Evening Post. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1909. A COLOSSAL MEASURE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 119, 16 November 1909, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1909. A COLOSSAL MEASURE.

A mere glance at the colossal proportions of the Native Land Bill is enough to convince one of the immense labour that has been involved in its compilation. It extends to 106 pages and 426 clauses, and the schedule of enactments repealed shows that the existing legislation, dating ns far back as 1871, has had to be reviewed and overhauled, and the whole or part of each of 71 different measures has been repealed. The Statutes Revision Commissioners wee wise to leave this branch of law for special treatment. Herculean as their task was, it included nothing quite so laborious as the endeavour to I spell sense and harmony out of the tangled mass of our * native land laws. The matter was indeed beyond their jurisdiction, which, pace Mr. Justice Edwards, was substantially confined to' the codifying and re-enactment of the legislation as they found it on, the Statute Book. The dotting of i'if, the filling in of lacunas, and tho dovetailing of clauses dealing with the same matter in separate Acts, was a necessary work, in the execution of which the commissioners may have occasionally overstepped the line and introduced substantive charges of an unforeseen and embarrassing character. But an exact mechanical reproduction in a single context of provisions which they found scattered in a number of different statutes was the principal function of the commissioners, and to this they have idoubtlc<?sly confined ■themselves as strictly as' in each case they deemed to be practicable. In the case of the native land laws, however, a mere codification would have been useless and even absurd. Where there is a want of connection, or, it may be, even a positive conflict between two enactments dealing with the same subject-matter, the collocation of them would not clear up the difficulty, but would merely focus and emphasise it. The commissioners must either have repeatedly assumed a legislative power of resolving such contradictions as these, or have given ub a consolidated Native Land Act which would have been a perfect marvel of unreason. A remarkable instance of the class of absurdity to which we have referred is mentioned in the memorandum which Mr. Salmond, the counsel to the Law Drafting Office, has prefixed to the Bill. One of the many measures that have from time to time been designed to provide a last and conclusive word with regard to the native land problem is the -Maori Lands Administration Act of 1900. Although the measure has been amended in nearly every subsequent session, we do not know that on that account it is to ba scouted as any more inconclusive thaD its predecessors The page-ancl-a-half schedule to the Bill now before the House shows that only two sessions" have passed since- 1890 without some amendment of the native land Jaws, and that the inaction. of lliose two sessions has been, more than made up by the passing of three or four amending Acts in each of a considerable number of the other sessions. All the amendments which have been made in the Act of 1900 have, however, not affected in the least the fundamental provision of that Act to which Mr. Salmond refers, in his memorandum. Extensive powers over the alienation and administration of the native lands were conferred by the Act upon the Maori Land Councils which it had established, and which have since been transformed into Maori Land Boards. "Those councils," says Mr. Salmond, ''w«ra in certain matters given the same jurisdiction that up to that lime the court alone had exercised, but it was not made clear what relation existed between the provisions of that Act and the different pi o visions in pari materia of the Native Land Court Act, 1 1894. Consequently, the law now contains two sets of different and inconsistent provisions dealing with tho samematters, and also recognises two differ-

ent bodies— namely, the Native Land Court and the Maori Land Board — which have concurrent and discordant powers und duties in respect of the .<=ame matters." The wonderful overlapping of jurisdictions on so fundamental a matter is a fair sample of the class of tangles that the draftsman of the Native Land Bill has endeavoured to clear up ; but the manner in which he has acquitted himself must be leserved for discussion in a future article.