ZEALAND TO THE SECRETARY OE STATE.

73

A.—No. 1

take land at discretion and appropriate it for purposes of settlement, wherever a supposed criminal is not given up on demand. The demand may be made on rumour or suspicion, for no previous inquiryis required by the Act; all lands alike are made subject to seizure, with only one exception applying to a very rare case. To the Natives this must appear tyrannical. There exists amongst them no organization for the purposes of police, and any persons who may be disposed to apprehend offenders can do so only at the risk of civil war. Is this to be to them tho manifestation of our authority and government, to cast on them the very work which we took upon ourselves in the beginning, and to punish them by seizure of land of all alike in case they fail to effect that which we confess to be beyond our own power? Can this appear to them anything but a device for getting land? As to the suggestion that there is some English precedent for this enactment, true it is that in old times the inhabitants of a district were under pledge for the peace of the district, and were liable to the extent of a fine to be levied upon the district in case of a person suspected not being forthcoming. Nothing like the present enactment has proceeded from the Parliament of England, so far as I know even in the worst times. Tho circumstances attending the passing of this Act were singular. Misgivings as to the probable effect of the measure were strongly expressed on all sides. I do not learn that any one member gave it a cordial support; but it was a Ministerial measure, and at that time the opposition were not willing to give the Ministry any ground for resigning. Amongst ourselves of late years much has been said of the necessity of keeping questions of crime apart from questions of land. This seemed to be one of the few points upon which men of all ways of thinking had come to an agreement; but all our experience is now put aside. The new enactment affords a striking instance of the mode in which measures, which are at first defended only as exceptional come to be extended to entirely different cases. The seizing of the land of innocent men for the offences of others whom they could not restrain, and did not aid, was recently justified in the discussions on the New Zealand Settlements Act, only as being a consequence of war. It is now attempted to make it a part of the ordinary and permanent law, and this too at the very time when the principal is abandoned in the practical working of the original enactment. 21. Another instance is found in an Act passed in the sessiou of 1861, intituled, "An Act enabling Land to bo taken for Roads and other public purposes through Native and other Districts of the, Colony" (13th December, 1864, No. 5.) The effect of this enactment is to assert a general authority to take lands for roads, &c, at the discretion of the Government, whenever and wherever the Government may see fit. The ordinary English provisions for securing a safe exercise of this power in each particular case are omitted, and resistance to such taking is made a ground for taking more, and for applying to the case the provisions of the New Zealand Settlements Act, which in this case also are to be made a permanent part of the law of the Colony. Thus within twelve months two _\cts have been passed, which, if they should actually remain as law, would leave to scarcely any Maori in the country any security for the retention of an acre of his land. To these enactments the objections which were urged by the Secretary of State against the New Zealand Scttlemerits Act apply in their full force. In consequence of those objections, it was enacted in the session of 1864 that the New Zealand Settlements Act should coutinue in operation until the 3rd December, 1865. In the session of 1865, the Outlying Districts Police Act was passed, by which the extraordinary powers given by the former Act are in fact revived and greatly extended: for by the former Act the power of taking land for settlement is to be exercised only in cases where at least a " considerable number of persons shall have been engaged in rebellion against Her Majesty's authority;" whereas, under the new Act, it suffices that a single person be supposed to have committed a crime, or that a single suspected criminal be supposed to be concealed in any district. Summary. 22. Thus, Sir, in this letter aud the previous communication taken together, I have drawn the outline of a plan, by which we may hope to arrive at a better state of things. I should have no heart for entering so fully into the subject if I did not believe the way to be still open. There is no reason for desponding about this people, but great reason for changing our mode of handling them. AYe have tried force, we have tried diplomacy, we have tried money. AVhenever we resort to a sound and consistent policy, clearly and openly laid dowu, and steadily acted upon for an adequate time, then we shall succeed. We have abundant resources and means of influence, if only they be used aright. The Maori population is to be rendered contented and peaceable by the same influences as other populations. 23. There is even much to favor the undertaking in the present state' of men's minds on both sides. It is now becoming manifest to the leaders of the Maori race, that the scheme of separate government for themselves cannot succeed. Many of them are even now slowly receding from it. What is now wanted is something to re-assure them that it is safe to trust us, and this must be derived from some exhibition of moderation and generosity on our part in winding up the war, and from the gradual establishment of a beneficial system for the future. On the part of the settlers at large, there is no hindrance now to the establishment of a just and well-considered plan. As a body, they did not desire tho resumption of hostilities, though the war of course became popular for a season. They are now returning, according to the wont of Englishmen, to a cooler view of things. The Maoris have w 7on respect by their manliness in standing up in defence of their nationality against immense odds. It is now seen that the peace of this Island can be kept only by the aid of the Natives themselves. The great body of intelligent settlers are disposed to support a fair and equal system in Native matters. Of the particular plan here suggested, the details must be gradually worked out and modified by experience, and after many conferences with Natives. It appears to me to open to the Home Government a way of escape from the pressure of obligation towards the Native people, which that Government knows not how to discharge, yet cannot honorably abandon. Along with the gradual extension of the system, the home interference and control would be gradually withdrawn. lam bold enough to believe that uuder the operation of such a system, steadily continued, this Island—even tin; minds of its Native inhabitants—may be in less than twenty years subdued, and that by a process beneficial to every man of both races.