HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1288, 22 June 1883, Page 2

HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND.

Have your readers yet seen Mr Busden's new book on this subject ? It is by far (says the London correspondent of the •• New Zealand Times ") the most complete account of the islands yet published. To what extent to be depended on for accuracy must be more within the judgment of the colonists themselves than Home critics. I observe that Mr Busden differs from Mr De Lisle Hay, in his opinion respecting the treatment and ultimate future of the Maoris. The former thinks that by a.d. 2500 they will have totally disappeared, and he is not backward in denouncing the policy which provides a white population with a settlement and a country at the expense of the aboriginal inhabitants. The author generally denounces the English systefn of colonisation very freely, and particularly points the moral anent Ireland, the misfortunes of which he traces directly to the violence of our rule. Inasmuch as the Anglo-Saxon is the greatest of colonisation ra<ies, it is easy to find amongst our numerous dependencies some examples of thoughtless indifference to the rights of others, and it cannot be denied that things have been done in the past which, by the light of a purer civilisation, would not now be tolerated ; but in the case of New Zealand it does not appear to me that the course of events in connection with the relations of the natives and the colonists has been on the whole discreditable. The law of dispersion has compelled our people to find outlets for their redundant population, and the law of the survival of the fittest, inevitably decides the question in the long run when two distinct and dissimilar races come into collision. Yet it cannot be denied that the English are as a rule too imperious and dictatorial in their habits and sentiments ever to conciliate those whom they conquer. In this respect the French are our superiors, but one singular result has always happened — our Gallic neighbors have never been successful in their efforts to colonise, whefea's in the long run it has always been the reverse with our attempts ; and the' question may well be asked, has the result anything to do with characteristic difference of disposition ? Mr Busden points out that the ancient

Romans, whose 'successors we are, generally considered to be in their peculiar field of enterprise, held their conquered nations under a beneficent sway, or Briton, Gaul, and Spaniard would soon have disappeared from the face of the earth. It appears to me that the critic has mistaken his text. The Bomans, in the sense in which we understand the term, never or seldom colonised. The various provinces making up the Empire were held, as we hold India to-day, in a state of vassalage. The actual native population of Rome found a sufficient outlet in Italy itself, and needed not as the English of the present day to spread themselves over the face of the whole earth. I think it a pity that some one of the many able men in New Zealand do not put on record the actual history of the native race. Much misapprehension exists on the subject, ond it was only the other day that Mr Chamberlain in the House referred in a disparagiug way to the method in which the Maoris had been treated by the colonists.