Administration of Native Affairs.

• 15. Equally serious is the question as to the administration of Native, affairs. At the best the Assembly can do little more than lay down sound general principles, with an outline of the mode of administering them. In this point of administration lies our great practical difficulty. I have already indicated that which appears to me the only mode of surmounting this difficulty; I will therefore be brief on this point: That for our success we need the continuous and consistent working of some one system for an adequate length of time most men will admit. Can any man, who has watched the present mode of proceeding, see in it any security for the permanance of plans and arrangements, or even for the fulfilment of promises? Supposing a Native Minister to have formed some distinct conception of what ought to be done, his office will soon be transferred to another, who may have other views or none, so short-lived are our Ministers. One of two things must be expected to happen: either the substitution of officers will be left to go on at their own discretion, without aid and without check, or business must stand still until the new man has acquired the requisite knowledge. Such a state of things would be detrimental to the public service even in routine business, but in a business so novel and peculiar as this it may be fatal. With all this delay and uncertainty, projects put forward and never carried out, one expectation after another raised and disappointed, the soreness and distrust of the Natives will remain unallayed, or even increased; many more will come to say, what too many say already, that our plans and proposals to them are maminga—devices to cheat them and gain time.

  Whatever be the outward form or nature of the Native Department there must be somewhere a set of persons intrusted with special functions, and possessed of special knowledge, and empowered to carry out steadily and uninterruptedly some one consistent plan, if we intend to have contentment and peace. A mere theoretical uniformity of the outside of our administration will only screen from view a fact which it will be wiser to recognize. Special circumstances need a special organization to deal with them.