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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 24

[commentary]

Captain Porter was indignant at production of this, which he styled a private letter, but clearly, as it was voluntarily produced by Henare Potae, and dealt with public action to be taken by a public officer in a public matter, the Commissioners went far in refusing to receive it. I am informed that there are other letters of other persons—some of them in much higher positions, which will yet be produced to show the ramifications of the intrigues in connection with this land buying. Government agents bid and work against each other to obtain influence for themselves individually, and to destroy the influence of others. They play into the hands of favoured persons—favoured by the Ministry and their friends, and if half the reports be true, those agents often play into the hands of Ministers themselves. Very loud was the outcry against Sir George Grey for what he said, and wrote, and did, in his efforts to expose this land swindling, which is done at the cost of so much Native discontent, and at the risk of a Native disturbance some day. It is very bard to get at the exact evidence necessary to substantiate a case. Had Sir George been allowed to be Native Minister for a month he could have done this. But there is one thing very significant: loud as was the outcry against him for false and malicious statements, none ventured an action on the strength of them in a Court of Law. Yet Sir George Grey is well known to be a good mark in a pecuniary point of view, and well worth powder and shot. Mr Wilson was better able to prove his case; but the Government seem to have been bent on stifling and crushing him, and not on having the whole affair probed thoroughly in the interests of the Public Service only. It was said openly in Auckland and in Gisborne that some of the Ministers had been and were themselves too deep in the mud to tolerate complaint—that they only page 29 went into the Government to secure the lands they had bought, and to buy more, and that when they had done this, the colony might keep them in or turn them out as it liked, for their interest in public affairs would have ceased till there was more land to be got, or some other job to be worked by patriotically making a new appearance on the public stage. It is not a flattering view of public men; but I heard it so often expressed, and by people of such opposite opinions, that I was forced to remember the old adage, and to admit that, where there is so much smoke, there is very likely to be some fire. The sooner the colony washes its hands of this Native lands buying altogether the better, especially for us in the South, who know so little about it, except that we are paying so large a share of the waste it engenders, and taking so large a portion of the risk in the disturbances it may create.