Letter from G. W. Rusden to William Rolleston, October 21st 1881
October 21st, 1881.
“My dear Mr. Rolleston,
“I cannot express to you the pang which it gave me to see that you had resigned the post of Native Minister, and had been succeeded by Mr. Bryce.
“It would be impertinent in me to advise, but I may entreat you to reflect upon what must be the judgment of posterity if the marauding schemes of the New Zealand Company—the robbery at the Waitara, the persistent sharping at the Dunedin Prince's Street reserve, the confessed broken promises on the West Coast—are wound up by an attack on Te Whiti because he preaches peace, and preaches it with more eloquence than his enemies, or some of them, can advocate war. Had I but a trumpet tongue, I would cry to the world; but I have not, and I appeal to you as one who has, until now, maintained the manners of an English gentleman, though brought into contact with strange Englishmen or civilized savages abroad, as well as with ‘naked savages’—as the New Zealand Company called the Maoris.
“I have been intending to write to you for some weeks to ask you to let me have any fresh printed papers about the West Coast; but I have now little heart in the matter. I trusted in your supervision: ὄμμα γαρ δωματος δεσποτου σωρουσια—but if you shut your eye, and brutal force is used, woe be to the reputation of New Zealand!
* I wrote on the same day to Mr. Swainson, and urged him to let his voice ring out against the contemplated enormity. I reminded him how he had formerly raised it against wrong, and as an advocate of right. “I can only think of you. Th sound of your voice, or the dictates of your pen, would engrave themselves more readily than if the public were daily familiar with them. For Heaven's sake launch a bolt in favour of the right, so that at least it may be said that there was one righteous man among you.” Mr. Swainson, who was old and infirm, did not comply with my request; but he lived to write to me in 1884, and congratulate me upon my “minute and accurate knowledge of the affairs of New Zealand.”
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