HAWKE'S BAY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume IX, Issue 442, 19 January 1861, Page 3

HAWKE'S BAY.

[From the Wellington Advertiser, Jan. 9.]

By the s.s. Robert Lowe we have received the Hawke's Bay Herald of the 29th ult.^ Prosecutions had been commenced against certain parties, including amongst these the Native Secretary, and Mr Donald McLean, for a breach of the Native Land Purchase Ordinance, under which it is made unlawful for Europeans to rent lands from the natives. The prosecutions up to the present have broken down from the want of evidence. A Mr Ormond— who was formerly the Private Secretary of the Lieut.- Governor of New Munster, and his brother-in-law — has been engaged in a warm correspondence with the Superintendent of the Province on the subject. He asserts that the action taken by Mr Fitzgerald is calculated to excite still further the already unsettled minds of the native population, and is, to say the least, most impolitic and unwise. In reply, Mr Fitzgerald says that he had beforehand the best possible reasons for believing that so far from exciting any hostile feelings in the minds of the natives, the principal men amongst them fully concur in a step which had, in fact, been taken in a great measure at their instigation. But Mr Ormond was not to be thus put down. He immediately writes again to his Honor, and reiterates the statement that the natives looked upon his proceedings as an attempt to interfere still more with the already unsettled land question, which, ne says, was notorious to all who had any knowledge of their opinions. The writs for Hawke's Bay had not been received. Mr Joseph Rhodes and Mr Ormond were in the field for Clive, and Mr Colenso and Mr Worgan for Napier. The manner in which the latter gentleman is attacked in the Herald would put even tht Independent or Spectator to the blush. A melancholy accident had occurred at Mr Duncan's station, Ruataniwha. A shepherd, by the name of James Heath, while bathing on Sunday, Dec. 22, in the washing pool, was accidentally drowned. A jury had sat on the body, and a verdict as above was recorded.