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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 32

Chapter VII

page 37

Chapter VII.

Are the Anti-land-selling League and the King movement breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi.

The writer has no wish to go specially into these matters at present.

But if it be true that the members of the Anti-land-selling League do not only use persuasion and argument but resolve to use force to prevent persons entitled to alienate their land from alienating, they act in violation of the spirit of the treaty and of the rights and privileges of their fellow-subjects; and if they associate themselves together and do use force to oppose the officers of justice in the enforcement of the rights of their fellow-subjects, and defy the authority of the Queen, they commit a great crime, in direct repudiation of the treaty, and, under certain circumstances, amounting to rebellion or treason.

As to the King movement—if the election of a King find the hoisting of a flag are intended to be a repudiation of the Queen's authority, they are evident and palpable breaches of the treaty, and overt acts of rebellion or treason; but if the actors in the matter are only seeking to have an organisation of their own for the protection of the interests of their race, without repudiating the Queen's ultimate sovereignty, or forcibly interfering with the rights of other subjects, it might be difficult to say that the election alone and the use of the flag necessarily amounted to treason, especially in the case of those who have but vague ideas of the rights of a "King" or the meaning of a flag. It may be that by some tribes and individuals the King and flag demonstrations are viewed in the one way and by others in the other.