MAORI REPRESENTATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2649, 21 December 1904, Page 34 (Supplement)

MAORI REPRESENTATION.

Under an Act passed in 1867 provision was made the special representation of Maoris in the House of Representatives, and four Maori electoral districts were constituted, each of which should return one member. This provision was expressed at the time to be merely temporary, but it has been contained in successive representation Acts until the present time, and there are still four native members of the Lower House, while there are also two native members in the Legislative Council, one of them holding a beat in the Executive Council of the colony. A long period of tranquil develop - ment in the sunshine of peace and prosperity followed the close of the Urewera campaign, and end of tho second Maori war. Of the mock court of the Maori King, and the fantastic but all-peace-ful isolation of the prophet Te Whiti at Parihaka, it is scarcely necessary to speak. The first was, and is, r, wise concession to that element in the Maori character, which finds comfort and siejf-respect in externals ; the second was but a phase, an interlude such as occurs from time to time among civilised peoples, as when a Dowie founds a Ziom City, or a Madame Blavatsky is reincarnated, or a Mrs Eddy give« us a new gospel. We have se^n the Brown Sea.Rover at work, at play, in peace, and at war. We have followed — briefly, ah, too briefly to do him full justice — the process of his evolution from th<j wild free ways of his old sea-moving to the ever narrowing bonds of his civilisation. A few words must give the pen-and-ink sketch of