NATIVE LAND ACT, 1865.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 8, Issue 707, 9 December 1865, Page 3

NATIVE LAND ACT, 1865.

;•,.••, LETTER NQt 11., Sm,—lt is true that there is to be a Court for the purpose of adjudicating all matters coming, within the provisions of this Act, presided over by lio' end of a big wig, well up in the laws of the ;Medes and; Persians, and other useful knowledge of that sort, and duly supported, by the usual complement of subordinates and other genii." But unfortunately this apparatus is,< to say the least of it, clumsy, and not to be had for nothing, as times go, arid it is particularly liable to lay itself open to the accusation of being in no great" hmry "to get through with the business before it. The difficulties surrounding the purchase of lands, from the natives will not bo much lessened by undergoing the process of filtering thi'ough a Court, which is not in the least interested in getting the matter speedily settled. For instance, A wants to buy a piece />f land from a certain native, say 1000 acres. All goes , on swimmingly enough until we go into the question of who. are the real owners, amongst the Maories fur and near, ofthe parcel of land sought to be bought. It is pretty well known that, so complicated k the" title of natives to this land, and so difficult to arrive at is Any perfectly clear idea of it, and equally difficult to settle any question affecting it, that it takes many a weary day and many a cautious move, on the part of those most anxious to push the matter to a termination, and who are perfectly competent to.do so,, before any definite and satisfactory conclusion can be come to, •Or an opinion upon the subject safely given. One native says •"I have a right to a share iv that land because my father's great-grandfather was killed on it." Another one will claim a share because his grandmother assisted in eating a near relation of some one who had something to do with the land under discussion at some remote period, and so on; all of which objections or claims may appear frivolous enough to the uninitiated pakeha, but they are, for all that, very seriously put forward on the part of : the natives, and do, I make no doubt, according to their ideas of these matter 3, establish a, kind of mana or claim upon the land. Here, then, we see that not alone arc a number of very admissible claims put forward, but there are also a great number of other claims which arefound upon investigation to' be not admissible at all. And there yet remains, even after the most : careful and prolonged investigation, the possibility of some one who has not yet turned up having n, finger in the pie too, obliging us to go-into the matter de now. ''■■ Let us look now at the old system. The person seeking to purchase is an agent of the Government, acting in the matter for that Government. He wants to buy a large tract of eburitry, say 200,000 acres or so. We shall find that for the purpose of acquiring that large piece of land, it will probably not be necessary to investigate- andrf afcisfy-.a gveater-number of claims, and undergo a greater amount of difficulty and vexation than will have arisen out of the little transaction of it for 1000 acres. The minds of those men accustomed to native matters, can hardly conceive how it will be found possible in the course of one generation to get over all these innumerable and interminable questions inseparable from native land business, when subdivided into the settlement' of the right to unlimited fractional portions of 200,000. acres. If the native land purchase system under the defunct regimb was open to objection upon the ground of the difficulties and mistakes which attended it during the investigation of the outs and ins of the ownership of native lands, what can we possibly expect, when all the letters of the alphabet, from A to Z, are engaged in endeavoring to carry out, each on his own hook, an arrangement with the Maories which involves resultsand opens questions equally hazardous with those out of which sprung the Tarannki war and other native difficulties. We have no reason to suppose that the officers employed by the Government under the old system were not as well, if n0& a great deal better, acquainted with the natives and their ways, as those gentlemen who ai'c likely to come in for a share of the official loaves and fishes under tbe new. . . . If, then, it is concluded that the native land question can be settled by no other means than by that of this new Act, ifc appears likely that according to all human probability and established fixed precedent, it will never be satisfactorily settled at all. It is evident that, apart from private and personal feelings and interests, apart from official pique, and little matters of that sort, the Act itself is surrounded by such insuperable difficulties, pulling agaiust its practical working, that, except by a special intervention of some kind, it will riot be got to work at all at any price. Upon the whole it is to be hoped that it will not work; for assuredly some one of the letters between A and Z, if we don*t include these two, will get the country into another Maori war. If we could,not keep out of a war under the old plan, when the chances of it were great, what is to pi'event our getting into another war under this new plan, when the chances are by so many degrees greater ? . By the exploded system the purchases were . made for the good of the country; under this untried system the purchases will be made, whether large or small, for the good of individuals alone. And yet the people will be called upon to support a quarrel arising out of some insignificant transaction of an individual with just as much earnestness as if the credit of the Government and welfare of the country were at stake on it. The.operation of the new Act will give rise to a great deal of private jobbing and vexatious haggling. In a keg of powder or a caslt of rum, given to a native chief as an earnest of what he may expect if things go on smoothly, the heart of any province may be eaten out and the best lands in New Zealand may fall into the hands of Z, without giving any other letter half a chance. , Yours, &c, ; .... .. ; A. SiMAIiL S&TTUEB.