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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9103, 11 July 1888, Page 4

There will no doubt be considerable trouble in getting the Bills relating to native land legislation passed through, the House this session. The Maori members are always obstructive to every measure affecting native lands, putting forward impracticable proposals, and making their support to the Ministry in the House dependent upon the adoption of those proposals. At length Ministers become wearied, and determine to wait for another session. That has happened several times, and has often prevented useful legislation in regard to native affairs. And it must always be remembered that there is a considerable section of the House and of the Ministry who are quite prepared to give the go-bye to legislation in respect of native lands. It has become a fixed idea with Southern men that all native land transactions are swindles, that when anyone speaks about altering the law he wants to do it in order to compass some end of his own. This time it is to be hoped they will take a colonial view. An experiment was tried with the Native Lands Administration Act, and on all hands it is acknowledged that the experiment lias been a failure. What the Government propose is to withdraw the experiment. Surely there can be no resistance to the stoppage of a futile experiment. We are glad to see that Mr. Ballance, who, with the very best intentions no doubt, launched the Administration Act, does not oppose the bills laid before the House by the Government, but merely wants to have some amendments inserted limiting the

area which may be acquired by one man. An amendment of the law is certainly wanted to suit the circumstances| in which we find ourselves. The law at present stands as a bar to theextension of settlement over a large area of country, on which we have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in the construe of a railway— in the construction of a railway, be it observed, for the accommodation of settlers whom our present laws prevent from establishing themselves in the country at all. Truly, ; New ; Zealand has done many mad things in its day, but nothing more deserving the name of downright lunacy than this. Then, if it be the case that we are likely to have some of the capital that has been flowing so plentifully into Australia, what more likely way that it should be invested than in the purchase and settlement of native lands It would be far better that it should be invested in this way than in town allotments, or in businesses in the cities. There are many men in Australia who, if they could procure moderate-sized farms, would come to the fertile soil and genial ciimate of New Zealand, and make here their homes. It will be a great misfortune if the Ministers allow the trouble and annoyance which are inseparable from all native Bills to frighten them in this matter, or to deter them from pushing these Bills through this session. There is nothing that this part of the colony wants so much; there is nothing that we know of that would do the colony as a whole so much good. The wilderness which now stretches alongside the railway line for some forty miles beyond Te Awamutu would soon be occupied, and this in itself would improve the prospects of the whole colony.