MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Daily Times, 18 August 1933, Page 5

MAORI MEMORIES

(By J.H.S., for “The Daily Times.”) “TIKANGA HE” (UNJUST RULE). The only possible way in which a family, a local institution, a nation, or a League of Nations, can hope to live in peace, or to obtain its objective, is literally to rule by agreement. Rules, regulations, constitutions, are worse than useless without that single iron liand, which however, must be most completely disguised in a soft silken glove. The citizens ’ committees at Waitemata, Kororareka, and Wellington wore boxing gloves; Governor Gipps had a bare iron fist, and his Lieutenant, Hobson, a hand of wood. The year 1841 was so marked by petty differences among them that even the Maoris found delight in caricatures of their absurd quarrels as an evening entertainment at the pa. On 3rd May, 1841, Lieutenant Hobson was proclaimed Governor, and in August, eighteen months after his arrival in New Zealand, made his first •visit to Wellington. The people there Warned him for his neglect, while the Aucklanders abused him for “landing settlers in the mountains, marshes, and fens of Cook Strait.” But the most

bitter ingredient in Hobson’s bitter <mp was that the British Government ' refused to meet the liabilities of £20,000 which were mainly .the result of an v entirely unjustified and even suspicious transaction in land, and for which he was officially, and only officially, responsible. An appointee of Hobson s named Clendon claimed title to . land at the Bay of Islands in anticipation of Its being made the seat of Government. Hobson agreed to give him title to “30 acres for each 1 acre, the land to be chosen where he pleased!” The whole transaction became even more suspicious and reckless when Clendon’s choice and the seat of Government were both fixed upon at Waitemata.. Upon having this translated to him from Alfred Saunders’ book, a Maori centenarian in the Public Hospital said 4 ‘Now, do you wonder why we revolted against the thieving and misrule of your quarrelling people?”