FIJI AND FEDERATION.

Otago Witness, 5 December 1900, Page 9

FIJI AND FEDERATION.

THE GOVERNOR CONDEMNS THE PROJECT. AN EXTRAORDINARY PRONOUNCEMENT. (From Oub Own Cobeespondent.) WELLINGTON, November 28.' " I had a brief interview to-day with Dr Purdy, who has just returned from a holiday trip in Samoa and Fiji. When the doctor left Fiji many of the people were tip in arms against the Governor, Sir George O'Brien, because of^a somewhat extraordinary speech he had delivered on the' occasion of opening a > hospital at a village on the Rewa River. On that occasion Sir George O'Brien said he deemed it his duty to warn the natives against being led away by those who were advocating federation with New Zealand. The federation party was, he added, mainly desirous of getting the natives' land. He accused the Europeans of Now Zealand of robbing the Maoris of their lands, leaving the Native race "to be cooped up in a fragment of it." This sort of thing, he declared, had happened in every country tinder the " kind of government there was in New Zealand," and the same thing, he predicted, would happen in Fiji were the "New Zealand party" successful in their desires and ambitions. Sir George declared thai he would have a report of his "warning" printed in the native language, and abked the chiefs present at the meeting to see that the pamphlets containing the same were widely circulated. Dr Purdy, who was in Suva at the time, controverted these statements in the Fiji Times, which alsc denounces Sir George's speech as being one of a recklessly inflammatory character. Dr Purdy pointed out that instead of the Natives here being landless, they have been granted large areas of land on which they had never set foot ; that land cannot be purchased from the Natives ; that their health and social welfare are the subject of wise and effective paternal care by the State ; that they draw immense sums annually in rents from the Europeans; and that if injustice were in the past siiffered by the Maoris at the hands of the white race, it wag when New Zealand was a Crown colony. He concludes by expressing surprise that a gentleman occupying so onerous and honourable a position as that held by Sir George O'Brien should deliberately go out of his way to insult New Zealand. The papers relating to the matter have, I learn, been forwarded to Mr Seddon, and it is not at all improbable that a protest will be sent from New Zealand to the Colonial Office drawing attention to the nature of the reflections made upon this colony by the Governor of Fiji and the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific.