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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 10

Our Future Policy

page 41

Our Future Policy.

There is, I think, ne single instance on record, either in ancient or modern times, among any sort or condition of Men, where the original or semi-barbarous Inhabitant so of a Country to which a superior race has come, have ever bowed to the Institutions of such superior Race until they have felt its supremacy in Arms; and most assuredly the arrogant, pugnacious Maori is the very last of Aboriginal Races who would suffer himself to form an exception to any such historical rule.

If, in dispatching Governor Hobson to create New Zealand a British Colony in 1840, Lord John Russell had backed him up with 5000 Bayonets, the Maori would now have been engaged in making Laws instead of breaking them. The Colonial Office, in its secret chambers, has long knewn that to effoct the civilization of a Race like the New Zealanders. The Soldier with his Enfield was as necessary an instrument as the Settler with his Plough, or the Missionary with his Bell. But, daunted probably by your Peace and Cotton Party, the Colonial Office has kept this knowledge to itself; and, by such a Policy and by such a Bearing towards the Maori as we have seen it has maintained, has sought, for twenty years, to put off an evil, but a necessary and an inevitable, Day.

The whole history of the Maori Race, in common with the history of all aboriginal races, the whole of our five and twenty years' intercourse with them, shows that they reverence physical power and esteem it the only qualification for command. For ten years we attempted to live with them without the presence of Soldier: we trusted to prayers, to mild persuasion, to missionaries, to missionary-governors. page 42 The dirt they made us eat during this humiliating period is revolting to think of—they committed twenty murders rose in two rebellions, and sacked a Settlement. Troops appeared, and for the next ten years the Native hid his arms and turned to the plough, and the Colony twice quadrupled her wealth and population. Half the Troops were withdrawn—Colonial-Office economy threatened to withdraw the other half—the Land League was formed—and at once, the Colony was in a blaze again, and thousands are brought to the verge of ruin.

Redoubled Missionary efforts—cargoes of pictorial Bibles with moving pictures of the Prodigal Son in ragged breeches and cocked hat; redoubled Legislative efforts-admission to local parliament, admission to general parliament, Native council, Native magistrate, Native policemen Native hospital, will each and all prove useless in our efforts to civilize and save the Native, if we do not first prove to him that while we are a just and merciful race we are a strong and a warlike race—a race, if need be, as well able to fight as to work, or trade, or talk, or write.

Here and there among the Natives, some man of intellect may be found who, owing to long intimacy with the Colonist's family who would converse with him on other subjects than his own merits, or salvation, or adult baptism, and the like, has formed a reasonable idea of the strength of the White man; and here and there a Native has visited England and seen and measured for himself Portsmouth, Woolwich and the Guards—yet only to be called a liar on his return. But, except in a burlesque smattering of scriptural knowledge, the New Zealanders, intelligent, astute as they are in many things, are really, even now, little other in many important essentials than page 43 they were in the days of Tasman and of Cook; and have no clearer an idea of the real power and resources of that far-off Country which would rule them than savages of Dahomy or barbarians of Bhootan.

The Church Missionaries, who, in consideration of the great sums lavished on them by the public, might have been expected to attempt to do some good in New Zealand by imparting to their converts a little elementary knowledge of things practical, have been too much engrossed in expatiating to the Native on the mysteries of the Trinity, on the errors of Rome, on the heresies of Wesley, on la haute politique, to have had sufficient time or inclination to teach the Native anything that would be terrestrially useful to him; and when missionary teaching has stooped to things mundane, or things homely, it has sought chiefly to make the Black man distrust the White.

One marked characteristic of the Maori race, is their stupid, Chinese-like contempt of any other race. They sneer at Frenchmen as Wee-Wees, make mock of English-men as a people who can work like beaver-rats, but who can run away like rats, and esteem dark-skinned races so little that I have heard them figuratively boast that they could eat an Australian aboriginal for breakfast, and dispose of a negro for supper. Physical force, the might of the strong arm, they respect—this, they think, comes and goes with the Soldier. Moral force, industry, the wealth of the working arm, they covertly despise—this, they think, and this alone, is the poor possession of the Colonist. We are the busy beavers—they, the warlike wolves—and they will be ruled by none of our Beaver laws till we show that we can enforce them with the Lion's teeth and claws.