Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 1879.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 665, 1 April 1879, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 1879.

The advocacy of a new system of colonial land tenures is becoming quite the order of the day in many of the centres of New Zealand. Perhaps out of all these, some method of improving the way in which land may be acquired will be hit upon. Let us hope so j for our land Jaws, with all their various complications, are so bewildering that it is difficult for even those who have read the various and conflicting Acts, with many amendments thereon, to understand how land may be acquired. It is also becoming the rage among g'u^m-politicians for framing new Constitutions for the Colonies. "We have received from the author, Mr. E. G. Fitzgibbon, the able Town Clerk of Melbourne, and a barrister by profession, a copy of a pamphlet entitled "What Next?" The object of the writer is to propound a new scheme for the reform of Colonial Constitutions. Unfortunately Mr. Fitzgibbon, has not learned to clothe his ideas in plain and simple English ; but the writer is evidently intensely in earnest, and gives what is intended to be forcible expression to his very strong convictions. Mr. Fitzgibbon's idea of a Constitution suitable for New Zealand and the Australian Colonies is, that it should "provide for the transaction of the business of the country. Hence, he deems it a mistake to graft the English form of Parliamentary Government upon Colonial Constitutions. With much that he says on this point, many thinkers will agree. Representatives of Victoria are, as in New Zealand, paid for the work of legislation, yet the aim of each of the different parties is to frustrate the efforts of the others, and time that should be devoted to the business of the country is taken up with, personal and party squabbles. To this indictment a plea of guilty must no doubt be returned ; but we

must confess we fail to see how Mr. Fitzgibbon's method would remove the evils complained of, though it might perhaps shift their ground. His plan is that there should be two Chambers, consisting of an equal number of members, say fifty each, in both cases the qualifications for electors and elected being the same. The two Chambers are to be called respectively the Executive Council and the Legislative Council, their names indicating the character of the duties devolving upon them. The Executive Council is to be elected for six years, half of the members retiring every three years. From this body the Governor is annually to appoint Committees to direct the administration of each department of the State, so that each member may be on, at least, one Committee. It will be seen that that the Corporation plan of transacting business is followed, and the Committee would of course take the place of a Ministry. The decisions of the Committees are to be ratified by the Council and the Governor, and to the Council is to belong the right to initiate Money Bills. The second Chamber is to be elected for ten years, and half of the members are to retire every five years. Its functions are to be purely legislative ; but it is to. be a Court of Reference to decide any points of difference between the Governor and the Executive Council. It has also other duties which it is not necessary to specify. Both Chambers are to sit together as a Parliament quarterly, or as often as may be necessary. Bills certified by the Legislative Council are to be passed or rejected in the usual form, and it is also to be a Com*t to try impeachments for corruption brought against any member of either Chamber. Such, in brief, is the vaunted plan. Undoubtedly it has advantages over the existing system, but, on the other hand, we are afraid it offers no sure remedy against the evils now rampant. Even Corporations wrangle and are split up into parties. They waste time in personal recriminations instead of attending to the business of the city. Would not the Executive Council do the same 1 True, there would be no attempts to gain seats on the Treasury benches, since all the members would take part in the executive business. The non-frequency of elections for both Houses would certainly have many advantages, and the putting of all electors as well as of all the representatives on the same footing would no doubt do away with class distinctions as they now exist. But we fear the first would destroy or at least weaken the sense of responsibility on the part of the members, while as to the second we see no reason for supposing that it would do away with that system of cliqueism which is not unknown even in corporate bodies. In addition to this the immense power vested in the Governor of appointing the Committees and apportioning their duties would, we fear, lead to very unpleasant consequences. In short, Mr. Fitzgibbon's plan pre-supposes for its effective working a general desire on the part of all to secure the general good. If this feeling were universal it would matter very little under what form of Constitution we lived. On the other hand, in the absence of it the bestdevised Constitution must work imperfectly. Nevertheless Mi*. Fitzgibbon's pamphlet is not without value at the present juncture of affairs in New Zealand and in Victoria. The " no good " which has resulted from the efforts of the Bepudiation party, while it has ended in discomfiture, has been the means of inflicting incalculable mischief to the districts of Poverty Bay, as it has in Hawkes Bay. The leasing or disposal of land and estates, where Maori titles are concerned, is, at present, an impossibility, as was evidenced in the instance of the late public sales held in Gisborne. The Maori has been advised that what he has sold and received payment for, he can recover by process of law, and this has completely demoralised him. Of commercial morality the New Zealand aboriginals, with, perhaps, a few exceptions, have no idea ; and when a feeling is instilled into them that the technicalities of the law will free them from any bargain for sale of land they may have completed, they are only too ready to avail themselves of the opening. How it is that any journal can advocate repudiation, is to us one of those enigmas we confess we have been quite unable to solve. The repudiationists are, from first to last, men of straw. By and bye the Maori will have discovered that their intentions are the furthering of their personal interests, and that the natives are the tools used for this purpose. Perhaps, when too late, they will come to discover the delusions and the snares they have fallen into. It is, to a certain extent, satisfactory to know that the repudiation journals are few, and that if we have one such in our midst any influence|it might atone time have possessed is fast fading out of existence. Such advocacy must be ruinous to any journal beyond all hope of redemption. The Waimate difficulty has been explained and discussed by North Island journals from more than one point of view ; and the real facts have not always been stated. The statement made by the official organ of the Government is as follows: — "The Hon. Mr. Sheehan went to the native meeting at Parihaka. He demanded that Hiroki, the murderer, should be given up, which request was refused. He then proceeded to explain the course he was about to pursue respecting the Waimate Plains, and was engaged in doing so for about twentysix minutes, when Te Whiti, in violation of a promise which he had made before the Native Minister, began speaking, interrupted him, and made one of his most violent and fanatical utterances, characterising the action of the

Government as a theft, and accusing the Government of being the murderers of M'Lean, and not Hiroki. After the Hon. Mr. Shekhan had left Parihaka on that day a meeting was held, and Te Whiti decided that the surveyor should be turned off three times peaceably and that on the fourth occasion they were to do what Hiroki did. Accordingly a party went down on Monday and removed the survey camps to the other side of the river Waingongoro, where they are now. The motive for Te Whiti's action is perfectly plain. For the last seven or eight years he has deluded the people by the assertion of prophetic and even God-like powers. Each year at his annual meeting he stood pledged to do various wondrous miracles. This year he was to have raised the dead, to have restored all the confiscated land, and to have ascended into Heaven with Sir George Grey. None of these things came to pass, and his speech at the meeting on the 18th of March was one of the lowest and most hesitating that he has ever been known to deliver. As a consequence the people began to murmur, and numbers left Parihaka in disgust. To save himself he has thrown himself into the hands of a more violent party. So far as the Government are advised at present Titokowaru is not a consenting party to any violent measures.