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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 10

Preface

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Preface.

I have published the following letters at the request of my brother, and I hope that they may be instrumental in imparting correct ideas to some persons concerning the merits of the much-lamented war in New Zealand. I think the facts contained in them will do much towards removing the unjust obloquy under which the colonists have fallen.

At the same time our fellow-countrymen residing in New Zealand should make large allowances for erroneous impressions in reference to transactions taking place at so great a distance from home.

1. The great majority of people in this country have no connexion with New Zealand, and no other means of obtaining information than what the public press affords. A considerable part of the English community, both in Parliament and out of it, make the Times newspaper their text-book, and take their impression of passing events exclusively from what they read in that periodical. Hence the statements made by the military colonel, probably form the staple of many persons' knowledge of the New-Zealand war.

2. In the next place, however, I would remark, that the English mind has been deeply impressed by a very strong conviction of the injustice of the first New-Zealand war, into which Governor Browne hurried this country, by steps as impolitic as they were unjust. The robbing of the Natives of a tract of land was the original cause of the first breach between them and the authorities of New Zealand.

That question has already been thoroughly sifted. No page iv one has censured the transactions to which it gave rise more severely than the author of the following letters; and it is now an acknowledged fact that the land, which was the original hone of contention, was taken from the Natives in defiance of law, that the pretended owner could give no legal title to it, and that an act of more shameful spoliation was never committed.

This is a source of great humiliation and grief to all in this country who take an interest in the welfare of the native tribes of New Zealand. We have been grieved to think that the natives should have been driven into rebellion by an act of British injustice, and that a civilized Christian nation should have set so bad an example to a race just emerging from barbarism, and, under the genial influence of Christianity, beginning to give the brightest promise of future progress.

3. I am willing to admit that many persons in this country have not drawn a sufficiently broad line of distinction between the merits of the first war and the second.

The first was simply the result of British injustice driving an injured race into rebellion, in order to get redress, which the administrators of the law refused them; and I may add that the parties who are responsible for that shameful transaction, which has cost our country so much blood and treasure, have laid themselves open to the charge of very unworthy motives, such as a shameful greed for land, and a disposition to act on the tyrannical principle that might makes right.

The second war, however, is happily not obnoxious to the same censure as the first, and the following letters will clearly shew that the New-Zealand Government are free from the great crime of which their predecessors were guilty, and that the present war is one purely defensive, and could not be avoided. Sir George Grey, when he set foot in New Zealand, came in for a very bad inheritance, and whatever blunders he may have committed, it is clear that he could not avoid the recent rebellion, and is not to be held answerable for it.

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Admitting these facts, however, our New-Zealand colonists must not be surprised if feelings of English sympathy should still go out towards the natives. For; since it is an established fact that they were goaded into the first rebellion by British injustice, is it surprising that a half-civilized race, who have had little or no political experience, and who probably retain much of that suspicious temperament common to savages, should so thoroughly have lost confidence in the Pakeha as to abandon themselves to unwise measures? If our Hampdens and our Pyms were driven by the habitual falsehood of the first Charles to take up arms in self-defence, need we wonder that a race undisciplined, unaccustomed to forbearance and self-control, should lose confidence in British rule and British honesty, after such a transaction as that of the Waitara?

Very great allowance, therefore, must be made for the present posture of the Maori, and the feelings by which he is influenced towards the British Government.

4. A further question of a more practical kind, however, is the course which the Colonial Government ought to pursue towards the Natives in rebellion.

Abhorrent as war is to the Christian mind, and fearful as the consequences are which it entails, yet there are occasions when it becomes a stern necessity; and if so, under what circumstances more so than when the peace of a country is disturbed by the wilful rebellion of a portion of its inhabitants? The colony of New Zealand is so circumstanced at the present time, that it has no choice between abandoning the country entirely, and suppressing the unhappy rebellion of the Natives. When once the sword is drawn, the truest benevolence consists in decisive measures and a speedy suppression. Great complaints are uttered in New Zealand against the present Governor for his undecided shill-I-shall-I course of policy which has protracted the war and given encouragement to the Natives to persevere in their rebellion, whilst the complainants contend that a more vigorous prosecution of the war would long since have suppressed page vi the rebels. The merits of this complaint I pretend not to discuss.

5. The complaint, however, which the colonists make concerning their countrymen at home is, that we have brought general and sweeping charges against them of enmity to the native race, of a desire to possess themselves of their land, of an unscrupulous disregard of the means employed, and of a studied purpose to drive them into rebellion, in order to their destruction. If such charges had been confined to the individuals responsible for having goaded the Natives into the first war, they might probably have been justified by the facts; but it is hardly fair to hold an entire people answerable for the acts of a Governor and his ministers. Even Acts of Parliament, passed by both Houses, are a very imperfect representation of the public mind amongst ourselves at home, much more those transactions which have never passed through that ordeal. Thousands amongst ourselves would indignantly repudiate the charge of being held answerable for the guilt of our Chinese wars, and of many other acts of Government; and in like manner, though there may be, as doubtless there are, in. New Zealand as amongst ourselves at home, some greedy unprincipled per sons, who would set all moral restraint at defiance, yet it certainly appears unjust to hold the colonists as a body answerable for the unhappy wars which have moistened the soil of New Zealand with so much precious blood.

It is much to be desired, that, during the present session of Parliament, the question of the New-Zealand war may be thoroughly sifted, and such measures may be taken as shall ensure prompt action and the adoption of the course best calculated to hasten on a speedy and permanent peace, whether that course involve a change of Governor, or merely of policy.

G. T. Fox.

Durham,