as at 1840, the date of the Treaty, and issued a certificate of ownership which resulted in the issue of a Crown Grant. But the Court could only put 10 names in any certificate and accordingly inserted the names of ten or less persons selected by the owners—normally the leading chiefs or heads of families—the idea being clearly that they should hold for and on behalf of the hapu or tribe. It was, in fact, possible for the Court instead to issue the certificate in the name of a tribe or hapu. The trouble about this was that no method was provided of dealing with land in this way, that is, of selling or leasing, and the eyes of the Maoris as well as those of Europeans were turned towards alienating. The consequence of the ten owner system was, unhappily in many cases that the persons (usually chiefs) nominated as owners dealth with the land as if it were their absolute property, and in many cases the remaining beneficial owners got nothing. Indeed, various steps were taken to avoid this, and later the names of all members of the tribe were inserted as beneficial owners, but the grantees still had power to lease. Eventually the law required, as perhaps it should have done from the start, the insertion of all names.

Towards Full Individual Ownership With this arose fresh problems. Since all were included in the title, a sale of the land required the execution of a deed of conveyance by all, including minors and other persons under disability. No relative shares were at this stage defined. This made the process of alienation well nigh impossible particularly where the members of the owning tribe might reach some hundreds, until at last the time came when the law permitted the sale of undivided interests which might be cut out by partition for the purchaser. Ultimately the Court was required to define interests. This was normally, in fact, arranged by the owners themselves reaching agreement and submitting the result to the Court. The flow towards the individualisation of interests once commenced was irreversible and it resulted in more and more difficulties, complicated by the constant spate of legislation and it is true to say that it was not until the Act of 1909 that one coherent and clear system of dealing with Maori Land Titles was set forth. Here despite earlier foreshadowings we first have a clear system of dealing by vote of the owners in the assembled owners procedure; the incorporation system enabling the owners to work their land by means of an incorporation; the governing body being an elected committee of management; the relatively clear system for cutting up and leasing lands vested in the Maori Land Boards which, for reasons often quite unforseeable, were to go so astray—also a comprehensive code for the purchase of Maori Land by the Crown. It was well on in the 1920's before any workable system of financing the development of Maori land for Maori settlement was formulated.

Succession and Partition The position was, then, that much Maori land after passing through the Court was held by a number of owners each individually, with a defined share. Before long it became necessary to provide for some method of succession to a deceased owner to be found. For this purpose the Court was given power to act and it was laid down that succession (to land interests) should as nearly as possible be in accordance with Maori custom. This meant that, generally speaking, succession was in favour of all children equally so that as time went by shares got smaller and smaller as the number of owners became larger. The Court also, at quite an early stage, was given power to partition land—that is to cut out the interests of different people or groups of people into different parts, each with a separate title. Over the country the Court has made many thousands of partitions, resulting in pieces of land of all shapes and sizes which today are not easily handled for practical use. There are for example, the “fiddle-string” groups of sections, perhaps several miles long and only a chain or two wide. We tend to wonder these days why a piece of land should be cut up into such fantastic shapes. There is usually an explanation. The “Fiddlestring” type of partition was designed to give the owners of each section a part of each sort of land in a block. Thus the section might run from the sea back into the hills, enabling the owners to have access to the sea for sea food, to have some flat land for residence and cultivation, and some hill country for forest foods and timber.

Could Tribal Ownership Have Been Maintained? So we come to to-day's position. The great part of Maori land has been sold. Of what is left a great deal is broken and poor in quality, and much is difficult to deal with owing to badly shaped sections and a multitude of owners. Our question is whether some other system of titles could have been used which would have prevented all these difficulties, and which would perhaps have encouraged, at a much earlier stage the farming by the Maoris of their land for their own benefit. Many people think this would have been possible if some system of ownership nearer to the tribal system had been carried on by the laws and the Maori Land Court, rather than the giving to each person of a distinct share which he could deal with himself. The issue between the communal type of title