MAORI DOGS AND MAORI LAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9322, 27 March 1889, Page 6

MAORI DOGS AND MAORI LAND.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—Accept my hearty thanks for so promptly inserting my letter on " Maori dogs "in your issue of the 19th instant. Kindly grant me yefc further space to mention three matters that have come to my knowledge since writing you. No. 1: A settler within a few miles of me lost last year every sheep he had, from Maori dogs ; No. 2 : Another settler had 50 lambs killed ; No. 3 : Last week a collector of the dog tax called at a native settlement j one Maori acknowledged ownership of two dogs, but refused to pay, and defied the collector ; another native also acknowledged ownership, and refused to pay, but said collector could shoot the dogs. I understand both these gentlemen will interview the R.M. at the special request of the collector. In the face of such losses as I have mentioned, which could be multiplied a thousandfold did time permit, there must be only one answer to the request of the native to be free from the dog tax, and that answer must be No. I see that at the great meeting to be held at Orakei, a resolution is to be proposed that (a) a certain acreage should bo granted to every Maori-man, woman, and child, and (b) that such allotments shall be selected by themselves. Excepting that I see no reason why all the wives and all the children of every Maori should have a separate land grant, I see no great objection to the first part of this resolution, if acted on in moderation ; and if, eventually, this is granted them, let them nob forget that they will then receive a better security of tenure than they'ever had before, for although in the earliest days every native was supposed to have a communal right to any land occupied by his tribe, yet we know he was very liable to the loss of it, first, from conquest, and then later on a chief often sold a large portion of such land and pocketed the proceeds. With regard to the second part of the resolution— the selection of the land by themselves,—if this were agreed to, then almost every man would want his section to have a large water frontage to a river or creek. I know of a Maori-sslected section, containing less than 150 acres, that swallows up a water frontage of considerably over a mile. Is this fair to the European settler who occupies the land at the back ? As to the cry of the Waikato natives that they have no land, whilst this is doubtless true of some of them, there are, on the other hand, certain tribes and families who, although they own enormous blocks of land, either do nothing at all with it, or lease it to Europeans. Let me mention three Crown-granted blocks in the Waikato district only. No. 1 is a block of over 90,000 acres, leased at £600 per annum ; No. 2 contains 45,000 acres, on which, I believe, there is only one man who has made any permanent improvements ; and No. 3 contains over 3000 acres, on which, I am told, there is not 20 acres of cultivation, equalling about one acre per man, and as I have read that the average cultivation of land per head per native is only half-an-acre, I presume these cultivators of a whole acre each consider themselves most industrious. Anyone with the knowledge of the facts before him must know that as far as the Waikatos are concerned, there has already been given them in the aggregate more land than they can possibly cultivate, and this irrespective of the 60,000 acres in the so-called King country now a waiting the acceptance of Tawhiao. Let no one reading this letter say that it is written by a man who has no good feeling for the natives. None would rejoice more than myself to see them more prosperous and more free from the semi-starvation they often suffer at the present time; but they appear to refuse to recognise the fact that if they are to do well they must work as the Europeans do, and not depend for a miserable existence on eels and potatoes, or on the money received from land which they themselves are too idle to cultivate. Surely the time has come when all dual laws should be done away with, and when we should wipe out of the Statute Book of the colony all enactments specially relating to the natives. Would not two short clauses (that could be introduced into the ordinary Acts) do all that is necessary ? The first should recognise and regulate the manner of dealing with all land not yet Crown-granted and subdivided, allowing a reasonable time for such to bo done; and the second should make inalienable a certain area of land for every head of a family, whether such head be a man or woman, then we should be one people, under one Queen and one law.—l am, &c., Waikato Settler.