THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 1907. NATIVE LANDS COMMISSION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13391, 21 January 1907, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 1907. NATIVE LANDS COMMISSION.

Sir Joseph Ward was right when ho informed his audience at Dunedin that the Native Lands Commission was not an ordinary one. For a Royal Commission has usually some reasonable excuse for its appointment, while it must be evident to all who are interested in this matter that the only possible excuse for the proposed investigation is that the Native Department has quite neglected its simplest duties, and that the only additional reason is that it is not desired by the Government to hasten the satisfactory solution of the Native Lands

question. Much as we all respect the Chief Justice his appointment to the Commission does not alter the necessity for this criticism, for the relationship of our judges to the immediate settlement of the problem ought to have been confined to the assessment of the value of the lands taken by the Government from native owners or to the division of purchase moneys among the various claimants. We say "ought to have been" because there, is absolutely no reason why the departmental machinery, set energetically in motion, should not have solved this vexed problem, which is only vexed because the Government has sustained and supported the Native Department in its stubborn determination to yield to Pakeha ownership not another acre of nativeowned land. That is the plain truth. For the past fifteen years, first by direct, legislation of an amazing description, which denied to either the Government or private individual the right of purchase and which violated the treaty rights secured to the Maoris by the Treaty of Waitangi— supposing there were any treaty-rights left to violate—and then by wilful and deliberate hampering of the Governmental pur-chasing-power, reluctantly re-estab-lished, the Native Lands have been locked against the Pakeha. Mr. Carroll has repeatedly asserted, and other Ministers of the Crown have not been ashamed to applaud and to repeat, that the condition he aims at is to see rackrented Pakeha tenants paying rent for ever to a hereditary Maori landlordry, secured in its inalienable privileges by the law of the land Our Leasehold Party, with the dull-witted-ness and narrowness of judgment peculiar to faddists who apply fanciful theories to something of which they have no practical experience, actually appears to approve this prospect; for as long as the farmer pays rent it does not appear to matter to the Leasehold Party whom he pays it to. Mr. Carroll has also the tacit approval and support of the South, which is sectionally jealous of our Northern progress, and is inclined to favour anything and everything which may impede the exodus to Auckland. This determination of tho Native Minister, this support of the Government, this mania of the Leaseholders, and this jealousy of the .South, have combined to bring about the appointment of the Native Lands Commission as an alternative to vigorous and intelligent departmental action for the settlement of the Native Lauds question.

If a Native Lands Commission is necessary, under the instructions given it, then the Native Department is quite worthless and ought: to lie promptly dissolved. For the Commission is primarily to inquire "what areas of native land there are which tire unoccupied or not profitably ocupied, the owners thereof, and if in your opinion necessary the nature of such owners' titles. and interests affecting same '." If the Native Department cannot answer this question, what can it answer? If Mr. Carroll has not been systematically tabulating the number and conditions of the Maori people and the use made of the Maori land —as the other -State Departments do for the European part of the population we may fairly ask what he has been doing. And so with the rest, of the instructions. We ail know that the Maori question is extraordinarily complicated -when the Government chooses to allow it to be complicated— and thai the customs of the ancient race. particularly as they apply to land. have no finality. Hut it lias always to lie borne in mind that in the olden time the Maori puzzles existed comfortably because i hey could always be ended by the force majeure which then, as now and always, was the supreme law. A Government which was determined to reach a solution of the question would promptly take over all unoccupied land, after making the necessary reserves for landless natives, and would pay the value of Ihe preempted laud into a trust fund, from which just and equitable compensations would be made. I* would shift the endless contentions based on Maori custom from the land itself to the value of the land and would dispose of the land in the meanwhile as seemed to it best and with all the authority of public ownership. Or, if it did not wish to be thus burdened, it would allow the natives to sell land as they chose, as they did once and as they are secured in doing by the Treaty of Waitangi. Even if thereby they became "landless" that does not seem to be any reason why they should starve, for a Maori has as many arms to work with as a Pakeha. and it would do him a vast amount of good to have lo labour for his daily bread. Certainly, we should much prefer to see the Maori working for himself, instead of sitting idly on the fence watching his British tenants working for him. But the instructions of the Commission not only cover the collection of information which the Native Department ought it) have collated from year to year; they deal with ail surfs of vagaries which are merely matters of opinion or incitement to partisanship and have nothing practical to do with the question. For example, in the face of a Land Bill which Mr. McNab declares will settle the land conditions of the colony for till time and which provides for the future limitation of all holdings, the Commission is asked to suggest a safeguard against the aggregation of alienated Native Lands in Euiopean hands. There we have '.he most obvious of appeals to the Leaseholders to come to the assistance of the " Taihoa" policy, as though it mattered very much under what hold land was as long as it was cultivated and as though those who insist that agriculture can only be satisfactorily carried on by tin independent farmer are in favour of vast estates and rackrented tenantry. This last prejudice is only found in New' Zealand nmonagtlio.se who are responsible for the appointmenof the Native Lands Commission, whereby the settlement of the question has been postponed for at least two years.