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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 667, 3 April 1879, Page 2

To the Editor of the Evening Herald. Sir,—Mr. Rees' action in Native Land matters appears to be attracting some lively correspondence in your's and your contemporaries columns. As a very old colonist, well acquainted with the Maories, their manners, customs, and their land tenure, I may be allowed to put my spoke in the wheel. lam. not prepared to go with Mr. Rees the full length of his tether, because either he is much mistaken in the character of his clients, or they are under a corresponding delusion with regard to him. What wrongs the Natives here have sustained, what injustice has been done them, would require a singularly morbid sense of the sublime, or a little further on the ridiculous to determine. I cannot see where the wrong lies. Those interesting people got otf pretty well in these parts after the war, by being permitted to lay' any claim whatever upon the lands within forty miles, of the township. More than a million of acres were confiscated, as the spoils of war. A weak and feeble administration, which in those now distant days, held the reins of power, or rather of authority, in an evil hour and in a fit of temporary instinity, gave back these lands to those who had justly forfeited them ; the blood of our slain, our bravest men, our loved ones, young and old—that was the price we pa; d for these lands, and a great, and dreadful price truly. With regard to Heretaunga, the acquisition of that valuable block of land by a solemn league and covenant, known as the Apostles, was one of the many outcomes of that most iniquitous Act of 1865, which enabled a few sharp practioners to acquire any lands from the natives they liked to put their foot on — nolens volens. : Many yeaas ago, I wrote a series of articles in the Times newspaper of Napier, attacking these same "' Twelve Apostles," and all their works and ways ; but they were too strong,.as the wicked generally are, for a day or so.: I have been pretty well persecuted from that day to this. As I said then, and repeat now, that surely as an injustice begets another, so retribution will as certainly follow, and I have lived to see the day when those same persecutors, are being persecuted, and prosecuted according to their deserts. The opposition, composed as it is of these celebrated Apostles, and their respectable following, may possibly turn Sir George Grey and his present Government out; that is quite in accordance with the usual order of affairs in Parliament. But mark me, they will never again wield the autocratic power which they so cruelly abused in days of yore. No, if Sir George Grey goes out, others of even more advanced ideas will come in, and the last days of the " twelve" will be worse than the first. — I am &c, O. W. L. BOTJSEJttEIiD.