MAORI PEERS AND M.P.'S. 511 NECESSITY OF OBSERVING THE TREATY OF WAITANGI. (33, page 484.) Smarting as the British Australasian public are under the ungrateful insolence of the Maori race, revolted by the murders of the wounded soldiers and the Taranaki boys, indignant at the braggart threats of the Land Leaguers and Maori Kingites, it has here and there been urged that as the Natives have now contemptuously torn up one portion of the Waitangi Treaty, we should now tear up the rest, begin de novo in our Colonization of New Zealand, proclaim the whole country British territory, and enforce our rule at the point of the bayonet. No one can have a lower opinion of this Treaty than I have-still it is a Treaty, it has been acted on for twenty years, practice has obliterated its base, bastard origin; some of the tribes at least have substantially observed it, and it would be an act of bad faith to the Maori race, and one which would bring its own punishment, if we were now to suffer the provocations we have received to incite us to depart from it. The Waitangi Treaty must still be scrupulously observed, and remain, what its admirers like us to call it, the Magna Charter of the Maori. THE NEW "NATIVE COUNCIL" The General Assembly, in its last session just closed at Auckland, passed an Act creating a "Native Conncil;" but the details of the Act, the constitution of such Council, the mode of creating its members, their powers and duties, are not known to me at the time I write. If, as has been rumoured, the Council is to consist mainly of members of the Old Church Missionary party, and is to be intrusted with the framing and execution of all Native measures, it will prove the greatest curse to the Colony which our worst enemies could have devised. If, on the other hand, while admitting members like Archdeacon Hadfield, it provides itself with such antidotes as it would have in the persons of some of the practical Wesleyan Missionaries, and of men like ex-Chief Justice Martin, Mr. MacLean, Mr. Dillon Bell, Mr. Dart Fenton, Dr. Thompson (if the Government could get such a man to return to New Zealand), and other eminent laymen, distinguished by their thorough acquaintance with the Natives, and by their popularity with both races, it may prove our greatest blessing. NATIVES IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. It appears to me that the time has arrived when the Queen might well select half-a-dozen of the most loyal chiefs, created them life Peers, and give them a robe of dignity and seats in the Legislative Council; and I also think that, under some simple form of election, a dozen or more chiefs might now well take seats in our House of Representatives. Certain lingual difficulties which have been urged against such steps have been much overrated. Both in our Upper and Lower House there are members quite competent to understand every speech which might be made in the native tongue; an official interpreter, too-say one of the members the best up in Maori-might always be present as a referee, 512 TEACHING THE MAORI COMMON THINGS. and the debates of the House might be printed in the two languages, as was long the custom at the Cape. Each Native member would of course require to be maintained during his month's or two months' attendance at the annual session of the Assembly-but the 1,000l. the Colony or the Mother-Country might devote to this purpose would, I think, be money well expended. The "Native Council," if it be properly constituted, may prove the most practical power in the work of civilizing the Maori race; but we have to recollect that the Native Council, whatever may prove its merits, will always be looked on by a large body of the Colonists as an anomalous excrescence in our constitution; and, that if the great object be to make the two races one, this object will scarcely be accomplished by ruling one race by one power, the other by another. I do not suppose that, at first, our Native members would take any very active part either on Opposition or Ministerial or Native benches. They would prove more picturesque than useful. But if at first they did no good they would cer tainly do no harm. The race, too, would, I think, be mightily proud of having its representatives" wagging their pows "in the great Runanga of the Queen. There must be a beginning to everything, and the shadow might soon become the substance. THE NECESSITY OF TEACHING THE MAORI COMMON THINGS (36, page 485.) It may seem a coarse thing to say, but it is a true thing to say, that if our Missionaries would direct the attention of the Maori rather more to his present state and rather less to his future, give him a little more animal food and a little less spiritual food, they would really do him far more good. Scrofula and consumption, springing mainly from their piggish mode of life and certain life-shortening sexual evils alluded to at page 114, are biennially decimating the race; and to do nothing but preach and pray to a people who are passing away is to exhibit as much practical philanthropy as we should display in seeking to restore a half-drowned man by reading over him the twenty-second chapter of the Book of Job. The Maori wants a model village here and there; and in every second Pah some respectable, married, jack-of-all-trades' carpenter, who, in consideration of receiving from the tribe, say, 100 acres of land, would reside with them and teach them how to pull down their pig-sty wares and put up model huts, and whose matron wife would show the women how to cook a leg of pork and doctor the black baby with fresh air, soap and water, and mutton broth. And in every second village, planted down by the side of the car penter, the Maori wants a good, married, agricultural labourer, who should also have his 100 acres of land, and who would show the village how easily grass and sheep may be made to take the place of dock and thistle. Carpenter and labourer, both officers of the Native Council, and both subject to periodical visitations from Dart Fenton, Dillon Bell, or other itinerant Edile of the Board. This is the sort of thing the Native wants, and this sort of thing might be provided for him at a very small expense. Theories of Government propounded by classical Missionaries, graduating both at Oxford and Utopia, dissertations on the Trinity, moral essays after Martin Tupper, moving pictures of the Prodigal Son in ragged breeches and! cocked hat, have all been given to the Maori, and have done him, perhaps, less harm than good; but if we want to change the weasel's nature, if we want to save the Maori from himself, we must not only see that he is better governed, but that he is better clothed, and better housed, and better fed. I have offered a few remarks on this subject at page 122; and I would here repeat that, in my opinion, no great or general matrimonial amalga mation of the two races is at present possible. But some physical union of the races would, I think, be productive of excellent results, and certain existing legislative prohibitions unquestionably tend to prevent such union. Any young Colonist, partly enamoured of Tennyson's picture placed below, and happy in his Bush life, might well be willing to espouse some dusky maid of the mountains, and ally himself to a chief of high Moko; but though such chief might possess fifty thousand acres of fertile waste land, the law, as it stands, would forbid him to settle an acre of it on his would-be son. Thus the wooer, who, though not mercenary, would still wish that his "dusky race" should have better work to do than "catching goats" and "mocking parrots," abandons the matrimonial idea, and returns to town, or may take the maid for a mistress, and desert his broken toy when passion is appeased. The half-caste race is a very fine race. A few hundred respectable young Colonists married to Native girls, one living in this village, three or four in the next, would be admirable pioneers of settlement and civilization, and would soon neutralize the hostile influences exercised over the Natives by that bad portion of the "Pakeha-Maori' men described at page 448. And I cannot but think that the attention of the Native Council might well be directed to the framing of some measure under which the few liaisons of young Settlers with Native girls should become still fewer, and the marriages more frequent. THE NECESSITY OF NEW ZEALAND HAVING SOME EFFICIENT OFFICIAL REPRESENTATION IN THE MOTHER-COUNTRY. (38, page 485.) In the first edition of this work, I made some observations on the "legislative cohesion of our Home and Colonial Empire, and on the advisability of St. Stephen's giving a few seats on its benches to Colonial Members, or of Downing Street receiving a few Colonial Representatives as Ambassadors. In a complimentary letter on the work, which I had the pleasure of receiving from Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, then Secretary for the Colonies, he observed, to the best of my recollection, that though he thought there were grave objections to the presence of Colonial Members in the British House of Commons, yet that he thought my suggestion as to Colonies having some permanent official representatives in the mothercountry of higher grade and status than mere Emigration Agents, was a suggestion worthy of consideration. I still entertain the opinion that our principal Colonies ought to send Members to Westminster. I hold that each great Colony is as much a "There, methinks, would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind, In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind. There the passions, cramp'd no longer, shall have scope and breathing space; 514 NEW ZEALAND'S HOME MINISTER. limb of the United Kingdom as Yorkshire or Kent may be. Virtually the Colonies now stand as near to us as Yorkshire did to Westminster in Elizabeth's time. On all great paramount subjects, their interests are idea tical with those of the mother-country; while the argument that the admis ¦ sion of Colonists to a participation in imperial legislation would be represen tation without taxation, I would meet by three counter-arguments. 1st. The Colonists, by their immense consumption of the manufactures of the mothercountry, and by their immense supply of raw products necessary for the mant factures of the mother-country, do, virtually, pay a very large portion of the taxes of the mother-country, inasmuch as the profits derived by the residents of the mother-country from this immense trade and traffic with colonists furnish a large number of such residents with the very means of paying their taxes. 2nd. That Colonists, or which is the same thing, Emigrants, (for if each individual Colonist is not an Emigrant, he is the descendant of an Emigrant,) in expatriating themselves to the number of 5,000,000, in going forth to create new worlds, in doing, so to speak, the rough work of the great British Nation, have signally benefited the British Nation benefited it far beyond those profits of trade and that political securityalluded to at pages 342 and 438. This exodus has given scope and breathing space, and opportunity and occasion to the "home-staying" people, without which they might have been stifled or trodden down in the crowd; and thus Colonists in various ways, directly and indirectly, are signal benefactors of the Nation, who have contributed and who do still contribute as much its real wealth and strength as any other portion of the people who may directly pay imperial taxes. 3rd. That if war were to be proclaimed in Downing Street against a naval power, it is the Colonies which would be attacked; and that as the power of declaring or continuing war virtually rests with the British Parliament, where Colonies are not represented, five millions of the British nation are exposed to a calamity which they have not the slightest legislative or constitutional power of seeking to avert of moderate Whatever, however, may be the arguments, pro and con, as to Colonies being directly represented in the British Parliament, it appears to me that the time has come when such a Colony as New Zealand, at least, require some more efficient representation in the mother-country than she ha ever yet possessed; and my idea of what she wants is this. To the present Ministerial Executive of New Zealand there should be added a "Home Minister." Such Minister to be appointed by the same powers as now appoint the other Ministers, but to hold office for a year and a half or t years, certain. Such Home Minister to be a leading practical and political Colonist, who, during his term of office should be resident in Londos. Such Home Minister to preside over an office to be established in London, to be called the New Zealand Office, his duties being these-1st Communicating with the Colonial Office on any Legislative Acts of the General Assembly, or any public matters relating to the Colony o which the Colonial Office might desire to consult him. 2. Presiding over and directing the Immigrationary business of the various provinces of the Colony, and making his office the great popular head-quarters New Zealand, where trustworthy official, information on every New Zealand subject might be freely obtained by the British and Continental public. The salary of such Home Minister to be 10001. a year, with 300 for overland travelling expenses; and his establishment to consist of a Secretary at 4001. a year, and a chief Clerk at 1007. Such an establishment-salaries, rent of offices, printing and small items 1 NEW ZEALAND'S HOME MINISTER. 515 -might be maintained by the Colony in London for 2,000l. a-year, and I believe it would soon prove an establishment worth to the Colony 50,000l. a year. Such a Colonist as Mr. Fitzgerald, or Mr. Richmond, or Sir Charles Clifford, or Mr. Sewell, or Mr. Stafford, or Mr. Fox, or a dozen others of this calibre, filling the office of New Zealand Home Minister, and speaking from this substantial elevation, would be the means of doing incalculable service to the Colony. He would save half the tedious reference, made by the Colonial Office to the Colony on the subject of Colonial Bills, and prevent any hasty or ill-judged exercise of the power of veto. He would be the confidential adviser of Downing Street in all matters affecting New Zealand; and had he been in existence during the present conjucture would have had three or four regiments on their way out months ago. If the Provinces would intrust their immigration interests to him—and with the exception of Otago, who recruits in Scotland, they safely might, I believe he would send them more capital and labour in one year than they have hitherto obtained in two-from the position he would command in society, he would have, and would use, a thousand opportunities of increasing the popularity of New Zealand, in quarters utterly inaccessible to a mere local emigration agent or employé and such Home Minister, renewed every eighteen months, and going back to his Colleagues, fresh from Europe and the great world of London, might well be expected to rub up the intellects of the governing authorities in the Colony, slightly impaired, perhaps, as these might be by long confinement in a small official ring and by long exclusive familiarity with the Bush. NOTE.--Any of my readers wishing to avail themselves of the offer made at page 6, had better address me, care of my Publisher, Mr. E. STANFORD, 6, Charing Cross, London. |