The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY). WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1882.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 6691, 27 September 1882, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY). WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1882.

A test instructive comment on the character of Sidney Taiwhanga, leader of the Maori deputation to England, as also on the conduct of those righteous people who have there lionised him as the expounder of our colonial wickedness; was furnished in Auckland a few days ago. On the 19th instant there appeared in the Police Court of that city , a brokenhearted woman, requesting that her boy, nine years of age,’ who accompanied her, might be admiited to the Industrial School on the plea that she was unable to provide for him. This was none other than ; the, wedded European wife of the notorious Sidney, whom the fine lords and ladies of London and adjacent places have recently been doing, homage to as an undoubted favorite of Heaven. It appears that this : self-elected champion of Maori rights and wrongs had, on his departure for England, left this poor woman the magnificent sum of £2 wherewith to maintain herself and lour children, and that, after this pittance was exhausted, she had struggled to earn a livelihood until her strength was no longer equal to the strain. The distress ot her situation was, moreover,. deeply intensified by the fact that the youngest of her children is! only one month old.' With a brave heart, proving her to be worthy of a better lot than her union with a Native charlatan has secured for her,

sli© proposed to take service to maintain herself and infant, if she could be relieved of the necessity of providing for the other children. The eldest has, as a matter of course, been admitted to the institution ; but the second and third boys, of the ages of five and three, cannot, accoiding to the rules, be received on account of their tender years, so that there is a practical difficulty in the way of fulfilling herheroic intention. This difficulty, there is every reason to believe, will in some way or other he surmounted for her by the charitable people of Auckland; albeit they, in common with New Zealand colonists generally, are reckoned such sinners by Sidney’s admirers in England. Even in this Nazareth of the Aborigines Protection Society’s conception, there will be found sufficient humanity, not to say Christian principle, to aid the deserted family of a starring hypocrite, who has_ been occupying his time in traducing, in the hearing of those who displayed only too great an aptitude to listen to him, the character of the very persons to whom his children are obliged to cry for bread. Perhaps when this significant episode reaches the ears of these illustrious auditors, they may feel disposed to give the colonists credit for haring at least a little of the milk of human kindness remaining in them, and learn to be somewhatless credulous than they have been of the tales of rapacity which have been related to our prejudice. Or, better still, for by their deeds must even the excellent of Exeter Hall be known, it may occur to them to supplement the attentions and money which they lavished upon Sidney, by transmitting a portion of their treasure wherewith to meet the necessities of his offspring, or to recoup the outlay to which the colony has been put on their account. It may be very wicked in us to say so, but we must yet honestly confess to having very small expectation of such a practical display of their generosity. The case would, for them, not be at all sufficiently lesthetical. With these devotees of a morbid sympathy, seeing and being seen is the major part of believing. They have seen and been captivated by Sidney himself with his feigned tale of woes, but they cannot with languishing eye behold the pinched features of his starving family; nor, even if they credited the report of their distress, might they feel inclined to trust the colonists, who rank so lowly in British esteem, with being the almoners of their charity. Still these little obstacles might all be got over by transporting to England the “ pledges” of Sidney’s love, that they might be seen and handled by aboriginal protectionists, and be loved for their father’s sake. No good or philanthropic end would be served by sending the mother and wife, because she is white of skin, and the color of the objects of assthetic sympathy must, at the least, be grey. Nor, for or similar reason, would it perhaps be prudent to send her oldest boy, for he is pakeba by birth, being her son by a previous marriage. But the other three are undoubtedly of Sidney’s body begotten, and are, in his own phrase, “ the only legitimate half-castes in New Zealand.” As the veritable children of their quondam protege these would most surely .find favor' with., those members 'of Parliament;: some : of.-, whom' lad visited New Zealand, and noblemen, and Churchmen, and zealous ladies, who lately were deeply affected —it maybe to tears —over the recital of‘Maori wrongs. In these deserted and virtually orphan children, they would see the living types of the only Maori wrongs that have reality, and the redressing of them, as thus demonstrated, would prove their vaunted sympathy to be worthy of the name. But of such a fruitage of their charity there is, as we have said already, very little expectation; and, to speak, more plainly, there is no expectation at all. In this patient mode of showing sympathy with human suffering and injustice there is not much, if anything, to feed that spirit of self-com-placency which is the spring of all movements wearing the stamp of notoriety. We may as well therefore, conclude at once that the cruel wants which have been entailed on Sidney’s family, while Sidney was himself basking in the sunshine of all but regal favor in England, will have to be met solely by the New Zealand people, who have been so greatly maligned. There is just, perhaps, the barest chance that the distinguished colonial ecclesiastic, who chaperoned Sidney Taiwhanga to the office of the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the palace of the Primate of England, and other celebrated, places, may, on his return to New Zealand, and in gratitude for the honor he thus had the opportunity of achieving for himself, deem it a special privilege to bo allowed to refund the colony the expense it has been put to byr the paternal laches of his distinguished protege. But of even this the hope is infinitesimal, and is all but certain “ to vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision.” , We may, therefore, in this (nod-forsaken land, where violations of the Treaty of Waitangi are said to have ( been constantly perpetrated, at once make up our minds to take heart of grace as best we may, and comfort ourselves just a little with the thought that we are ready, in same measure, to return good for evil, and are not slow to relieve from destitution the fanily of one who was encouraged in England, as he ought not to have been, to slander our reputation.