NATIVE LANDS AND BRITISH RIGHTS.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVII, Issue 1764, 9 September 1862, Page 2

NATIVE LANDS AND BRITISH RIGHTS.

Mb. Editor. — The recent disscusion on the Native Lands Bill, has elicited such a torrent of eloquence, such a mass of useless verbiage, and such a general mystification of the real principles on which such an important disscussion should be founded, that the people of this colony, who, after all are most vitally interested in its decision, are thus thrown into a perfect maze of perplexity and conjecture, as to what conclusion they are to arrive at on the real merits of the case at issue. ' This measure proposes to reverse the policy of the last twenty years, to render null and void the Treaty of Waitangi, and to recognise fully aud en tirely 'tie right of the Natives to deal with upwards of twenty-nine millions of acres of land in this Island as their supreme will and pleasure may dictate. The right of pre-emptiun, the sole and last legal claim which Her Majesty the Queen of England has held over native territories (should this measure become law) will be set at nought, colonial interests and financial considerations will be alike disregarded, aud the Maori Race as specimens of "Nature's Nobility," will become the true lords of the soil, i Such is the gist of the Bill introduced by Mr. Dillon Bell, that man of many ministries wbo has contrived not only to utter an harangue of whioh your report extends to six columns, but with greater fortune still to pass his bantling through the rocks and shoals of a Committee, and the perils of its third reading. Fortunately, however, there are other ordeals yet to be undergone before it can become law, and meantime while they are being sustained, it may not be out of place to comment briefly upon the principles that are involved in such a species ol legislation, to touch on the facts of the past as bearing on the future aud to trace the measure as a whole to its ultimate and legitimate results. Tbe first principle then wbich it is proposed to establish is to recognise the legal right ahd title of the Natives to all unreclaimed lands, on which the so calle 1 Native Title has not been extinguished, and that therefore shall have precedence in the present consideration. Let us clear this question from all the mass of pseudo philanthrophy and Exeter Hall cant with it has been enveloped, aud definitely ascertain what this alleged Native right actually is. Is it asserted that a savage race occupying an almost inappreciable portion of a vast and fertile region, carrying on merely such an amount of cultivation, as will suffice to support the bare wants of existence, and leaving the rest of the almost boundless domain to the operations * f Nature, shall be accounted its true and legal occupants, and hold aright of property against the pioneers of civilisation ? Absurd as it may appear, this is the principle already affiirrned by the united wisdom of our representatives, and we will now examine how such is borne out by the law of natious, and by the past history of colonization* An eminent continental writer on the subject has propounded the theory, " that in au unreclaimed country in which there are uone but erratic natives, incapable of occupying the whcle, they cannot be allowed exclusively to appropriate to themselves more land than they have occasion for or more than they are able to settle and cultivate. Their unsettled habitation in those immense regions cannot be accounted a true antl legal possession, and the people of Europe too closely pent up at home are lawfully entitled to take possession of the waste and settle it with colonies." Such is the theory held by grave and learned jurists, and the settlement of the Anglo-Saxon race, during more than a century past in the colonies of America and Australia, have in the main furnished its illustration in practice. Our fore-fathers held ihe sensible opinion, that, the enterprising colouist, who, with all the pains of patient and indefatigable labour, changed a dreary waste to a blooming field smiling in plenty had fairly acquired a right of property as the fruit of his toil. Not very long ago the first band of the myriads who have now founded a new empire in the neighbouring Austialian Continent commenced their career in the same way and by the immutable operation of those supreme laws, which show that a civilized race will displace a tribes of savages, became the possessors of the country. We, however, seem to have fallen on other and wiser days, where all the wisdom to be gained from past experience is disregarded, and where the interests of the British colonist are to give away to those of the Naw Zealand Maori. I One is at a loss to imagine wbat argument can be adduced in support of such a proposition, unless it be that of expediency. If this is the case, then let our legislators honestly say so, and not cortend for what so utterly outrages the principles of all past action, Imperial and Co. loni.il. The Treaty of Waitangi, on which so much stress has been laid, as acknowledging the Native title, viewed in the light of after events, is but a sorry argument at best. That Treaty provided that the natives should have full possession of their lands, so loug as it should be their desire to retain them, on condition of the exclusive right of pre-emption and sovereignty being ceded to her Majesty; but it was certainly never intended by the Imperial Government that such a concession involved a sacrifice ef our claim to the whole waste and unoccupied lands of the Colony. The lands referred to were merely those in actual cultivation and occupation by the natives, and although the local authorities seem to have recklessly adopted the wider interpretation, yet, the resolutions of the Committee of the Hotise of Commons, passed in 1844, fairly decided the question otherwise. The terms of one of

these resolutions, wbich runs as follow?, are unmistakable on that point : — " That the acknowledgement by the loc il authorities of a right of pioperty on the part of the natives of New Zealand, in all wild land in these Islands after the sovereignty had been assumed hy Her Majesty, was not essential tv the true construction of the Treaty of Wailaugi, and was an error which had been productive of very injurious consequencesJ' Such was the interpretation by the Imperial Parliament, and although the anthorites in the Colony it appeared afterwards entertained the pretentions of the natives, in support of the other view, yet the fact remains that the previous legislation was founded ou the theory we have already quoted. , It is very probable that this measure, besides being founded on a radically bad principle, is the result of an entire misconception of the power of the Colonial Executive to initiate legislation on the subject at all. The 73rd clause of the Constitution Act, provides " That it shall not be lawful for any other person than Her Majesty, her Heirs and successors, or the Governor of New Zealand, or Superintendent of a Province by instruction, under the Royal signet and sign tnanuel, to purchase Land from thejAboriginal Natives, or to accept any release or extinguishment of the rights of such natives in such land." Until the effect of tbat clause is. removed by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, it would appear to be a shere waste of time to proceed with such a probably futile measure. On another occasion I may comment more minutely on its details; for the present, it is sufficient. to hare shown, that itis based on a principle of fraud towards the Colonists, that it is but a specimen of a miserable policy of expediency, and that the grand flourish of trumpets about the indefeasible rights of the aborigines, are simply specimens of bunkum oratory. The introduction of such legislation is virtually an acknowledgement tbat we cannot deal with the question in any other way, than by admitting a right to which the natives have not, and never Lad the shaddow of a claim, either moral or legal. If that be so, then let us have done witb all the cant about "civil rights and equal laws ;" it would have been honester to have admitted tbe truth, and our own weakness at once ; but alas, political honesty in those degenerate days is a scarce commodity, and if tbe Cynic Diogenes were once more here with his lantern and his tub, he would hardly find the object of hia search in the person of our present Native Minister. Democbitcts.