The Patea Mail. Established 1875. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY I7, 1883. NATIVE LAND PURCH-ASES.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 985, 17 January 1883, Page 2

The Patea Mail. Established 1875. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17, 1883. NATIVE LAND PURCH-ASES.

If -ouv Government is lavish: in some respects,-, ,-it, is also:, parsimonious in ©there- 'lt has not always a sufficiency - of faith in remunerative investments. Thns for instance of late, the purchase of , Native r lands has been stopped, though: the statistics issued by the Government .. .clearly* sho\rihat>t;hese \ purchases fhave generally;paid well,-and though it isevi- - dent that the time must soon come when frbm the vapid increase of bur population " ’ we'shall need more land to settle on. "In fact ia glance at any map where the Native districts are marked out, will soon show any one .that the whole area of land in the .hands of Europeans, whether alienated or as Crown lands, is still dangerously small. Audit is not as if • ■ in purchasing, we should be defrauding the Native owners of one shilling .which is their due. They are themselves not merely willing, but even wishful to sell. JSxeter - Hall ;may think .differently, and bishops and peers whose philanthrophy is only equalled hy. their per- ' greed, of wealth may profess to know more about our affairs than we ourselves, but only very weak-minded people need be troubled about that. So . ..long as the sale of Native lands is ; entirely voluntary, ; and .made through the -Lands Court only, and in public, there cannot be much ; in it tbai is wrong, or even unfair. Of course there are some people who on senehr'*fd’’'“‘ I Maori lands being alienated, and, assert that this is only stepping-stone towards ‘rendering them penniless, and thus lm annihilating. a noble race, - We fail to senit. ;If ,they were such a very noble race, they .would either make use of the land by cnltivatiug it-. themselves, as owners, or else if they did not care about the .responsibilities of industrial ownership, they would be willing to work for those otherwise minded in order to earn their And, ; -supposing it admitted that the Maoris are a noble race, who is there among ns who believes r that they are a nobler race than the ' Britishers ? If it is a question which of the two must permanently settle the land, we profess'to a preference for our countrymen, provided they get the land fairly by free purchase in the open market. - And ■ experience proves that whether living ’ as landowners or as landless people, where the inferior race .conics into contact with a higher, the inferior, dies out. To fight against nature in. this matter is merely to be vainly beating the air. • • And then, too, if we may trust to recent appearances, it does not seem ns if either the Maori? or we had much choice in the matter. Provided the natives are willing to sell, it is a question practically whether the Government of this colony buys honestly and openly through the Native Uands Court, or whether gentlemen of the Sydney Taiwhanga stamp and others purchase surreptitiously in a close market, andintroduce a wholesale system of land sharking. Already the land companies formed propose to make purchases to the extent of all the nnalienated-Maori-lands, and most likely if they cannot get the land by- fair means they will by foul. - We all know the old adage, that - A ™runrnfion has neither a body to be

kicked not* a soul to be damned. Andlbaj'- will prove ..to betthe case in Maori land ; sharking as. in other . companies; Arid even' if the big; companies should by some fluke ' honestly buy the land, and--purchase long annuities for the existing with the proceeds, isany business man so utterly innocent as to suppose that a long annuity cannot be quite as easily, or even more easily sold outright than a Maori fieehold ? 'We" have”dieen "long enough-’ delivgecl- : with sentimental humbug on .the Maori land question. It is high time that we "should'discard'this and fall back on - our common-; aense.ct^tMri Bryce -has been justly praised all over the colony as a wise, just,; and ; energetic- administrator of Native affairs. It has been because he- has preferred; common . sense land common justice to eloquent twaddle ..and has acted on his .preference, ijV f J ;