MR TRAVERS AND THE MANAWATU DIFFICULTY.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3108, 27 January 1871, Page 2

MR TRAVERS AND THE MANAWATU DIFFICULTY.

* TO THB EDITOE OF THB INDEPENDENT. Sib, — Mr Travers has published some correspondence relative to the settlement of the Manawatu difficulty and claims credit for having paved the way to a peaceful and satisfactory solution of the question. In one of the letters thus published, which is written by Mv A. M'Donuld toMrTravors,tb.e following remarkable expression occurs : — " I regard it aa hopeless to expect a settlement by the methods hitherto tried, methods which the natives are advised by counsel are unjust, and which are partly unintelligible and wholly obnoxious to the natives themselves." Now the methods referred to are the trials of the question before the Native Lands Courb, the tribunal specially instituted to investigate Maori title to land. Let Mr Travers deny if he can that he was the " counsel" referred to, and that he never advised the natives or their agent that they had a legal right to obstruct the surveys. But for such advice it would probably not have been nect'Bsary for Mr M'Lean to sacrifice £12,000 worth of the provincial estate to satisfy the natives. But for such sacrifice, which Mr Trarers claims to have suggested, Mr Travers' little bill would probably never havo been paid. — I am, &c., Manawatit.