MEMORIAL TO THE GOVERNOR.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 868, 13 March 1869, Page 2

MEMORIAL TO THE GOVERNOR.

The following is the memorial which has beep drawn np by the committee appointed at thit pnblic meeting, and is now in oourse of signature :—: — To His Excellency Sir G. F. Bowen, K.G.C.,

Governor and Commander-in-Chief in and ovar Her Majesty's Colony of New Zealand, &c, Ac, &c. The Memorial of the nndersignod inhabitants of the Proviuoe of Taranaki, showeth, —

That the late unprovoked massaore of settlers at the White Cliffs, all engaged with the exception of the Rev. J. Whiteley, in the cultivation of their lands, and living as they imagined, at peace with the natives, has occasioned the deepest feeling of alarm and insecurity to the whole of the inhabitants of this district.

That your Excellency's memorialists, whilst deeply grateful for the assistance so promptly afforded by your Government, feel that there is no seourity against & recurrence of similar outrages, and that many of your memorialists have with a painful conviction of personal insecurity, brought their families into town, thereby neglecting their dairy stock and orops in the midst of harvest time, and leaving their farms at the mercy of maranders.

That most of your memorialists were, after long struggling, enabled to maintain themselves on their farms, but they are now by the recent calamity suddenly deprived of the means of doing so, and must become destitute should the present disastrous condition of things extend over the approaching seed time, which would necessitate the importation of food for the subsistence of the community. ( That some of your memorialists were on two or three occasions compelled to abandon their farms owing to native outrages ; but they resumed their occupations, trusting that the natives wonld not repeat their aggressions. The late massacre, however, shows so determined a feeling of hostility amongst certain of the native race, that your memorialists are now convinopd .that there will be no returning again to the oountry districts, until a policy is put forward defining the relations of the Government towards tribes in arms against her Majesty's authorityj; and until the tribes now implicated are brought into subjection, and the perpetrators of crime punished ; and that a continuance of the present feeling of apprehension on the part of the European community must lead to the ruin of your memorialists, and tbe rapid abandonment of this and the other agricultural districts of the island.

Your memorialists are aware that their case already engages the serious consideration of your Excellency, and they earnestly pray that you will adopt prompt and energetio measures to repress rebellion, and to inspire a feeling of security for life and property, on the part of your memorialists aud others of her Majesty's subjects in this part of her empire. And your Excellency's memorialists, as in duty bound, will ever pray.