MAORI DISTURBANCE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8055, 2 November 1897, Page 2

MAORI DISTURBANCE.

The police authorities have done the right thing in promptly " running in " the Maori disturbers of the peace in Taranaki district, and the terms of imprisonment that they have all received .should be a lesson to them to respect the law in future. The disturbance seems lo have arisen as the result of a good deal of quarrelling amongst themselves as to who should receive the rents for the properties which arc being administered for them 'by the Public Trustee, and which, of course, have been leased to Europeans, and the Maoris apparently worked themselves into a groat state of excitement over the matter. Mixed up in this excitement there seems to have been a good deal of fanaticism, and the result, according to Inspector MeOovern, was such disgraceful behavior, that seeing the excited state they were in there was no knowing what might have been tho consequence. The rights of the European property holders had to be protected, and the display of lawlessness which took place in tho shape of ploughing up land held by Europeans and tearing down fences could not be lightly passed over; fur had it been, the excited wrongdoers might easily have been led to still further extremes, and serious calamities have arisen from smaller disturbances than this. Inspector Mc(!ovcrn and Sergeant Stagpoolc, therefore, did well in putting the insolent Natives down with a firm hand.