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 10

Preface

page break

Preface.

The following pages contain matter bearing upon the famous Manawatu purchase which, I trust, may not prove uninteresting to those who are acquainted with the past history of New Zealand.

There are those who think that the Waitara purchase and the Waitara war were a great injustice and a cruel wrong. An open investigation into all the circumstances in connection with the Manawatu purchase, may tend to throw some light upon the question as to who have been "the cause of that long and protracted war, the burdens of which now bang about our necks, to the hindrance of public and private prosperity."

The Reverend, afterwards Archdeacon, Henry "Williams, in 1840, translated the Treaty of Waitangi, "and repeated in the native tongue, sentence by sentence," all Governor Hobson said. He afterwards, requested by Governor Hobson, "fully authorised thereto by Her Majesty's instructions conveyed to him by her principal Secretary of State," obtained the signatures to the Treaty of all the principal chiefs on the North side of Cook's Strait, as far as Whanganui.

As I hold the opinion, in common with many others, that the Treaty of Waitangi has been clearly broken by the Government of this country in their dealings with the Natives for the acquisition of the Manawatu block, and as I am the son of the Rev. Henry Williams above-named, I need offer no apology for page iv now coming forward to assist the Natives "on the north side of Cook's Strait" in standing up for their rights guaranteed to them by the said Treaty.

I bring no charge against the colonists, for whom, as a body, I, in common with Parakaia and many of his countrymen, have a great respect. I believe them to have been misinformed and misled. "When I ask any intelligent Maori the question "who are to blame for the past and the present state of things in New Zealand?" the reply is a ready one—"Ko nga kai mahi o te Kawanatanga." When I am myself asked a similar question, my reply is the same—"the Government and the officers of the Government."

Thomas C. "Williams,

A Native of New Zealand. Taita, "Wellington,