W.C. Reserves Administration.

Opunake Times, Volume III, Issue 116, 13 August 1895, Page 3

W.C. Reserves Administration.

f The following letter has been received from the Public Trustee by the Chairman of the Town Board with reference to the West Coast Settlement Reserves Administration Public Trust Office, Wellington, 30th July, 181)5. Mr George W. Rogers, Chairman Opunake Town Board. Sir, —It wou’d appear from your letter of the 10th, in which you continue, at the desire of your Board, the correspondence respecting my administration of this private estate, that the Board has not yet formed a correct notion either of the rights of the property or of my obligations as the trustee. The Board could not otherwise still contend that my administration of the estate in question should be regulated by such a consideration of thb interests of the lessees of the land, that they may derive some benefit equally with the beneficialies, and could not assume that I would be justified in making towards the relief of the settlers, and even towards the promotion of their speculative projects, contributions from the estate. I should hardly suppose that you yourself would willingly become a party to placing in the Public Trust Office the estate of a friend for which you might desire an administration in the interests of the beneficiaries, if the Public Trustee should be at liberty to apply the funds to subscriptions for wharves cr for dairy factories, or be required to see that his administration might afford some benefit to tenants “ equally with the beneficiaries.” The question for the settlers is whether their projects will benefit themselves, and for the Public Trustee, how he. can consistently with the law best secure the interests of his trust at the smallest expense, which in those inhe is authorised to incur. I should be relieved if your assurances that the desire of the individual members of the Board “ that the lands should be revenue producing,” and that “ the land? should be occupied by prosperous settlers, and that the Board fails to see any obstacle in the con-

summation of this subject,” were proved by some more satisfactory evidence than your letter contains, to

have been given in the real interests of the trust. It is impossible, however, to avoid a fear that the interests of the settlers will be uppermost, when the Board seriously argues that the lands which are leased by the Trustee on the condition or leasing contract, that no provision or no more than a certain provision shall be made for roads, ought, after being thus leased, to make towards the expenditure on the roads contributions not in

the leasing contract. This contention, indeed, is alone sufficient to prove the Board to be incapable of a just conception either of the just and lawful rights of the beneficiaries or of the obligations of the Trustee.

I have no doubt that a good result will flow from this correspondence, and that a correct apprehension by the Board of the rights of property and of the duties of a trustee will be profitable to the beneficiaries of the estate. I cannot, however, help a feeling that the Board, in pressing its suggestions for the administration of none but the properly in question, has been influenced by some consideration that the property belongs to natives, and Las not taken properly into account the care with which this office must preserve the existing public confidence that the estates are administered by the office in the interests of the beneficiaries. Mr Lysaght, for instance, whose family occupies a large tract of land in the Mokoia Block, near Hawera, would, if owning the. fee-simple of that property—the most charming, indeed, in a district remarkable even in New Zealand for its fine climate and for its great natural beauty and fertility—hardly be disposed to appoint the Public Trustee to be his trustee or executor, if (here should be occasion to fear that the Public Trustee could be led, in the administration

of that property, to adopt any such proposal of a local body to act in the interests of the settlement as your Board would make for the administra-

tion of the private property of the /natives. This illustration is all the more appropriate that the land must be the envy of the farmers, and would suffice for the homes of from 25 to 30 settlers, and that a surrender of the leases could be accepted "in the interests of the settlement without any detriment to the trust, notwithstanding Mr Lysaght’s complaint that my estimate is excessive of the value of the land. The view which the Board takes of the obligations of the Public Trustee as the administrator of an estate, that he should give equal consideration to the interests of the tenants would appear to imply that he should treat the estate as a sort of common property for the benefit, not of the owners, but of the people of the district generally in which the property is situated. If this is a “ broad view ” I should, speaking for myself, do what probably Mr Lysaght would do, arrange for an executor who would take a “narrow view ” of the obligations ot a trustee. And here I would like to diverge for a moment to express the great regret with which I learn that this gentleman should have just expressed himself in sympathy with a league formed with the object of a wholesale resumption on the terms of the league, and no doubt in the interests of settlement of the private estate in land of one race of the inhabitants of the country. The views of Mr Lysaght and the league may bo “ broad views ’’ in the eyes of many of the persons who, living in the district of the native lands, are casting longing eyes at those lands, bpt such views could hardly commend themselves to anyone who would accord to the native people the .right to an administration of the’.'

property as strictly in their own interest as if they W'ere not natives. Such proposals might be excused from a writer like Mr Elwin, who belongs to a small band of disappointed applicants for new leases, and whose recent contributions to the Taranaki Herald indicate by their publication in that newspaper that the passion for the acquisition of native lauds is still strong enough to render a section of the people there tolerant of any misrepresentations made for the purpose of acquisition proposals of the worst character. But I should have thought it as unlikely to find Mr Lysaght with that section as to learn that the Opunake Town Board would appiove of the proposals of the league. The administration of the “West Coast Settlement Reserves Act, 1892 ” has proved to the Natives that their greatest material benefit can be most effectually secured by the management of their property in their own interests, and has won respect for the law. But the native mind has hardly been brought into this condition and the two races into an attitude of mutual confidence, than a design is formed with the object, it might almost appear, of the wholesale confiscation of the private property in land of the now \Veak and peaceful aboriginal race. Such a design must be regarded not only as indefensible on moral grounds, but as unjustifiable in the interests of the Colony itself or the future settlement of the Native lands generally ; for it is my sincere conviction that a respect for "the just rights of the Natives, and their confidence that these rights will continue to be respected ; would be of incalculably greater benefit to profitable settlement in the best interests of the Colony than any course which could commend itself to the League which it has been the misfortune of Mr Lysaght to address. I shall here state plainly enough to leave no further doubt upon the matter, what I thought had already been placed beyond question, that “ the settlement of unoccupied lands ” does not come “ under my consideration,” and that though “ prosperous settlement ” may be beneficial to the trust I can only regard such settlement as one of the accidents of an administration of the properly in the interests of the beneficiaries. The duty of the Trustee is to promote, not settlement, but the interests of the beneficiaries, and though settlement generally, may in some measure be the consequence of a successful administration, the interests of settlement may, as I have made clear in a former letter, be adverse to the interests of the trust. I do not think “ too little ” of the interest of the lessees, but 1 do not contribute more to those interests than I am bound to contribute. That the Board should “ not consider an expenditure on roads so speculative ” as myself is a proposition on which the whole'tenor of the correspondence with the Board shows that it could not but insist. Tho Board desires an expenditure on the roads of the district, and, having no responsibility in the expenditure of the Trustee, would care very little for the consequence to him of the desired outlay. If for the purpose of an income to meet its local expenditure, and should lease that land on the condition of a certain provision for roads, the Board would hardly sacrifice that income to contributions in excess of such provision, and would then, in its own interests, see the absurdity of the contention that in the “ broad view ” of the obligations of a trustee “ the trustee to contribute nothing ” or that *' it would only he fair to to the beneficiaries to contribute towards this work out of the rents derived ” in a case where the lands are leased on the condition that no such contribution would be made. The satisfaction of the Board with the work which I have authorised of making a twelve foot track on the Kina Road, is only gratifying to mebecans’e the work was not done at the suggestion of the Board or other body interested in the progress of the settlement. Had the suggestion come from the Board, it would, from the natural tendency of the views of that body, have been dangerous for the Public Trustee to adopt without more than ordinary circumspection. It would have been necessary for me to be satisfied that no other course should be adopted with equal or greater benefit to the trust. And your letters would show that it was especially incumbent on me to act with such precaution. "What has been done to open the Kina Road will only be an example for imitation where all the circumstances are found to be the same. As to the Wiremu Road, it was not my intention to carry out at the expense of the Trust any work on that road ; and I cannot afford to the tenderers for the land the convenience which the Board “ considers it but fair ” of tendering “ just prior to the felling season,” unless by doing so I can secure tenders to pay so much more rent as would compensate or more than compensate for the delay. The Lessees understand clearly the conditions on which they take the land and tender accordingly, and they must know that they would have no claim to anything from the trust but a compliance with those conditions. If a mere track is to be cut, the upset rent is low ; if an expensive road is to be made, the upset rent must be increased to pay for the increased expenditure. That the Board should be unable to comprehend that the increased provision for roads would entitle the Trustee to expect an increased rental, or, which is the same thing, that the expenditure on the roads must affect the rent, must seem increditahle to those who arc not aware of the extent to which the interests of a body may influence its judgment. When land to ho improved is leased, the vent, all things being equal, is more, when tho lessees is, at the end of the term, to bo entitled to the improvements, than when the lessee is not to be so entitled. When the improvements go to the lessee they go as the compensation for a low rent.

But it too often happens iu the Na ive Districts, that lessees of land there are not ashamed to contend against the contract right of the lessor to the improvements, when the land belongs to Natives ; and too often it may he added that the Native owners should at the same time contribute in aid of those improvements. I cannot but think it fortunate for the beneficiaries that the law does not allow or require the Trustee to so deal wiih the income of the estate as to apply a portion of that income to a relief of the tenants, from the expense of roads to which the Trustee does not not make such relief a condition of their tenancy ; and that the responsibility of the administration should lie entirely with the Trustee. The Board, indeed, could not have offered more striking evidence than is offered in every line of your letter, that local bodies constituted in the interests of settlement would be unfit to administer or to even advise in the administration of a property whose interests might be in conflict with, or in danger of being sacrificed to, those of settlement. While you admit that the beneficiaries would be affected,, you state that you do not think that they would be affected to any “ appreciable extent,” ns if an assertion in these indefinite terms must be conclusive. Then it would appear to be assumed by the Board as admitted that lands most accessible and of the best qualitj must, in the interests of the beneficiaries, be offered to the public. In my judgment, however, these lands must be reserved for the tenancy of the beneficiaries, and it is accordingly not my intention to offer them for settlement until 1 am satisfied that the benefit of a direct pecuniary income from rent can be secured without encroaching upon the more important benefit which requires the reservation of the land as a provision for the houses and residences of the life tenants of the estate—the people whose ancestors originally occupied the whole territory, of which the settlement, at the expense of the property left to those people, is the object of the Board in this correspondence.

I cannot conclude, however, without an expression of the hope which I still indulge, that this correspondence may be of benefit to the administration; though it may be but natural for the Board to submit for the purpose of such administration proposals which I should be slow to admit.—l am, sir, your obedient servant, J. K. Warbuton, Public Trustee.