HOUSE.

Waka Maori, Volume I, Issue 21, 15 February 1879, Page 302

HOUSE.

Monday, 21st October, 1878. MR. FOX ON THE NATIVE POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT. After reading to the House several extracts from an exceedingly frivolous and puerile report (referred to in our last) about the doings of Sir G-eorge Grey and Mr. Sheehan in the "Waikato, written by a reporter of a G-overnment newspaper who accompanied those gentlemen to the Waikato, which report was laid on the table of the House, Mr. Fox proceeded thus:— " Sir, that is the sort of matter of which ninetynine pages out of every hundred of this report consist. An honorable member near me mentions that I have omitted to refer to that portion which relates to the feeling of the Native Minister's bumps. Well, Sir, I will not trouble the House with that, but I will merely ask whether this is the sort of thing which ought to be laid on the table of the House, and I may say that at this moment it is the only record we have of these meetings with the Maories to which so much reference has been made. On looking a little further into these papers, I must confess that there are a great many things in them which astonishjne greatly. In 1876, two years ago, during the lifetime of the Sir Donald McLean, the Premier arose in this House and commenced one of the bitterest and cruellest attacks I had>ever heard —an attack on our late respected friend, Sir Donald McLean. He said, — " A very serious question was now raised—the question of a great Minister of the Crown going to meet a Native chief, who exercised considerable influence and assumed a royal name, and at the time of the meeting there were present, in this chief's company, or amongst his followers, persons who were known to be cold-blooded murderers." Then, Sir, the honorable gentleman went on to speak of the heinousness of the offence committed by Sir Donald McLean in visiting Tawhiao ; and he proceeded to tell us that so deeply was he affected by this incident tliat he wrote a letter to the Natives—a letter which he then read to the House, and which I shall now read. That letter was as follows:

" My Fptends,—My heart is very sad because you have sheltered ar>d protected murderers. I allude particularly to "Winiata. Now I advise you to consent that that man should "be seized by Te Wheoro and carried into the presence of , a judge, and that he should he judged fairly accord* .ing to law. Do not be led astray by ihe action of Sir Donald McLean in this case. The thoughts of the greater number of good men throughout .the world will not- approve of the action he has taken in t.his iiisianco. ois customs of the best men in this world are not in accordance with the action which he has pursued. My heart is very indeed on ac-

count of your having protected Winiata. Now I warn you that the name and repute of Tawhiao, if you act in this way, will fall very low in the opinion of all men. I felt altogther ashamed, when I heard of the conversation Sir Donald McLean'had held with you, that in it no allusion was made to this matter of the murder. I thought that he really had not the presence of mind to speak to you as you ought to have been spoken to. I now speak to you as a loving friend and one whose heart regards you: and I tell you you ought at once to consent, if you wish to preserve your good name and the good repute of Tawhiao, to give this man up. Do you no longer protect murderers. I tell you at the present time the custom of all civilized people is this : If a man murders another and flies to a strange country, the people of the country to which •he flies give that man up, that he may be fairly judged in the country where he committed the murder. This is all I have to say to you " In a previous part of his speech the honorable member had given from memory a full account of the letter, and had spoken in even stronger terms of the heinous impropriety of what Sir Donald McLean had done in visiting Tawhiao when he was surrounded by these escaped murderers, who were skulking away from justice. And then the Hon. the Attorney- G-eneral—that sensitive gentleman—following the Premier, who was then only member for the Thames, says,— " There was one thing the Native Minister had not yet cleared up. He would like him to explain why he did not ask the King to give up the persons in the King country who had committed crimes." a After the part which the Premier played on that occasion in 1876, Sir, we might have expected that, before he would have visited Tawhiao, the shelterer of murderers, he would have had some understanding that those murderers were not to be there —at all events, that they should not be seen, and should not take part in the meetings, and even pat him on the back and take him under their patronage. We might have thought that he would have vindicated the opinions he expressed in so virulent, severe, and urgent a manner. And yet what took place P I gather from this document—not from one of the " specials" only, but from the concurrent testimony of them all —that, when the.Premier visited Tawhiao at Kopua, the most blood-stained murderer in New Zealand, the author of the Poverty Bay massacre, was within a few yards of the Premier the whole of the time ; but he (Sir G-eorge Grey) did not see him, I believe. The same man was at another meeting, at Hikurangi Mr. Sheehajt.—The honorable member is not correct. Te Kooti was not at the Hikurangi meeting. Mr. Fox.—He was in the village, and he was for a long time sitting in a tent with one of these specials. Mr. Sheehan.—No. He was turned away. Mr. Fox.—l will tell you where he was, then. The Premier and Ta whiao. were sitting together in a tent, having a private talk, when Te Kooti rushed out —as it is expressed by one of these" "specials " —with nothing but a breech-cloth on, and, .dancing within a few yards of the Premier's tent, shouted out, " I am the man on whose head a price is set." There were two places from which, as the Native Minister says,

this man was turned away ; but let the Houad observe that he was not turned away because he was a murderer, but simply because he was drunk. The document is in eveiybody'shands, and every one can read for himself the history of the whole affair. There was Te Kooti, the man who was the author of the atrocities I have referred to, clad in nothing but a breech-clout, crying out, " Here am I, the man with a price upon my head," within a few yards of the Premier, who was with Tawhiao in a tent. The atmosphere was tainted with the murderer Te Kooti, and it is notorious that, even if he was not at one particular spot, he was at least at three of these meetings. That is a fact which is much more notorious than that Winiata was at the meeting at which Sir Donald McLean was present. But was Te Kooti the only murderer there ? No. Tapihana, whom the Premier admitted, in 1876, he knew to be a murderer, and who had killed a man near Auckland, was also present at these meetings, and was seen by the Premier there in 1877. He communicated with him in front of Tawhiao, and Tapihana absolutely gets up, makes a speech; takes the Premier | specially under his patronage, and says he will take him away and bring him back again On the second day and on the third day also Tapihana was there, and was to be seen strutting about in his wife's petticoats. And there was a third murderer there. This third murderer was Purukutu, the murderer of Sullivan, as bad and cold-blooded a murderer as ever was, whom one of these " specials " describes a 8 going forth like a Maori generalissimo, carrying has spear in front of him, and heading the men who went out, to meet Sir Q-eorge G-rey. This special examines him and says that a more repulsive and savage expression of face he never Baw. The place was, in fact, full of murderers. But those are not all. There were one or two more. Where was "Winiata? In 1876 we were told where he was : where is he now? Amongst the and friendly tribes! If not in sight of these meetings, he was certainly not far off. And one of these specials had a conversation with one of the Armitage murderers-—a man who killed poor Mr. Armitage when he was a non-combatant, and had married a Maori wife and had half-caste children growing up around him. There were murderers flitting . about these meetings from hour to hour and day to day; and yet the Premier, having in his recollection the' taunts he hurled at Sir Donald McLean for taking part at meetings near where one of them was supposed to be, never asked a word about them—never said to Tawhiao, "Do you give these men up. It is the custom of all civilized countries now, it a man murders another and flies to a strange country, for the people of that country to give him up." Nothing was said. The whole thing went on week after week, and no mention was made of these murderers. When I put a question to the point on this subject two months ago, what answer was given to me ? The Native Minister appealed to the House not to press for information on the subject, because it might interfere with the negotiations with these people. It is not with a view to the future that I make these remarks, but to express the deep regret I feel, and the pity I entertain for the Premier, when I think that he bears about in his conscience the knowledge that he denounced the late Sir Donald McLean in 1876 for even going near the place where murderers were, and then, m the very next year, went himself into places and into an a£ mosphere that were foul with murderers on ererr side. J