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Notes on Sir William Martin's Pamphlet Entitled the Taranaki Question

Page 44

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Page 44.

"They raise plain issues."…………

Any one reading this would of course be led to believe that these issues had been raised before the commencement of hostilities; whereas the Government had vainly invited the claimants to bring forward their claims, and they had never done so. It was the bounden duty of persons possessing documents which in their opinion raised these issues, to have communicated them at once to the Governor, even if the letters themselves did not repeatedly pray that this should be done.

The Governor may not perhaps have an official right to complain of Archdeacon Hadfield not sending him the letters he received from Wiremu Kingi; but when the Superintendent of a Province receives remonstrances addressed to him in his public character on matters of grave public importance not within his functions to deal with, and when such remonstrances expressly pray that these matters may be laid before the Governor, the Governor has just grounds of complaint against an officer who withholds them altogether from his cognizance, and lets them see the light for the first time only to serve a party purpose in a debate in the House of Representatives. A double evil is produced by such proceedings: the Natives are invited and encouraged to address the Superintendent on Native grievances which he has no power to redress, and are then led to believe that the Governor pays no attention to remonstrances which he was never permitted to see—[See notes pp. 30-32, 34, 35.]