THREATENING STATE OF NATIVE AFFAIRS.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume 2, Issue 74, 14 May 1873, Page 2

THREATENING STATE OF NATIVE AFFAIRS.

Not only is the Province of Auckland threatened with a renewal of Native disturbances, but we gather from the ‘ Telegraph’ that a very general feeling exists amongst the settlers of Hawke’s Bay that serious troubles will shortly arise with the natives there. The ‘Telegraph asserts that the prevailing impiession is not illfounded. That journal says “ there is no good object to be served in disguising or attempting to hide, the fact that the Maoris are in a very excited and discontented condition—a condition, indeed, in which semi-savages require but little to provoke them to commit a breach of the peace. The systematic manner in which evil disposed persona hare, for the past twoyears, educated the Maoris to believe that they have been ill-used both by the Government and by the settlers, has at length borne fruit, and we hear that the natives have stated that unless their wrongs (?) are redressed, they will take the matter in their own hands, and retake possession of the lands they have sold. In Hawke’s Bay, we have been accustomed to think that the Maoris of the province have too much to lose to rebel against the constituted authorities, but we must remember that the number having property is small compared to that which has nothing to risk in the event .of hostilities. Murders and arson are usualh, by Maoris, the work of young fellows who, possessing nothing, crave for distinction, and we have too many instances in this colonv, of low bom irs gnii'icant na'ives, making for themselves, bv the commission of crimes, names that will be associated with the history of the colony through all time, to shot, our eyes to the gravity of any circumstance that, apparently, affords an opportunity for a savage scoundrel to become either a hero, or a martyr, in the estimation of bis fellow barbarians. Affairs in Hawke’s Bay are just in that position in w'hich other parts of New Zealand have been in previous to the outbreak of hostilities wiih the natives A drunken native may commit a crime that will set the country ablaze, and though we have no hesitation in saying that the majority of Maoris in this province are peaceably disposed, there is no saying what number nf outsiders may arrive to aid those whose actions, in the matter of the repudiation of their land sales, evince a desire to bring about hostilities,”