The Agitation of the Lessees for the Freehold.

Maori Record : a journal devoted to the advancement of the Maori people, Volume I, Issue 2, 1 August 1905, Page 6

The Agitation of the Lessees for the Freehold.

The following has been condensed from the original letter, chiefly in reply to a lessee. The correspondent says that, properly cultivated, four acres is enough for a Maori. Mr Ballance said four acres and a cow is enough for a European farmer, so it appears there is but a cow difference between the respective needs of the two races. The native title, your correspondent says, was fictitious, but it was fully confirmed by the Treaty of Waitangi; his subsequent title is the Crown Grant of the Sovereign duly sealed, and Mr Hogg, a staunch Government supporter, lately said at Eketahuna that the Crown seal must be honored“ Members of Parliament were too honorable to interfere with leases bearing the Crown seal. Opponents of the Government were offering a bribe, in the shape of the freehold with a small land tax, to Crown tenants in exchange for the leasehold.” (Stab, June 5.) In respect to the agitation of the native leaseholders and their supporters, at a meeting of the Farmers’ Union held at Hawera to consider

the advisability of nominating a candidate, Mr said : “The man who supported the native lease should not get another vote” (name in report of Star before me). Mr Elwin denounces the habits of the Maoris and half-castes, which I also deplore, and he attributes them to the handling of rent-money as the result of the landlordism we have established; but surely if the natives got an increased income, as it is affirmed they would, from interest on the debentures, the result of the purchase of the fee-simple, that evil would be increased. Much depends on the point of view. Whilst Mr Elwin deplores the necessities of the up-to-date Maori who now wants stores, clothes, etc., the British are spending hundreds of thousands per annum to create those wants in savage nations abroad— is good for commerce. And in respect to those clothes, what are they to eat and wear if not “European clothing and food” which we have been trying to make them use for generations? It has taken the Anglo-Saxon approximately 2000 years to evolve from a coat of woad Stultz’s latest Paris fashions; it has taken the Maori about 100 years to substitute for a suit of tattoo one of reach-me-downs. But Mr Elwin suggests no scheme for the better treatment of native lands and native people than the selling of the freehold to himself and his co-leaseholders, though Mr Seddon does. Mr Ballance did not contemplate leaving the natives, for their own use, but four acres, when he advocated the passing of the Act of 1892, which gave the lessees the right of perpetual renewal, and certainly Mr Seddon does not. Mr Ballance, in introducing a bill on its second reading, said of a portion of the reserves (see Hansard, vol. 75. p. 566 : “There are, as I have stated, 2400 people in these various grants, beneficiaries who are interested in these lands. Some of them are minors. These people at present, apart from the forty thousand acres which I have referred to, and which may be leased, still retain in occupation no less than 40,000 acres. We consider 40,000 acres held by these 2400 people will be ample for them to live upon. Wo do not intend to lease it, but to leave it in their possession in order that they may live properly and comfortably.” That is over 16 acres per capita, but by administration under the Act by the Public Trustee, the lands that were not to be leased, have been leased, there is not enough left, in most districts, for the natives to “live properly and comfortably on,” and that is what I am trying to drive into the right-thinking people of this colony. Because Mr Seddon has formulated a scheme, and he will require land to carry n, out, I draw no oompaarison between the actions of this Government and former ones. Mr Elwin complains that I have not mentioned the inequality of interests, and mentions the slaves. 1 don’t think Mr Elwin quite understands the status of a slave in old days in any case they have been freed. “As a general rule they (the slaves) would become by inter-mar-riage incorporated with the tribe.” (Tregear, The Maori Race, p. 158.) It was necessary for me to draw an average, as partition has only been very partial, and that is the very matter I want to deal with, if Mr Elwin will be silent till I’ve done. I have only space in this letter to quote Mr Seddon’s plans for the equipment of the native race, to take the place

of the old methods we both so greatly deplore: Methods which reserved the land, but did not tit the owner to occupy it, or supply him with money on security of his lands, so that he could farm it. For neither the white nor the brown subjects of .Mis Majesty can farm without capital. The State has found it, under various Acts, for the one and not for the other. I quote from the Canterbury Times, a paper supporting the Government, portions of Mr Seddon’s speech at Rotorua. [Here follows an extract from the speech we published in full in our last issue.] The scheme then propounded is then spoken of. That scheme cannot be carried out on the West Coast if the area of the reserves is further reduced, and it is impossible to offer advantages to one section of tribes and withhold it from another. It is impossible to parade this proposition before the natives in order to persuade them to bring their lands under the laws of the colony, and at the same time deny it to natives whose lands are so brought and are Crown Granted. 1 have an abstract of Mr Elwin’s evidence at Stratford before me. Mr Elwin denounces the administration under the Act of 1892, by the Public Trustee, and I agree with him. The faults of the administration should be firmly and kindly pointed out. Because, at Eltham, Sir Joseph Ward was in favour of administering the reserves to be made, over the area yet supposed to be left under native title in a similar manner; and that would be disastrous. But if the bad old days came back, which is impossible, and we were left to “taste of their despair” over the loss of their Crown Granted lands, we should have the spectacle of natives fighting for the Queen’s Crown Grant, and colonial troops attacking. Which is unthinkable.