TARANAKI COMPENSATION.

Tt appears that M r. Beckham's absence from Auckland sis Commissioner to enquire into the Taranaki compensation claims tor losses incurred during the late struggle, is no! likely to be a very prolonged one. lie has been, it would seem, commissioned to take til random some half dozen claims, investigate them carefully and return to Auckland with a report of his investigations. These claims will be, taken as a sample of (lie remainder, and if it shall have been found, as there was reason to suppose and hence the present commission, that these claims have been unfairly stilted either one way or Ihe other, the whole affair will commence itr noro. Mr. Beckham's instructions only appoint liini to enter upon an investigation of claims made for losses sustained from the enemy and not from those caused by the action of the military authorities. The delay which this course of act ion must necessarily cause in the settlement of these already overdue claims for compensation lias verv naturally called l'orfh an expression of disappointment from the Taranaki people and Press. The; Titvaiiuki Hreiihl iu reviewing this matter winds up with the following remarks: —" jS'o doubt, when Captain Heckliani " hits made his report, it will receive the same " careful attention and consideration as the| ■' resolution of the 1 louse received ; and after ; " that icaiu then; will be further action and "so on; and by the time the Assembly meets ; " ;i"iiin (which will be barely ten months j " hence), we shall be in a lair way of knowing ; " what we have to expect." It is «|uite true j that Ihe tieneral Assembly by a special re- | solution ordered the Government to pay the j compensation claims fort liwit li.f o t he amount j if we remember rightly of AT—CM),(»<'O, but ! the people of Taranaki must bear in mind that; ordering the money to be paid, and providing the money which is to be paid, are two very dili'eren't things. The importance lo the'Taranaki settlers of having llicir fjaiim? arranged, a« soon as e\er tliev can be

satisfactorily made out, is a measure which we beliiwe the New Zealand Government are particularly anxious to see carried out. but the doing so necessarily involves t lie understanding that there shall be an -,v lilable fund from which lo settle them. We think Ihe refort) that the delay occasioned by the new commission is more imaginary than real and that there must necessarily elapse a certain amount of time betbre the result of the t oloniit] 1 reasuror's negotiations at home ean lie practically concluded, that, the interval mil}' lie very filled up by the thoi ough iuvestigation of the several claims preferred. 00 large a sum as two hundred thousand pounds could come from no other source than the loan, and in despatching to England one ot their colleagues to negotiate that important business, the ministry have as yet, done ill I they could be expected lo do towards the settlement of claims which every right minded colonist must be anyious lo see paid as speedily as possible. The little Pro\inceof Taranaki was for a long time made the " hutfer " to ward oil'the concussion ol war lroiu larger ami more important Provinces —Iter settlers were long stigmatised by the pcace-at-any-price organs here and elsewhere in the colony as causing the war through greed of the hinds of the Maori, and none more Ihe people of this Province, on whom Ihe largest proportion id'this compensation fund will of course fall, will be better pleased fo see Ihe Taranaki settlers placed in a way of recovering their former position. The ministry, however, have not the power of coining money, and must necessarily wait the result of Mr. Reader AVood's visit to the mother country.