Representation.

• 21. Within all districts which have come within the operation of our system of property it will follow that Natives will take a direct part in the political, as well as the legal, system of the colony by becoming electors. I understand that even now such is the case to some degree in the south of this Island. This is a result absolutely essential to the end we are seeking—namely, the establishment of a just and equal system for both races. It is one which need not excite any alarm, for the average capacity of a Maori is not below that of many of our present electors. The effect will be to provide the Maoris of the district with a constitutional helper and protector, interested in obtaining their confidence, and able to convey to the Assembly an accurate account of their wants and grievances. Thus the system of representation will yield to the Natives that first and most obvious advantage which was its chief recommendation in England itself in old time. It will open a path by which a knowledge of local needs or troubles may be carried directly to the Government, and the best modes of supplying or removing them be suggested and considered. The need of such an opening, under our circumstances, is very great; for such local matters, small in the outset, are apt, if they be overlooked and allowed to accumulate, to become causes of permanent disaffection. That such matters should be speedily and directly brought under discussion is especially to be desired in the case of the Natives, in dealing with whom a grievance promptly attended to and discussed is already half healed.

  It has recently been proposed that the Maoris should be represented in the Assembly in a general way, and without reference to the ordinary electoral divisions. On that plan the members would be rather orators on behalf of the Maoris in general than well-informed expositors of practical grievances and local needs; and the fact of a few members of the Assembly being regarded as specially representing the Natives would naturally have an injurious effect on the rest of the members, leading them to take less interest in Native affairs, and to feel less responsible for the management of them. I think it far better to fall into the existing system. Representation, to answer its purposes completely, should be one and the same system for all.