Auckland, in which land robbery by the then head ol'the Government was plausibly set forth aa a justifiable proceeding, even an w :ts lately done from the : Uov/ninu-htixet of Fiji, aud rumour hath it, ■ a certain Governor has yone 'dome ou leave ! of absence, but still in tin: [i.iy of one : colony, Lo back up his conization policy iu ; another colony. The " extrusion of the i Empire" runs'sonic ri. k of being extended the wrong way. Colonist:: ::vc. beginning to ' think, when they see .such proceedings, that ; the colony gets on :•.» very well without the ; Vice-Regal being prjscnt in s the flesh, and but, for the spirit of loyalty » which accepts ;i Governor as the binding i ftnk—the Very laot link in the chain— i between the Mother Country and tiiooolony, f we arc indulging in a £6000 a-ye.u-super- - fluity, and have not got the honour aud > g>lory of the Viee-Regal presence. .: Downinu-Blreet had Letter mend its ways. 3 It is dangerous for it to allow an incipient u President of the Great Britain of the South i to be knocking at the dooc. When that n sound does come the door will have to hi: f opened, for the President will virtually he in f possession of his presidential seat of power, 3 and his demand to be received and heard will f have to be accorded. g But let us hope this may still be many a many long years in the future.