The Observer. AND FREE LANCE. "Let there be Light." Saturday, August 8, 1885.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 348, 8 August 1885, Page 8

The Observer. AND FREE LANCE. " Let there be Light." Saturday, August 8, 1885.

Native Lands legislation has always been a difficult problem in New Zealand. The difficulty was probably inseparable from the circumstances of the Colony when Europeans came here, yet it is pretty certain that the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi served rather to complicate matters. By these we became bound to protect the natives in all their landed rights without at all defining what these rights might be. We had gradually to discover that they were complex and puzzling to a degree. The rights of owners amongst the natives were of various kinds. Not only the individual who possessed a hut, or a kumara patch of his own rearing, had rights, but his hapu had other rights, and some one or more old chiefs had rights of mana or lordship over the land besides. So long as the Government bought, and the great wish of the natives was to sell, this was no serious obstacle, but when the chiefs began to see their power diminishing, and their people gradually falling back before the Europeans' advance, trouble at once arose. The war at Taranaki in ISGO, and the more general war of 1863, were the results of these things, and they led to the first regular attempt to deal in a reasonable way with the difficulty. Since 1865 we have made a succession of attempts to simplify j the question, and so to get rid of the difficulty. A Native Lands Court has been established, and with various modifications the attempt to individualise native titles has gone on ever since. By means of this I^Court much has been done, and as is ! usually the case, with mixed results. A great deal of native land was individualised, and large areas were bought by Europeans. This was complained of on the one hand because it led to great competition between capitalists for the land, and consequently induced many objectionable practices with a view to getting it. On the other, it was objected to because, while the natives sold

the land cheaply enough, the mass of the Europeans had no chance of buying it direct, and had to submit to pay greatly advanced prices to the original buyers. It was also said that practically the,.native owners were cheated ; that they received drink and little else in return for the lands alienated ; and that while, the process degraded them, it would in a very short time pauperise them.

The present Native Minister has proposed a plan which, in his opinion, is to rectify all these evils. So far, there is little appearance of his getting many people to agree with him. There are two main points which, mast be embraced in any satisfactory scheme for this purpose — it must fairly fulfil our pledge to the natives made at Waitangi forty-three years ago ; and it must fairly provide for the settlement of the country now. The radical objection to Mr Ballance's scheme would seem to be that it does neither one nor other of these things. So far as our pledges to the natives go, they involve the necessity of protecting them in the full enjoyment of their rights to the land. What these rights exactly were it would be hard to determine. As to much of the country, they had probably none at all that would bear investigation. But admitting that they had rights, they must be practically treated as individual rights. For the last twenty years we have preached this doctrine to the Maoris, and we can hardly change our tactics now. "We have said much about treating them as ourselves, with equal privileges and liabilities, and this involves individual and not tribal rights. To withdraw from them the power to sell their lands to Europeans is to withhold these rights. To say that native committees shall have an over -ruling voice in the matter is deliberately to return to the old tribal tenure which we have always hold was the ideal of a barbarous state of society. It is certain that if the scheme becomes law it will be regarded as an injury by very many natives — and, so far as the withdrawal from a people of recognised rights which they have enjoyed constitutes an injury, they will be justified in their opinion. It is no answer to say it is good for them. All injustice can be excused on the same grounds. It might be good for many Europeans to be deprived of much of the freedom of action which they now possess, but it would be tyrannical for their neighbours to deprive them of it. And it is the same with the Maoris. If the Native Minister thinks they can be treated as children he is grievously wrong. JN"o such treatment is possible any more than it is wise, and the native dissatisfaction of which Mr Eallance has so much to say under the present system would be enormously increased under that proposed. Bad as the proposals are, however, from a native point of view, they are worse from that of the Europeans. If carried into effect they would lead to two things, both of which would be evil : They would render the need of intrigue and the field for its exercise greater than ever before. Lands could not be bought, indeed, but they could be leased, and out of leases money might be made. So long as this is the case there will be intrigue. Every native district committee will become a centre of intrigue, a recij)ient of bribes, and the victim as well as the agent of corruption. Such a state of things must be bad for both parties. But this is not the whole. The Bill, by discouraging the sale of native lands, must necessarily lock up the country. European speculators may, and no doubt will, scheme and bribe to obtain leaseholds in the hope of profit, but European settlers will not settle on these lands and cultivate them. The wealth locked up in the vast area of lands still in native hands will remain there, unless in such a case as a gold discovery adding a special temporary value to the land. As the race decreases in numbers the absurdity of the position will become more apparent, but it may not then be possible to rectify the error. What is wanted is a little less doctrinaire meddling with the matter, and a good deal more plain common sense. We cannot by law prevent bribery and corruption, when people want to be bribed and corrupted ; we cannot by law make a semi-savage race prudent and temperate, when temptation to the opposite course presents itself ; nor can we by enactments prevent these temptations from arising. We may hedge in civilisation for a time by an artificial zone of barbarism, and imagine we are philanthropists. We shall by so doing injure the Colony, indeed, but we shall in no degree benefit the Maoris. Our view is no doubt heretical, but yet we are not afraid to say that we should secure ample reserves for the natives, and let them sell their land. The sooner the surplus is sold the better for all parties. The natives will then, and not tiil then, be free from temptations fatal to them in every way. The Europeans will then,

and not till then, be able to deal advantageously with the country. That full prices will not be obtained for the land in all cases will be true, but any attempts by Government to ensure that prices are fair and ample will, and must, always prove a failure. In matter of this kind sentituent must give way to reason ; and the fatal defect of Mr Ballance's proposal is that throughout sentiment is everything, and reason nothing.