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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3252, 3 December 1881, Page 2

Dβ. Bgxler in a recent address said a great blunder had been committed when the Crown surrendered to the Maoris its pre-emptive right to purchase over their lands. That pre-emptive right was absolutely ours by treaty, for, if the treaty of Waitangi meant anything at all, it secured to the Crown, by deliberate arrangement, this exclusive right ot purchase, in exchange for the protection extended to the Maori people by the Queen of England and the conservation of their rights and liberties by a powerful nation, who might at once have claimed the country by right of discovery. When the control of native affairs was entrusted to the colonists, the General Assembly, in a magnanimous spirit, surrendered the pre-emptive right and established free trade in native lands. His belief was that the legislation of the last few years in regard to so-called free-trade in native lands, whether so intended or not,-had the effect of placing large estates within the grasp of capitalists without the slightest chance of competition for the man of small means. He instanced the Waikato Land Company, with its 300,000 acres acquired in spite of Government proclamations and prohibitions, also the purchases of the Wanganui Land Ring and the operations of speculators on the East Coast. The whole system appeared to him a faulty one, and it was not too late even now to revert to the Crown's preemption. Let the traffic in native lands be absolutely prohibited, and let the Government alone buy to the best advantage for the State.