THE NATIVE LANDS. At Last Something.

Free Lance, Volume I, Issue 16, 20 October 1900, Page 6

THE NATIVE LANDS. At Last Something.

WHEN the mysteries of Native management were deepest, the hatred of all the managers was concentrated on all proposals to allow the Maori people to manage their affairs for themselves. Those mysteries are dead, but still the proposal meets with surprising fury of resistance ? Why? * # w When the Land Bill was in Committee, its passage was desperately resisted in the interests of free trade by men who were willing enough to make necessary reserves for the support of the Maori owners, but wanted the surplus disposed of upon Free Trade principles. It is a sweet principle in theory. In practice the timber syndicates, the knowing ones in gum, the "eye-spotters," and the land sharks would get the land for nothing, ihe Maoris being reduced to beggary in the process, and the European settlers fleeced right and leffc. Very properly the House sat upon the Free Traders. * • * " Maori landlordism " was found a powerful objection, and proved the cause of anolher fight. But the Maoris are, after all, the owners, and if they prefer letting their property to selling it, the mere use of the term landlord is not an objection. Moreover, there is not much difference, as things will be managed, between the State (as landlord) and the Maori. The House, therefore, was not wrong in turning a deaf ear to the specious terms. * • * A third set of critics discovered that the Trust system, as applied by Committees, is unsuitable, the possibility of finding men either capable or honest enough in the race being infinitesimal. They were assisted by another set who declared that if any money is spent on roading and surveying these Maori lands, it would be so impossible to lease them at a profit that they would disappear by pressure of mortgagee sale. Of these two theories, the first falsely dishonoured the Maori, and the second unjustifiably depreciated the value of his property, which, as a matter of fact, is the best unoccupied country in New Zealand. The House, then, did well to take no heed of this strange alliance. * * * The astonishment expressed by Mr Carroll during the second reading debate ought to be generaJly shared. He was surprised that when the Maori offers to work his property entirely to promote the cause of pakeha settlement — he said entirely, but that must be allowed to pass as a slip, so evidently contrary to fact was it — he is met with these jibes and sophistries, instead of frank applause and hearty thanksgiving. At all events, there is some evidence of constructive power in this Maori

policy, and that is the thing most wanted to tangle out a chaos which, if left alone, will destroy the Maori people. It hai also the dignity of self-reliance, and the only serious objection against it was removed by the addition of the proviso that all sales must be under the Lands for Settlement Act. The measure deserves a trial, therefore the House was well advised to pass it through all its stages.