Gk—7

10

Mr. Kensington. —Yes, that is if they were Natives who have never received any land in this district. It is quite true, as Mrs. Brown said yesterday, that Sir George Grey, then Governor, did want to give them more favourable terms, but the Ministry of the day declined his recommendation ; and to meet the whole of these claims, wherever they should be made, there was a total area of 12,200 acres set apart for the five hapus, who numbered 755 absentees; the proportion was as follows : —Ngatitama, 1,300 acres ; Ngatimutunga, 3,000 acres ; Ngatiawa, 2,700 acres ; Puketapu, 2,100 acres; Taranaki, 3,100 acres: total, 12,200 acres. There the matter rested for many years; no movement was made, and no action was taken by the Ngatimutunga to ask the Government to award them specific portions of the land. In 1884 Mr. William Fox, afterwards Sir William Fox, the West Coast Commissioner, reported that it had been found impossible to ascertain the names of the Natives in whose favour Mr. Richmond's promises were made, or even to discover where they are. "It is certain," Mr. Fox stated, "that many who were absentees when the promises were made have returned to the district and have been included in tribal reserves made by the Commissioner, or at other times." Special search amongst the records was made, but without success. Mr. Fox stated that very little interest in the subject appeared to exist amongst any absentees that there might be, or among the resident members. This probably was owing to the fact that the individual interests of the claimants are so small —only 16 acres each—as to be scarcely worth claiming. Mr. Fox concludes by stating " The course which the Commissioner has thought it best to pursue is to have reserves surveyed and allocated for each of the tribes entitled under Mr. Richmond's promise (except the Puketapu, who sold out to the Government, receiving their interest in money), but not to recommend any further action until the Government might be able (if it ever is) to ascertain who were the proper persons to become grantees. The reserves have accordingly been surveyed, and plans are herewith forwarded. Considering the fact above alluded to, of the small dimensions of the interest of each absentee, it would probably be a good course for the Government to arrange for any claimant who might turn up for the purchase of their allotments as was done in the case of the Puketapus." Now the position, Mr. Mackay, is this : Up to 1890 no claim had been made by the Ngatimutunga for any share of this 3,000 acres. Up to that time, as I said, no claim had been made; and the County Council, seeing the land idle and nothing being done with it, asked the Government in 1890 to open the land to public selection. Mrs. Brown must have been under some misapprehension yesterday when she spoke of the Court having taken the case into consideration. This land was never under the Public Trustee. In Mrs. Brown's petition she speaks here of the Ngatimutunga being treated worse than Australian blacks. I do not know exactly what she means by this remark. The land was there, there was no claim for it, and Mrs. Brown, who makes this petition, had been treated very well; she had been granted 500 acres in Block IV., Waitara. She says in the petition that they all felt that they had been treated like a pig tied to a post, to root so far and do farther, except with the consent of the Public Trustee. The Public Trustee never tied them by the leg to a post, neither did the Government, and all these years they could have come and rooted upon the land if they liked ; but as far as we can understand there were no pigs there to root. The Commissioner suggested that though Mrs. Brown might call her people pigs, yet we might not. The Under-Secretary explained that he was only using Mrs. Brown's own words which he understood were given entirely in a figurative sense. Mr. Kensington : lam now going back to 1890. In that year the County Council asked the Government to open the land, and the matter was referred to Mr. Percy Smith, then SurveyorGeneral ; and I think Mrs. Brown and all the other Maoris will acknowledge that there is nobody who has the interests of the Natives so much at heart as Mr. Percy Smith. Mr. Percy Smith put a memo, upon the papers to this effect, that the claims had been left so long in abeyance and no effort has been made by the Ngatimutunga to obtain any portion of the land that he did not think that any claim would now arise. The position, therefore, is this : there is 525 acres left belonging to the Crown ; there is another 775 acres we may be able to reserve back again, making in all 1,300 acres—that is to say, there is 1,300 acres which the Government may be able to deal with. The rest has been sold and cannot be taken back again. Now the Government, upon Mrs. Brown's petition, felt that something ought to be done to meet the case of any absentee of Ngatimutungas, who, for instance, we will say were in the Chatham Islands, or who were resident at Nelson or anywhere in Taranaki, and who received no land at all, and participated in no awards, and who therefore ask the Government, as an act of grace, to grant them the original 16 acres per head allowed them out of this land; and if there are any successors of those absentees, then they would only be entitled to participate if they had no part in any award made directly to them by the Crown. The Governor has appointed you, Mr. Mackay, a Commissioner, to inquire into this matter, and the information asked for is upon the following points :—(1.) Whether any of those absentees entitled to participate in the Ngatimutunga award are alive at the present date, or have legal successors. (2.) Whether the demands of the Ngatimutunga claimants have been satisfied by awards to the Ngatiawa or other hapus in other localities, and whether the present claimant is one of their successors. (3.) If such claimants have not been satisfied, then to what extent are the claimants entitled to participate in the 3,000 acres, or to what extent would they have been entitled to participate had they proved their claims before Commissioner T. H. Smith in 1867. I wish just to read an extract from a letter from Mr. W. Rennell, Reserves Trustee, who occupied that position before Mr. Fisher. The letter is dated the 10th May, 1892, and he states, " I am of opinion that, as many of those who were awarded 16 acres each, and for whom the land was set apart, have had their names inserted in West Coast grants, the promise of 16 acres each to such of those must be considered as carried out, and they can have no further claim, and as during the eight years I have been Reserves Trustee I cannot remember a single wellauthenticated claim being brought forward. I am of opinion that if 300 acres of the 1,300