Untitled

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 50, 13 October 1892, Page 2

The following extraordinary case is published in Parliamentary notes of the Post : — " The Studholme petition, respecting titles rendered invalid and of no effect owing to the Native Land Court Judges having for eight years misinterpreted the law, and dismissed applications for rehearing privately, opens up an extraordinary vista of disaster. A partial list has been made up of titles so voided through no fault of the holders. This list includee 237 blocks, and of these the area ot 41 has been attached, and totals 1,115,566 acres— one sixth of the whole. Many of these blocks have been purchased by Governmeni, and the country will be the sufferer — one block alone is over 417,000 acres. The enormous interests involved elevate this state of things to a national calamity, and yet the session is apparently to be allowed to close without any effort being made to solve the difficulty." There is a remote possibility that this wonderfnl muddle is " capable of explanation," but it must not be forgotten that not long ago one of the cleverest Native Judges who has ever sat on the Bench, exclaimed against the hopeless way in which the Laws relating to Native Lands were involved by hasty and ignorant legislation. Everybody who knows anything whatever about the " fearful and wonderful ways" of the land shark, whether Government agent or private purchaser, has had reason to suspect that much ol the Native Land Legislation has been made at the instance of these people who, from long practice and long purses, were enabled to » lobby " with much advantage —to themselves.