The Evening Star TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1875.

Evening Star, Issue 3894, 17 August 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1875.

The Dunedin Press is charged by the Wellington ‘Times’ with not fairly representing the grounds of the claim of the Northern Provinces to a share in the Southern Land Fund, and, as we showed a few days ago, that journal affirms that the Compact of 1856 is a dead letter, because of the passing of the Native Lands Act. It seems to us conclusive against the claim that that measure was, at the time, considered by the people of the North Island likely to conduce to advancing their interests. It is a pure after-thought on their parts to affirm that owing to the working of that Act the Provinces had become impoverished. Thirteen years have passed since it became law, and as we have not ready access to the Parliamentary reports of the day, we cannot quote the arguments that induced Parliament to pass it • but the motive of the Government, no doubt, was to remove any cause of complaint the Natives might justly urge, that were it not for the monopoly of land purchase by the Government, better prices could be obtained of private purchasers. We can easily understand how this specious, and, in the main, well grounded argument, would be handled by private speculators and their friends, nor is it easy to find an answer that would satisfy either the Native or European sense of justice. There have always been unscrupulous land sharks in the North, who allowed no consideration of policy to restrain them from fomenting discontent against Government when it suited their immediate purpose, and nothing was more easy than to persuade the Natives they were harshly and unjustly treated when the General Government alone could acquire land by purchase from them. Very probably the majority of the members never considered the political bearing of the subject. It might scarcely strike the Middle Island representatives that Provincial revenues could be affected by passing the Bill. It seemed to be purely a question involving the interests of the North Island only. A moment’s thought should have convinced both North and South Island that it was impossible to make Provincial revenue out of land purchased by private contract, and that it was only land acquired by the General Government on behalf of the Provinces that could yield any revenue return—improperly *• termed.

It is very plain, too, that for the time being the pric® at which land was obtainable from the Natives prevented the sale of Provincial lands at prices calculated to enrich the local treasuries. Although we have assumed it possible these almost self-evident truths were overlooked at the time, it seems very unlikely that these consequences should have been altogether unforeseen ; but whether or not the measure was passed by consent of North and South—by the former most probably at the instigation of a few wealthy land sharks, aided by men actuated by a sense of justice to the Natives, and assented to by the latter as a matter in which they were not concerned. When any terms of a compact are altered by common consent, the remaining conditions are not affected, and unless the Northern Provinces can show that the Native Lands Act was forced upon them by the South against their will and consent, their claim to share in our land revenue is a bareflfced attempt at swindling. There has been far too much Government land speculating in the North Island. The three-million loan was

for the purpose of a mere land speculation, although speciously set forth as a means of recouping the Colony the cost of a Maori war. It was as dazzling to the imagination of the members of Assembly as the hidden riches «f a distant goldfield to dissatisfied miners. The iniquity of the speculation never seems to have been considered. The Natives driven from their lands to seek a refuge where they could find shelter, their wives and children reduced^ to poverty and starvation, formed no part of the picture. From whatever cause it arose, the colonists in the Northern Provinces quarrelled with the and deemed it an excellent opportunity to obtain land from them at a cheap rate. The war was to cost so much ; the land seized was to sell for so much more. It never seemed to enter the sapient heads of the land-speculating Government that land obtained by conquest costs more to keep than to acquire. It turned out a bad spec, as might have been foreseen, and the Provinces sought to be enriched by it have had to share the loss. But the chief loser in this ill-conceived transaction has been the Middle Island, and therefore no plea can be urged in favor of Northern participation in our land revenue on that ground. In every view the Compact, so far as the South is concerned, remains intact. The Abolition Bill recognises this fact, and secures the land revenue to the Province : and it is, therefore, strange to find some of the representatives of Otago voting with an Opposition, ene of whose professed objects is to make the land revenue of the Middle Island Colonial revenue.