Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 24

Preface

page break

Preface.

Since the tragedy of Cain and Abel made our first parents acquainted with the crime of violence in its most hideous form, down to the news of yesterday, which tells of "Bulgarian atrocities" and incipient anarchy pervading regions rendered immortal by the story of Noah, the Ark, and Mount Ararat, the art, or rather science of government, has engrossed,—probably from sheer necessity,—the attention, and enlisted the sympathies of the greatest minds in every country, no matter what stage of civilisation that country may have reached, or perhaps failed to reach. Jerusalem, Sodom, Babylon, Rome, Athens, Venice, Madrid, Warsaw, Paris, Berlin, Washington, Constantinople, Mexico, London, and a host of other names serve, at least, to point a moral as to the direct effects of pure, or corrupt administration, upon the nations which these cities represent to the student of history. I have been led into the foregoing reflections by perusing, from time to time, a series of temperate articles from the pen of "An Occasional Correspondent" (a recent traveller, I learn), which have been appearing in the Otago Daily Times, upon the Native Office in general, and the Land Purchase Department at Poverty Bay in particular, and, if only one tithe of what is stated in such judicial, as well as judicious page iv language by the writer, be substantiated during the coming Session, then the sooner we settlers in the North Island, are prepared to firmly demand the total abolition of that remnant of the Vogelian age—the Native Office—the better it will be for ourselves, and for our children.

Even while I write, rumours are rife anent yet another Native Lands Act to be presented to Parliament this Session, and here, I may point out to the "powers that be," the anomaly of the Native Minister sitting in the "Lords," and at the same time, possessing no subordinate to represent his department, and to answer questions, (perhaps this would be distasteful,) in the Commons. The Prime Minister of England at present sits in the Upper House, but is represented in the Lower one by Sir Stafford Northcote. The Foreign and Colonial Secretaries are also Peers, but are represented by their Under-Secretaries in the House of Commons. Of course, our Under-Secretaries are Civil Servants, and consequently ineligible for Parliament, but this fact only strengthens the objection to the Hon. Dr Pollen representing the most important department of our administration in the nominee Chamber, and thereby leaving the snubbing of inquisitive members of the Lower House to be effected by the hair-splitting subleties of the Attorney-General, the Police Court platitudes of the Minister of Justice, or the Cromwellian diatribes of the Premier.

There is doubtless a reason for all this which my philosophy has not permitted me to grasp, or even page v to dream of, so I pause for a reply, from Her Majesty's Opposition.

A bad workman is said to quarrel with his tools, and if the present case of Mr J. A. Wilson, not to mention those of (now) Judge Heale, and Major Gordon, be borne in mind, the Atkinson Government must either be very bad, or so awfully clever, that they can afford to dispense, at least with good tools, if they do not employ bad ones instead. I should explain that the letter marked No. 3 and which is the sinning despatch in extenso, addressed by Mr J. A. Wilson to the late Native Minister, Sir Donald McLean, and which was the direct cause, I believe, of the so-called Royal Commission being appointed, has been substituted for letter No. 3 of the Otago Daily Times series, containing merely extracts from that famous despatch, with "An Occasional Correspondent's" comments thereon. This course has, unfortunately, been rendered necessary by the inability to obtain a copy of the Otago Daily Times of that date, in time for publication here.

I may add in conclusion, that my object in presenting these letters to the public in pamphlet form, is simply to endeavour to rouse the North Island settlers to a realisation of the fact, that one of the fairest portions of the earth's surface is being kept unproductive and desolate, through the blundering, if not the plundering also, of a Department provided for out of their pockets, and which nothing but the knife will now cause to relax its sinister grasp in the future.

The recent collapse of the Auckland Steam page vi Packet Company,—a company, be it remembered, which was launched with the special object of fostering and extending trade between this city and the North and East Coast settlements—is worth a bushel of homilies upon the infallible "flour and sugar" policy of the late Sir Donald McLean. While Dunedin is slowly, but no less surely, pushing Auckland out of the carrying markets around her own unrivalled port, a critic of the disgraceful meddling and muddling of the Native Office, may well exclaim to his readers, "By their fruits ye shall know them."

But before consummating the richly deserved "happy despatch" upon the Native Office, let us compel the Government to account for every penny of the £700,000 voted to purchase "a landed estate" for the North Island.

"Argus."

Auckland, June, 1877.