THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1911. IDLE NATIVE LANDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14648, 6 April 1911, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1911. IDLE NATIVE LANDS.

It is much easier for Mr. Buddo to 1 justify in the South Island the extraordinary policy of the Government! in respect to' Native Lands than it would be for him to defend that I policy in "the King Country. Fori his constituents of Kaiapoi have to! accept second-hand statements upon I a question concerning which they know nothing, whereas the settlers of the King Country can see the evil effects of the " taihoa'' system on every hand, Mid suffer therefrom every day they live. While Mr. Buddo has been expatiating in the South, upon the alleged hollowness of our Northern complaints, the Tail! marunui Chamber of Commerce has been giving voice to the bitterness with which its members '". see golden opportunities sacrificed to the gross incompetence of the Administration. The Mayor of Taumarnnui pointed out at a recent meeting of the Chamber that "no less than three-quarters of a million acres of ITatrre Land are _ lying'-; unoccupied ; in' our ' ; immediate ■"-;- it ■ '-"■:,'■ ■' '■". ■-•:'"■" ' ;.'•■" ."■'■'-

I ,- ■ ■.■ . ... . .... ;.; ....- -.■...'■ . - ' ; ;. vicinity. Milling rights have, been granted over a certain amount of this, and the powerful milling companies have claims over large portions of country which grow no bush at all. Now, further slices of this great area are, it is said, constantly being handed over to the milling companies, and if this sort of thing goes on much longer there will be "little left available for settlement." Following up this charge in a letter to the Commissioner for Crown Lands, published in to-day's Herald, the Mayor of Taumarunui officially calls the attention of the Land Board to " the large quantity of waste land lying idle in the West Taupo County, adjoining our town and the North Island Main Trunk Railway. It is estimated' that there are threequarters of a million acres of this land' unsettled, and so far with not even a survey peg in. A great quantity is suitable for dairying and closer settlement purposes, and settlers taking up this land . would have the best of opportunities for getting oh; as they would have two city markets— Auckland and Wellington—open to them: they could send produce, such as eggs, butter, fruit, etc., into either city daily. We are aware that a great quantity of this land is Maori-owned, but we contend this is all the more reason that it should receive your Board's immediate attention, as private enterprise.is stepping in and acquiring from the Maori owners very' large areas in the way of private contract, which everybody knows is not in the best interests of the Dominion as a whole,, and detrimental to the best progress of the small townships in the vicinity." What has Mr. Buddo to say in reply to the Mayor of Taumarunui ? Will he come to the King Country and attempt to persuade the land-locked townships that they are under a strange optical delusion, and that the waste lands which stretch for so many miles alongside the Main Trunk line are really covered with the thriving homesteads and productive farms for which they are suitable? Mr. James Carroll, raised by party merit and force of circumstances, over which nobody appears to have any control, to the position of ActingPrime Minister of this tolerant Dominion, has just told the public that there are only about three million acres or so left to the Maori people, and that this is very little among so many. But the Maori draws Old Age Pension, and , participates in every, other advantage - of civilised life: what right,. then, have Maori leaders to aim at the creation of a landlord caste, buttressed by legislation, endowed with unwarranted privileges, and based upon the exclusion from waste .lands of small independent settlers ? -. As a matter of iactf the /area.v of the Native Lands is highly mysterious, but not more mysterious than- the various tricks and . expediencies by which Native Land is locked against agricultural settlement, while arrays of figures are manufactured for the soothing of ignorant constituencies. In every Northern back block district 'there"'are' vast'' 'areas-': of . locked-up land, as every local authority knows j to its cost. Mr. Buddo, typical administrator, claims that "if tne I present rate of settlement of these | lands is maintained, it will only be a few years before they will all be occupied." Apologists for the lock-ing-up policy always treat rapid settlement as an evil, and profess to I have a sensitive conscience for the land requirements of unborn generations. It is not difficult to understand : the policy of those who are ruining and demoralising the Maori race by attempting to preserve it against the necessity for using its strong hands in honest labour, and who, in pursuance of this policy, are holding back pakeha settlement until heavy rents can be extorted from land-hungry tenants instead of light royalties from great timber firms, and* light rents from wealthy graziers. But tine attitude of men like "Mr. Buddo is . less comprehensible. If every acre in New Zealand were settled to-morrow, land settlement proper would go on faster, than ever, for the constant improvement of the land," the constant-increase in transit facilities, the constant growth ■■-of the agricultural population, would automatically induce increasing subdivision, aud % lead to closer and closer settlement under the most advantageous,:';,,' ; conditions. ' Meanwhile, the national wealth and resources would be multiplied by the permanent prosperity of many thousands of farmers, annually producing where now are profitless wastes. Denmark, our great competitor in the London butter market, is one of i the oldest of settled lands. It con-! i i tributed its swarms of Jutes to the j j emigrating bands which over-ran \ Rome-abandoned Britain. .Hundreds I of years later its emigrants domin-; ated and held the wide-stretching j Danelagh" of Saxon England. Its emigrants have left their; mark in Iceland and in Greenland and shared with the Norse in the occupation of Normandy and the Sicilies. Nor is there an English-speaking land of modern times which does not know and respect the sturdy Danish breed. Mr. Buddo can hardly know that modern Denmark, after all these centuries, m promoting closer settlement in the old peninsula of the Jutes, that with State loans, cooperative dairies, co-operative companies of all kinds, she is keeping her sons at home by offering them peasant proprietaries. We are beaten in the London market, not by "great firms and hugo farms, bat by.the" yeoman holders of a dozer}!

Danish i acres, practising intense agriculture, combined for mutual assistance and sedulously encouraged by the ancient State they control To imagine that there will be ] no land for future settlement if we make the best possible present use of our locked-up acres is to be ignorant indeed of the possibilities of agriculture.