E—No. 2

FURTHER PAPERS RELATIVE TO

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would be the first to be proclaimed under the Act. Let us now consider how such a measure would necessarily be regarded by a large portion of the population of that district, T,,ey have long been employed in establishing some sort of law and order among themselves. They have helped themselves, because we failed to help them ; but they have been throughout following our teaching and imitating us. Again, they have been endeavouring to protect themselves against a system of land purchasing which they know to be injurious to their interests, and under which land does not become to them, as to the Pakeha, a source of permanent wealth and comfort. All these things they have done openly and publicly. All this effort to be like us, all this substantial good, is converted into a crime by one foolish title. Suppose then these proceedings denounced by Proclamation as treasonable or unlawful practices, in what position would they find themselves ? They would be required to make an ditional surrender to a power which has failed to win their confidence, a power which has done little or nothing for them, and which by the Proclamation defeats their efforts to do something for themselves. There would be little motive to submit, if submission were possible ; but in fact the submission required would be an impossibility. Institutions erected by a people from a strong sense of their necessity, and valued by them accordingly, are not easily suppressed, especially where nothing better is offered in their place. To suppress a name is hardei still. Even the British Government has warred against Dames and titles without success. The Chiefs of the Native Communities possess only influeuce, no authority. Even if authority existed, how could offenders be given up who formed half of the population ? The alternatives then would be, either an attempt to comply with the Governor's mandate at the cost of civil war amongst themselves, or noncompliance, followed by the most severe penalty; that penalty being no less than the destruction of their trade, the withdrawal, as far as possible, of all the benefits which for twenty years we have been teaching them to prize, of all the comforts and appliances of civilization, possibly of all guidance and instruction for themselves and their children. For the Bill contained no exception in favour even of the missionaries. Everything was left to the discretion of the Governor. This punishment would necessarily fall on innocent and guilty alike. For twenty years we have been teaching the Natives to abandon the old barbarous rule, that a whole tribe may be punished ibr the crimes of individuals, and to adopt the rule of civilization that the evil-doer alone shall suffer. All this was now to be undone. The Government was deliberately to sanction barbarism by adopting the old Maori rule. One opening waa left for escape, and one which the circumstances of the country would greatly favour. Their neighbours might, and doubtless would, supply what they could not obtain directly for themselves. By so aiding them, those neighbours would become offenders against the Act, and of course be brought within its direct operation. Thus the net of this evil law would gradually overspread the land, the population being everywhere converted into smugglers, carrying on their operations in defiance of a Government wholly unable to check them. Thus the population would be forced into lawlessness and disaffection, by a Government which had professed to civilize and elevate them ; and all this for ne other offence than for endeavouring to do that which the Government ought to have done and did not ; or for endeavouring to protect the-nselves, by mutual compact, against a system of fond purchase, of which many even of ourselves do not approve. These were the alternatives to be proposed to a high-spirited people, irritated by a sense of wrong done, and apprehensive of peril to come. This was to be the commentary on our professions at Kohimarama. 19. Nor was this measure less notable, if regarded from the English point of view. It was strange and painful to see the Colonial Legislature moved by the Government to deal in this way with persons not represented in the Assembly, to deprive them of the rights of English subjects, and that by an Act to be at once assented to by the Governor without reference Home ; to undo in short all that England had been doing for so many years ; to render impossible the accomplishment of the national undertaking ; and, on the plea of upholding the Queen's lawful authority, to falsify the Queen's most solemn promise. Strange also it was to hear that constitutional rights and the fundamental maxims of English law were to be simply dismissed, as having no bearing upon the question ; and that by persons who had professed emphatically and repeatedly that the Native people should be subjected in all things to one equal law with ourselves. As though those principles and maxims were merely local and conventional rules, accidentally applicable to one time or one state of society, and not to all times and all states, so long as human nature shall remain the same. As if subjects of the Queen were to be punished, and that most severely, upon allegations not proved nor even properly investigated, and for acts pronounced unlawful by no better authority than a Governor's Proclamation. It was strange that men, who by the bounty of the Home Legislature have been allowed to wield powers so large, should so soon forget the spirit of that Legislature from which they derive everything. Nor less remarkable was it, that a Government which had strongly asserted the principle that the Natives must be governed by and through themselves, and the necessity of providing special institutions for the Maori people, should seek to inflict upon them this terrible pressure without having previously constructed any organization or proper authority, by means of which the Act might be carried into operation. The Government, with the professed aim of establishing law and of putting down unlawful practices, had provided no lawful way for fulfilling its own behests. If the Governor's Proclamation were carried out at all, it must be by unlawful means, by force unlawfully used by the Natives against one another. Strange indeed it was to see coercive laws, of the utmost severity, resorted to in a land where less than a year ago an unarmed traveller might have passed safely from one end of the island to the other, and where all the disturbance, that has since arisen, is the result of our own acts. It was singular too that legislators, complaining of their want of force to carry out the ordinary law, should propose an extraordi-