NEW PLYMOUTH

Observer, Volume 3, Issue 65, 10 December 1881, Page 201

NEW PLYMOUTH

Mr Robert Trimble (alias the " Kurnle"), the late representative of Grey and 8011, and again candidate for the same district (now culled Taranaki) has advised the Government to put the natives that were driven away from Parihaka, and are now destitute of food, on the banks of the Waitara, to break stones and work on the yoads to earn their food. The crops of these people, it will be remembered, were all destroyed around Parihalca by Mr Bryce. The men, women and children were driven to Waitara, where the few natives resident had scarce enough food for themselves, much less to provide for some four or five hundred people suddenly thrust upon them. The season is too far advanced to prepare ground and plant potatoes, &c, for the coming year. The Government refuse to

provide them with food, notwithstanding the chairman of the Waitara Town Board and many others have represented the condition of the natives to Mr Bryce. The Government have refused and neglected to give them the titles to the lands promised to them over sixteen years ago. The bulk of the lands north of Waitara, where the natives are located, is in this condition, that the natives can get no titles for them, and the " Kurnle " appears to believe that breaking stones and working on the roads is the proper remedy for these things. This is the gentleman made use of in the House by the Government to slander Sir George Grey "and his friends, and throw dirt about the lobbies : whose two sons were placed in position in the Government service, while over four hundred men were being turned adrift on the plea of retrenchment. ]t is not many years since Mr Trimble arrived in 'Now Zealand and obtained from the Provincial Government of Taranaki some two thousand acres of the finest land around Injjlowood under the pretext of bringing out a certain number of immigrants and placing them on this land. However, after the Crown grant had been obtained, every person who was supposed to have been brought out by Mr Trimble— his own family included— claimed aud received laud under tin; Immigrants Land Act for their passages, and Mr Trimble has not to this day placed a single settler on this laud (one Government immigrant excepted), nor paid passages for people io settle on it; and the land itself has been for some time advertised tor sale by the solicitor to a well-known mercantile inMitu'tion in the colony, to whom Mr Trimble proves very useful about the lobbies of the House. It would not be a matter of surprise to *cc this little transaction enquired into by the new Parliament., and the Crown grant cancelled. When (he "Colonel" arrived in Xew Zealand he insisted on being ollicially addressed by this military title, but investigation* at the Horse Guards showed that, he had been only a Colonel of Militia, and was compelled to drop the title on leaving England.

" Zl.'Ll'," W'jxxrat of the Melbourne Ccr