LAND RIGHTS.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 102, 17 February 1844, Page 406

LAND RIGHTS.

[From the Auckland Times. 1 ]

Every journal in the colony of New Zealand, and indeed almost all of their readers, are earnestly discussing the interminable question of land rights. The present condition of the southern settlements, in particular, in reference to this matter, is indeed awful; but we are all sufficiently embarrassed. There are disputes between the Government and the New Zealand Company; between both of them and the original land claimants ; between all three and the Maori population — the last stimulated into the most extravagant and ridiculous expectation of payment by the foolish proceedings of the Protectors ; and, lastly, that the catalogue may be complete, the proverbial avarice and cunning of these people being excited, there are almost as many rival claims to reconcile between the black population as the white. Captain Fitz Roy will find in this matter a Gordian knot, which may and must be severed, but which no human ingenuity can unravel. If it were possible to do so at all, the result would come, like a Chancery decision, long after all those who were to profit by it had been assembled before that tribunal where human controversy and human conquest are alike worthless. One of our contemporaries commences an elaborate article by commenting upon " the sort of mysterious connexion between men and land." Land is the inheritance of man from his great Creator and Father ; it is the gift of God ! (by figure of speech, a nurse and second parent to us). The condition of the gift is that we shall cultivate, subdue, and possess it; that we shall increase and multiply, till, by the fullness of the Earth, the mysterious purposes of its Maker shall be completed. There is in this no mystery at all. Land is the most obvious and unchangeable of all necessaries — and consequently the most valued of any. OUR Right (as a people) here is to be determined upon these principles. If we have not a consciousness of our just possession and, still more, of our perfectly easy power to maintain it, then ought we instantly, as a nation, to abandon the settlement of the colony. We cannot possibly remain here, unless the power, the acknowledged supremacy of the British Crown be established. It is not possible that New Zealand shall be a colony and an appanage of the British Queen, and yet that the Near Zealanders shall be acknowledged as an independent and sovereign people. This question must be first settled.

That our right is clear, may be established by this reasoning:— The New Zealanders are in possession of a territory half as large again as Great Britain; their numbers are about 100,000 souls — not a tithe of the population of London alone. The condition, as regards the preservation of human life and interests (leaving out of the question the ordained propagation of the Christian religion) absolutely requires that the people of Great Britain should enter into and possess some of the more eligible of the unoccupied regions of the earth. The New Zealanderg cannot possibly use their land— -they cannot possess it. They are conscious of great benefits arising from our settlement here. Why do we not complete a measure so desirable for both?

We cannot purchase of them, for they have no actual possession in the aggregate; and where they have possession in reality (their cultivations), it is not our interest, ana should not be our desire, to disturb them. It is easy for the British Government to reserve a tithe of the land, which is much more than can possibly be required, and apply it honourably and faithfully to the preservation of native rights. But buying lands in patches for blankets, horses which toe do not give them, toys, gunpowder, tobacco, and other trifles to corrupt them, is only repeating over again the indirect system of extermination which has prevailed in North America; it is far more deadly than an usurpation of their personal liberty. The surrender of the territory of the country by treaty is by no means impracticable, but the present system can only engender strife and ultimate bloodshed, we cannot buy land which has no individual possessor; for, as in the case of Papakura, satisfy one chief or tribe, and another and yet another will arise ad infinitum. If the British Government is diffident of her just position she has no business here; if she is afraid to proclaim her power, and stand upon that as her Bight, she has no other to put forward, and must abandon the place. A British Governor cannot occupy a position here second to that of an imaginary sovereign right of the natives — a right which i$ imaginary because it is not palpable, tangible, or recognised.

Stuv Ships. — Our war steam-ships form no less a proportion than one-fifth of the British navy. — Brighton Gas; He.