NATIVE AFFAIRS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1222, 19 January 1883, Page 2

NATIVE AFFAIRS.

The Pall Mall Gazette of November Bth had au article upon Sir Arthur Gordon's dispatches to Earl Khnberley on the Parihaka difficulty. The article, which was entitled " A Story from a Blue-book," blamed the New Zealand Government in no measured terms, and concluded as follows: — " Our kinsmen in New Zealand are their own masters, and are as free to do these things as if they were Frenchmen, Germans, or Eussians. For the same reason we are no less free to condemn their offences against legality and justice and to deplore that they should have been committed with the approbation of a community where mon speak the English language, bear the English name, and ought to be the heirs of great English traditions of reverence for the written law." Next day the following letter appeared : — '• A Stohy from a Blue-book." "To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. " Sir. — Your ' Story from a Bluebook ' is a little mixed. We no more 'arrested some 1500 persons' than you have arrested the Llama of Thibet. We arrested Te Whiti and half-a-dozen others, and told the rest to go about their business and live quietly on their reserves, which they immediately did. It happened that we took Te Whiti just about the time you took Mr ParnelL One of your statesmen asked me, ' Now you have got Te Whiti, what are you going to do with him ?' But I said, ' Now you have got Parnell, what are you going to do with him '— ' Keep him out of mischief for a bit, and let him go.' ' Just what we mean to do with Te Whiti.'. You say this 'violent and high-handed step was likely to lead to a general Native war.' That's just what it prevented. And you go on to say that Sir Arthur Gordon thinks war was only p'-r-vented by Te Whiti',.

forbearance. Just the same ' forbear- j ance ' as you saw the other day at . • Cairo, when 10,000 men cleared out at one gate as a handful of gallant ' fellows came in at the other. In both cases the turbulent spirits saw we were determined to stand no more nonsense, and they had the good sense to ' give it best.' " The West Coast of New Zealand has for years past been our Ireland. Like you, we have had to pass a strong measure of repression ; like you, we put another at its side to redress .grivances about laud. You pass a Coercion Act and take up hundreds of • suspects, 1 and detain them for months without trial ; we pass one, and take up a few troublesome fellows, whom we don't choose to bother to try. You carve a big slice out of Irish property to give your tenants ;we make reserves for Te Whiti and his people, worth much more than a million. You let Mr Parnell out of Kiltnaiham, and he is a power in the State ; we let out Te Whiti, and trot him about the country to see our little sights^ and reflect how much better it Is to*i)e at peace. We copy your acts and your measures ; only, when yau do a thing it is a 'great and beneficent policy' ; when we do it, it-is a 'proceeding of extraordinary violence,' That's not fair. " Might it not have been imagined that if our conduct to Te Whiti was so cruel he would have received the sympathy of the great chiefs with whom we were once at war 1 Not a bit of it. The Maori King and the great tribes have never been such friends with us as they are now. The trial of Te Whiti would have been a pure farce. I hope it is not impertinent to say that we don't see you are doing much better when you bring Arabi to a solemn trial and have to ask in Parliament what on earth he is being tried for. Do give us credit for a little common sense. We wore face to face with an old and very threatening trouble, and have got rid of it without shedding a drop of blood. The two races are at perfect peace. W T e thought that you in England would have said, 'Well done.' Certainly it was not from any organ of advanced Liberal opinion that we could ever have expected such words as yours. — I am, &c, "Tiie Agent-gener 'iL fob New Zealand.