THEFT OF SHEEP

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20093, 13 November 1939, Page 6

THEFT OF SHEEP

MAORIS’ OBLIGATIONS SECURITY ADVANCES CASE FROM THE COAST TWO YEARS' PROBATION A sentence of two years' probation was passed by Mr. Justice Blair in the Supreme Court to-day on Awherata Manuera, alias Alfred Manuel, aged 32, who had been found guilty on a charge of stealing 2Cr sheep, the property of the Totaranui Native Block Ag, Jerusalem, and which were subject to an instrument of security held by the Waiapu Farmers’ Cooperative Company, Limited. % Mr. A. A. Whitehead, who appeared for the prisoner, said that the case was brought more in order to establish a principle, and submitted that the case was one in which probation might be considered.

His Honour said that the case was an important one. The policy of recent years Was to assist members of the native race interested in land to work the land themselves, and they should be on a stable basis and on the same looting as that of the European farmers.

Advances by Firms

When a Maori signed a document, continued His Honour, it should mean that the obligations should be observed so that the Maori should be just as easily accommodated as Europeans were. If a stock firm was prepared to make advances on sheep and some of the sheep were to disappear, the firms would not be prepared to make the same advances as if they were certain that the contract would he observed. <

If the court did not frown on any breach of those agreements, the prisoner's own people would be made to suffer. That was why it was important that they should pay absolute respect to their obligations.

The prisoner had" put the country to a lot of expense and had sold sheep to a man who now had no title to them. However, the prisoner would be released on probation for two years on condition that he paid the cost of the prosecution, £42 Os 6d, and made restitution of the cost of the sheep, amounting to £lO, to the man whd had bought them and the sheep were returned to the property.