The Otago Witness WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE 'SOUTHERN MERCURY.' DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, MARCH 30.

Otago Witness, Issue 1374, 30 March 1878, Page 14

The Otago Witness WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE 'SOUTHERN MERCURY.' DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, MARCH 30.

Our readers who obtained, through the recent State Trial at Dunedin, a glimpse into the class of land transactions in one Northern Province which have made the late Government and its partisans infamous, will feel an interest in learning of the doings in another Province in which the proceedings of the land rings have made the name of Hawke's Bay a blur on the history of colonisatiori in New Zealand. A late issue of the Daily Times contained a letter from a correspondent at Napier, which throws some light on the dark ways of political and administrative chicanery which have succeeded — if the operations are not arrested — in reducing the once wealthy natives of that district to beggary, and creating a class of enormously wealthy men there whose career seems to give an emphatic lie to the apothegm that " Honesty is the best policy." These proceedings have long been well enough known to those who took sufficient interest in the relations of the races, to enquire into circumstances that have been a standing menace to public peace, but the charges laid against the names of men high in power and in influence over their fellow men, were too astounding for general belief while the difficulties invariably thrown in the way of inquiry, the power possessed for repressing such inquiry, or, worse still, for having it so biassed as to elude the search after truth, and, not leas, the peril to name and fame and even pecuniary interests which impended over the head of any man daring to move in the matter, have heretofore been sufficient to repel every effort made to get at the bottom of these things. Our readers who have seen the successful efforts recently made here by legal technicalities to prevent enquiry into administrative abuses in the Auckland Province, where that attempt was made before a Dunedin jury and in the open day of a Dunedin Court, can perhaps form an idea of the greater difficulties interposed in a Province like Hawke's Bay, where even juries were corrupt, where it would have been simple ruin to a juror had he dared to exhibit in his verdict the slightest sympathy with native rights as against the highhanded action of the ruling powers, and where even a Judge was removed from the District Court, as is now pretty well known, solely because his conscience was too sensitive to allow him to be made a tool in the perpetration of wrong. And forming some idea thus of those difficulties, one can no longer be surprised that from no part of all New Zealand has there been exhibited bo bitter and implacable hostility to the accession of Sir George Grey and party to power, as from Hawke's Bay, or rather from that section of its social life which has been represented so accurately by its members of the General Assembly. That infamous ascendancy of a ring which alone made such iniquities possible was, as shown by the correspondent, being steadily and surely undermined at the centre itself during the course of the past few years, but it required the striking down of. the Government at Wellington which fostered this ascendancy to enable the friends of justice to grapple on equal terms with gigantic abuses, the story of which during the next year or two will we have reason to believe be of a very interesting if not a thrilling kind.

With respeot to the proceedings of the Auckland rings, a little glimpse

into which we had during the past few weeks, we learn that the efforts to burke enquiry have been only temporarily successful, for writs are to be forthwith issued against the parties concerned, which will bring up for review in the law courts the cases incidentally referred to in the late trial, one after another, and in such a way that "demurrei" will no longer be omnipotent in choking off the pursuer ; while, with reference to the far more gross and scandalous transactions of Hawke's Bay, the accession to power of an honest Government gives hope of fair play to those who have set themselves systematically to work to investigate the validity of every title obtained from the natives, and overthrow every holding that is based on fraud. A vulgar proverb save, "It is a long lane that has no turning," and clearly the outraged natives of Hawke's Bay have at last reached that turning in their wretched history for which they so long and so earnestly yearned. The single incident narrated by our correspondent respecting one large holder of land having voluntarily paid nearly twenty thousand pounds to complete a title which he found could not stand the test of the legal proceedings threatened is illustrative of a class. Unfortunately there are a considerable number of honest men who, like the gentleman referred to, bought their lands at second hand in all good conscience, believing that the title had been honestly come by. Their case is a hard one, but even they must be regarded as to some extent culpable, and as such deserving some amount of loss for not having been more cautious in dealing with men of the notorious character of the Hawke's Bay Land Rings. But fortunately a large proportion of the dishonestly acquired lands in enormous holdings is still in the hands of the ori» ginal fraudulent purchasers, and for these persons it is evident there are lively times in store.

No person who has been an impartial observer of the recent progress of political events can have failed to see the insidious means that have been used to foster a suspicion regarding the objects of the Liberal party now in power. It has been industriously circulated that those objects are the development of class prejudices, and the exciting of a feeling against the possessors of wealth. If such were the objects contemplated, nothing could hi more to be deprecated, nothing more detvi mental to the progress and future greatness of the country. There is not among the humblest colonists any man who has not an interest in giving security to realised wealth, and to the enjoyment of all that influence which wealth brings to its possessor. Under our free institutions every man has the. right to look forward to the acquisition not only of competence but of those elegances and luxuries of life which money buys ; and the man would be dealing a fatal blow to the greatness of the country who would seek to create prejudice againsb either wealth per se or its possessors. But 'this 'is a wholly different thing from waging war against a system which, has tended to give special facilities to those devoting themselves to the acquisition of large lauded estates by unholy means, by using their political influences to shelter them in the plundering of defenceless native*, and by bartering their support of party for facilities in carrying out nefarious practices to their own aggrandisement, and to the manifesb injury of the whole of the rest of the community. Thus it has been in the very fullest sense in the history of the Hawke's Bay Land Rings. Preserving the closest relations with the Central Government at Wellington, these men have moreover held in their hands the controlling influence in the administration of the public affairs of that Province, and the result has been only what might have been anticipated. Dealing with an inferior race, cunning enough in many things, but unrestrained by the provident forethought that guides civilised men in their commercial transactions, they deliberately spread their nets, to catch the unwary. By fostering a spirit of barbaric extravagance, by furnishing the pabulum for such indulgence, entangling their victims in the meshes of mortgages, while these victims were blinded by drink and unaware of the nature and consequences of their designs, they managed to secure sufficient excuse for invoking the aid of the civil machinery of the State to give validity to their nefarious transactions ; while the extent to which unscrupulous practices would have gone is illustrated in the fact of proposals having been actually made to give the sanction of law to their robberies by a " Quieting of Titles " Bill,

which would legalise the titles already acquired by whatever means.

The pleasant dream of the Hawke's Bay Land Ring is now happily dissipated, and under the new order of things security has given place to fear and trembling ; and the "Repudiation Office," as it was opprobriously termed, has become a real power, under the shelter of which wronged and plundered natives have been enabled to tell the story of their wrongs, and seek in the Courts of the Colony that redress which was intended to be open to every subject of our gracious Queen. Not a moment too soon has this happy change been effected. The circumstances which originated the Waitara war, and spread devastation over the finest native districts of the North Island, have been repeated over and over again in the transactions of the land rings of Hawke's Bay ; and though the unhappy natives of that Province were too much crushed to entertain any hope of avenging their wrongs by force of arms, there is no doubt that the memory of those wrongs would have been handed down from father to son, and been for generations the grounds of rankling hatred, and distrust between the two races. There is not another district in all New Zealand where more interesting questions, or questions more intimately affecting the boasted honesty of our institutions and the fair fame of New Zealand colonization, are to be solved ; and we hold that there is not an honest man in the Colony, whatever his rank or class, but should bid God speed to the crusade of the so-called " Repudiation Office " of Hawke's Bay.