From the faithful pictures of Maori character, ideas, and feelings contained in these two little books, the observant reader will easily perceive how mistakes and misconceptions as to what they were, and might become, and as to how they should be treated, sprang up in the English mind. It is true that the Maori question, with all its hopes and fears, has practically come to an end. The bubble of Maori civilization has burst, the idea, that seemed at one time not unlikely to become an actual fact, of a native race becoming truly Christianized and civilized, and prospering side by side with their white brothers, has gone where many a noble and well-fought-for idea has gone before. The true level of the Maori, intellectually and morally, has become tolerably well known; moreover, his numbers are diminishing year by year.
But the English nation is, and I hope always will be, in contact with many nations of different blood and various forms and degrees of civilization, and as long as this is the case it cannot be too much impressed upon that extremely powerful and somewhat hasty and headstrong body, the British public, that human nature is not the same all over the world, that one man's meat is another man's poison, that there is no code either of logic or of feeling or of morals universally accepted by humanity, that every difference in custom makes some difference in mind; so that (if that public wishes, as I believe it does, to manage the races with whom England comes in contact, not so much by force as by intelligent and beneficial moral influence) the first thing to be done is to gain an unwarped, accurate, and thorough knowledge of the customs, character, and opinions of the races in question.
If these two little books should suggest to any careless Englishman that foreigners of dark complexion are not all like either those white men who seem to have got into brown or black skins by mistake, whom one reads about in anti-slavery books and some missionary reports, or those equally tiresome black dummies whom one reads about in another sort of book who have no marked characteristic or intelligible custom except shooting spears and arrows at people for no apparent reason, I shall be glad to have introduced them to an English public; and let me assure those who care more for amusement than instruction that they will be amply repaid by their perusal.
I hope the Pakeha Maori will pardon my impertinence in giving a personal sketch of him to his English readers on the plea that his writing would not be complete without one.
He was, I believe, sixty years old when I first saw him, but, in spite of his age, looked the finest man for strength, activity, and grace I had ever seen. Six feet three in height and big in proportion, with a symmetry of shape that almost disguised his immense size, I felt I could well understand the stories I had heard of his popularity and his feats amongst the Maories, especially when I watched the keen, bright expression of his humorous Irish face.
In manner and conversation he was the very opposite of what one would expect of a man who had lived since his boyhood among savages. With a real love, and a considerable knowledge of literature, a keen appreciation of all intellectual excellence, and a most delightful humour, I think I never came across so charming a talker as the man whom I may not inaptly christen the "Lever" of New Zealand.
Pembroke.
