Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

An Epitome of Official Documents Relative to Native Affairs and Land Purchases in the North Island of New Zealand

Social Condition of the New Zealanders

Social Condition of the New Zealanders.

In reporting to your Excellency my views and observations on the social, condition of the New Zealanders, I cannot repress a feeling of deep regret that so fine and intelligent a race of human beings should, in the present state of general civilization, be found in barbarism; for there is not on earth a people more susceptible of high intellectual attainments, or more capable of becoming a useful and industrious race under a wise Government. At present, notwithstanding their formal declaration page 12of independence, they have not, in fact, any government whatsoever nor could a meeting of the chiefs who profess to be the heads of the United Tribes take place at any time without danger of bloodshed. How, then can it be expected that laws will be framed for the dispensation of justice or the preservation of peace and good order, even if Native judgment were sufficiently matured to enact such laws or to carry them into execution?

Whilst the disunited state of the tribes, and their jealousy of each other, render it impossible to enact or execute laws, it also lays them open to the designs of turbulent individuals, and destroys all confidence in the permanency of the peace.

That their wars, which are fast depopulating their beautiful country, may sooner or later be extended to our countrymen, is a circumstance that it would be the height of rashness to doubt; and as British subjects are fast accumulating, and areevery day acquiring considerable possessions of land, it must become a subject of deep solicitude with the British Government to devise some practicable mode of protecting them from violence, and of restraining them from aggression.

Heretofore the great and powerful moral influence of the Missionaries has done much to check the natural turbulence of the Native population; but the dissolute conduct of the lower orders of our countrymen not only tends to diminish that holy influence, but to provoke the resentment of the Natives, which, if once excited, would produce the most disastrous consequences. It becomes, therefore, a solemn duty, both in justice to the better classes of our fellow-subjects and to the Natives themselves, to apply a remedy for the growing evil.