Parihaka - Imprisonment

Imprisonment

The first 40 ploughmen brought before court, meanwhile, were charged with malicious injury to property, sentenced to two months' hard labour and ordered to pay ₤200 surety for 10 months good behaviour following their release. Because none could raise the surety, all remained behind bars for 12 months. The Government declined to lay charges against any of the remaining 180 protesters, but also refused to release them. Colonial Minister and Defence Minister Colonel George S. Whitmore, who had led colonial forces against Titokowaru in 1868-69, admitted it was necessary to bend the law keep the protesters incarcerated, fearing they would be released by the Supreme Court if they went on trial. To provide a legal backing for its move, the Grey ministry rushed the Maori Prisoners' Trial Act through both Houses on the final day of its session in office, Whitmore justifying the haste by claiming the "actual safety of the country and of the lives and property of its loyal subjects" was at stake.

The new law provided that the detainees were to be brought to trial within 30 days of the opening of the next session of parliament. The government invoked two further postponements and in January 1880 moved all the prisoners to the South Island, incarcerating them in jails in Dunedin, Hokitika, Lyttelton and Ripapa Island in Canterbury. The move prompted Hone Tawhai, the member for Northern Maori, to remark: "I cannot help thinking that they must have been taken there in order that they might be got rid of, and that they might perish there."

Many of the prisoners had already been in jail for 13 months when, in July 1880, the next Native Minister, John Bryce, introduced a Bill designed to postpone their trial indefinitely. Bryce, who prided himself on plain talk, told Parliament it was "a farce to talk of trying these prisoners for the offences for which they were charged ... if they had been convicted in all probability they would not have got more than 24 hours' imprisonment. In the Bill we drop that provision in regard to the trial altogether." The new legislation declared that all those in jail were now deemed to have been lawfully arrested and to be in lawful custody and decreed that "no Court, Judge, Justices of the Peace or other person shall during the continuance of this Act discharge, bail or liberate the said Natives".

Sheehan, meanwhile, claimed Te Whiti's people were wavering and would soon break up, while Bryce declared the end game was within sight: "I fully expect, in the course of next summer, to see hundreds of settlers on these plains."