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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 171, 22 April 1864, Page 2

That there is a law for the rich and another for the poor is a very common complaint, and that that lamentable state of things is to be found in a highly flourishing condition in New Zealand is but too painfully true, and is made but too unmistakeably obvious from what took place a-short time since in the Resident Magistrate’s Court at Manawatu, and what is taking place and increasing in daring daily in this Province. The verbose magistrate at Manawatu, having got hold of a certain delinquent under ’ the Native Laud Purchase Ordinance Sess. 7, No. 19, determined to make a striking example of him, and in an elaborate oration gave that individual and the public generally such a direful picture of the enormity of the crime committed, and the alarming consequences to the commonweal if that crime were to go unpunished, that one would be led to suppose that every man hearing it, who had committed an infringement of the Ordinance in question, would .have precipitated himself at the feet of Justice, sought mercy and forgiveness, abandoned his evil ways, and lead an entirely new kind of life for evermore. Such would be the natural conclusion arrived at by all disinterested people on reading the report of these proceedings, which we have already published.

Things, however, in that wise are ordered differently in this Province, and although there' can be no doubt in the minds of some misguided men that, if the Native Land Purchase Ordinance is in force in Wellington, it ought also to be in force at Ahuriri, but it is pretty certain that, except in extreme cases of very poor men or men of no consequence, that Ordinance is a dead letter here. There can he no doubt whatever that a company ofpersons here have clubbed together and taken a large piece of the best part of the Ahuriri plains on lease from the Natives, and live in hopes that they may be able thereby not only to occupy those plains while living, hut secure them to their children when they (the fathers) are dead. What a grand conception ! And w’hat an equally grand conception that of the poor man of Manawatu being obliged to give up his lease and lose a great deal of valuable improvements and money besides, but to be mulcted in a pretty small fine in the bargain. Truly there is a law for the rich and another law

.for the poor. That under the present Government, any other condition of things than that which now exists could be expected, is oift of the question. Mr. McLean gave up his lucrative office of Chief Land Purchase Commissioner with an eye to his more lucrative transactions with the Maories on his own account. With that view, he quietly shoved our late innocent and harmless Superintendent out, and amidst a great flourish of trumpets, and a deal of Heralding generally, takes his seat in the vacant chair, from which vantage ground he can keep an excellent watch on the state of the Native mind, as touching their lands ! Of course. We now know the reason why the fine lands of Ahuriri never became public property. We now see how it is, that while a great deal of talk and a vast deal of expense was gone into at different times about purchases of lands from the Natives, no lands of any value were purchased. It was no more in the interest of Mr. McLean, when

Chief Land purchase Commissioner, to buy lands from the Natives in this Province, than it is now in his interests to sell his own land back to the Government for ss. an acre. The whole business, or pretence of business, of purchasing lands from the Natives in Ahuriri is a well-devised scheme—a deeplylaid and cleverly worked out plot, in which the M.H.R. for Clive and the Superintendent are deeplj complicated. Truly there is a law for the rich, and another law for the poor.