The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 10

Note

Note.

A Great wrong is being perpetrated in New Zealand. The legislature of that colony have, by large majorities, passed a Bill, confiscating native lands in the disturbed districts to the extent of several millions of acres. There is a feeling in the colony that this measure is, in the highest degree, vindictive and even dangerous; but for the present all sense of prudence and of justice has been overwhelmed by an anti—aboriginal torrent of hatred and rapacity. That Governor Grey and Mr. Fox should have yielded to these influences is greatly to be deplored; but the duly of those who regard a policy of confiscation as cruelly revengeful in itself, and as likely to lead to a war still more sanguinary than that which appears to be on the eve of terminating, is not the less plain because these eminent men have given the weight of their authority to a measure of spoliation. On the contrary, there is the more need that the friends of justice in England should emphatically protest against both the principle and the details of the Bill, and use all their influence to induce the Government to withhold from it the Royal assent. The Memorial which the Aborigines' Protection Society has addressed to the Duke of Newcastle will show the specific grounds upon which the Imperial veto is solicited. The report of the debate on the second reading in the Legislative Council, which is printed word for word as it was published in the New Zealander, will furnish the reader with ample proof of the fact that the Bill was opposed by gentlemen of high authority in the colony, whose speeches, we may add, contain arguments so incontrovertible that neither ministers nor their supporters appear to have attempted any thing worthy the name of a reply. We conclude with the expression of an earnest hope that this attempt to despoil the native tribes of lands which are necessary to their very existence, may be defeated, and that Great Britain, in the greatness of her strength, will temper justice with mercy.