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Observer, Volume 2, Issue 36, 21 May 1881, Page 388

With the Legislation on native land so far as as it affects the Maori, we have yet now to deal. It is a question greatly inferior in importance to the way in which its descent to future generations may affect the Europeans settled in the Colony and their children after them. The lesson cannot be too often impressed upon people that the riches of a nation, like the riches of a man, consist not "in the nmltidude of that Avhich he hath." It consists rather in the degree to which they minister to the comfort and independence of the whole people. Imports may increase and exports may swell year by year. They are only unmeaning figures if they are not accompanied by a distribution of wealth proportionate to that increase. If it be confined to the few and the mass be hopelessly pauperised uelow them, the nation may be wealthy but it cannot contain a happy nor an independent people. All other kinds of property than landed property vanish and decay. They require perpetual renewal and belong to the generation that produces them and with each generation they change hands continually. Thus the possessors never become a privileged nor a dangerous class. Not so with the possessors of land. Allow the laws to be so made or so administered as to secure the unbroken transmission of landed property and there follows necessarily a privileged and a ruling caste, united by a common purpose and sure in the end to prevail — sure to raise themselves, and to lower the rest r.f those who are dependent on the land for a living. Then comes the demon of family pride — the desire to build up a family that, rightly or wrongly, deservedly or undeservedly, shall rule over its fellow men. Enormous sacrifices are made to this feeling when it is once allowed to gain a footing in a nation. Land is held with an iron grasp and is