Untitled

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1170, 16 January 1880, Page 2

The report that Sir F. Dillon Bell and Sir Wm. Fox have been appointed on the Royal Commission to investigate native affairs is not altogether satisfactory. We hope that it is not authentic. So far as we know there could be no objection to Sir F. D. Bell, but to place Sir Wm. Fox on such a Commission would be highly improper. There is no difficulty in predicting what would be Sir TV . Fox's action were he appointed to act oh such a commission. His convictions would be stilled by inordinate hatred for the late administration, and he would, as an authority in native matters, give such a coloring to the whole of the deliberations of the Commission, that to arrive at the true state of native matters would be impossible. As we have previously said, it may be nothing more than a rumor, but a remembrance of the fact of Mr. TV hituker s appointment, in spite of his rejection, by a large majority, by an influential constituency, to one of the most important administrative positions that the Colony can confer by the present Gogernment, forbids us to dismiss the rumour as untruthful until we have conclusive evidence that it is so. But if the Government have appointed Sir TV. Fox to the Commission, they will have driven another nail into their own coffin. Mr. Whifcaker's appointment will not soon be forgotten, but what would the people of the Colony say to. the virtual inclusion in the Government of another iran of whom they unmistakeably said they had had quite enough. The native question is one of the most important with which we have to deal. With it are interwoven numerous other political considerations. It would therefore be subversive of political ho}ies{;y and good government to introduce men of a bygone and corrupt political epoch into any Legislative institutions whose duty it would be to give important decisions concerning it.