Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Notes on Sir William Martin's Pamphlet Entitled the Taranaki Question

Page 82

page break

Page 82.

"The compact is binding is rveocably".

So it is. But it is a compact: it is something binding on both parties. It is unreasonable to urge that the "full privileges of British subjects" are due to natives who will not only perform none of the duties of subjects but have constantly repudiated the British authority with arms in their hands.

The particulars of the feuds in which various sections of the Ngatiawa were engaged have been fully given in the Papers laid before Parliament and the Assembly. It is enough here to recapitulate them.

1.A series of murders was committed during five years, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and arising in every case out of quarrels about title to land.
2.The Governor issued a Proclamation warning all the natives that this anarchy would no longer be tolerated.
3.The natives openly violated the Proclamation, and notably Wiremu Kingi and his followers.
4.The belligerents were fighting in the public highways of the district and in fields cultivated by peaceable settlers whose lives were constantly in danger, and whose property was forcibly taken away.
5.Proposals were repeatedly made to Wiremu Kingi to make peace, which he constantly rejected.
6.He threatened without any disguise to roast alive the inmates of a pah he was investing, and letters containing these threats were sent to the Waikato district, where they were seen and read by the Resident Magistrate.
7.This happened long after the Governor's Proclamation of warning dated February 1358.
8.Peace between the belligerents was not made till six months after Teira had offered his land.

Practically, therefore, the argument to which this note refers amounts to this; that persons who are there styled "British subjects" may make war against each other and roast each other alive to determine their relative rights to land, but that when any of them offer to sell land to the Crown, even while the war is raging, they are entitled to a peaceful investigation before a Court of Law, The Crown on the one hand is bound to give them a judicial decision by an independent tribunal, and they are free on the other, as soon as they leave the tribunal, to come to a decision by the musket and tomahawk.