RATES ON NATIVE LAND

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2043, 2 April 1907, Page 3

RATES ON NATIVE LAND

The deputation from the Wanganui Chamber of Commerce wind’ waited upon the Native Land Coni* mission to urge that some 'means. „ should be devised for collecting races Oil native lands put a huger on. one of the sorest .spots in the whole mat ter Under our native land laws the native land is not only locked up against settlement, but locked up aganist taxation and rating as well. Although native holdings are nil th« time benefiting by. tho railways an roads which are being marie by th< Government and local bodies, nothing is contributed by the owners to tho revenues excepting what litt. they indirectly pay through the Customs. Tho nakelia settlei s taxed the more heavily when lie m in the vicinity of native land, to he must make up lor this unjus exemption. The Chief Justice sale that ’natives could' not be. ex]).ectce to liav rates on land winch .Vie dec no-profit. This is true. .But neither Maori .nor pakoha lias- any right ti have land which does not yield profit when others are eager to take it off bis hands. We. have got into an absolutely false position towards the Maori people. Tf we tieatce them as Europeans, giving them the same rights and demanding of thenthe same duties, they would be hotter off- at least they would have :■ chance. But. wo have neither permitted thorn the free ownership of tlioir lands nor asked them to pax rates, with tbe result that accord ing to Mr. Ngata himself, the whole l-nco is threatened witn extinction.— N.Z. Herald.

The footpad who goes about the streets cracking pedestrians on the “funny-bone,’ and rondel ing them comparatively helpless while ho or his partner in crime robs them, does not vet appear to have boon the necessary lesson (says the &J dr i).,ilv Telegraph ot ±VL.icli A)). u Wooilahra business man, who, with '-his wifh and- daughter, -had been to the theatre', were awaiting at the busy corner of Kmg and 'stfiSs SS^*e2rrag£>» pieces: As in a case r ported, the victim did not disci) - his loss until it . was-.too date to t any machinery in motion that "OiiJ. to lead to its recovery.

NEW ZEALAND’S ANCIENT HISTORY. HOW NEW ZEALAND ESCAPED FRENCH OWNERSHIP. LONDON, February 8. ! Somo time ago I sent you a fairly full account) of the controy’ersy which had arisen over the-question—raised by Mr. Stuart Reid’s then recontlypublished “Life of Lord Durham”— of Now Zealand’s escape from becoming a French convict sottlomont, and her establishment as a British possession. A letter signed “Albort J. Allom,” and dated from Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand, lias just, appeared in the Morning Post criticis-

ing tho statements mndo regarding the events of New Zealand’s earliest history as associated yvith Britain. Two statements are at! tho outset assailed by Mr. Allom: (1) “The assertion that “Now Zealand owes it to Lord Durham that she is a British colony,” and (2) the allegation that it was “Lord Durham’s energy in despatching the ship Tory from Plymouth to Port Nicholson” that securod the advantage. Mr. Allom assorts that in oach case “for Lord Durham we must read Edward Gibbon Wakefield.”

“As a matter of fact,” says Mr. Allom, “the Tory did not sail direct from Plymouth to Port Nicholson. She arrived at Queen Charlotte’s Sound, not Port Nicholson, as stated, on the 17tli August, 1839, and it was

not until the 20th of the following month (September) that she first reached Port Nicholson. A rendezvous had been appointed at Port Hardy for the first hotly of intending colonists on the lOtli January, 1840, but under the instructions of tho company tho attention of their agont, Colonel Wakefield, had been directed to Port Nicholson as being a likely place for the establishment of the future colony. It was Edward Gib-, bon Wakofield, not Lord Durham, who in a post-chaise drove rapidly from London to Plymouth to urgo the Tory off, with a view to prevent the threatened stoppage of her departure by Lord Normanby, then Secretary of State for the Colonies. In this Wakefield succeeded. Dr. Garnett’s comments on Wakefield’s vigorous action should bo moro generally read, ns it was this remarkable journey which to a great extent forced, the hand of an unwilling British Government by causing them hurriedly to send out Governor Hobson only just in time to save New Zealand from becoming a French colony. “But the most important of these mistakes,” continues Mr. Allom, “is where the reviewer states that the Baron.de Thierry reached New Zealand two days later than the Tory, and thus failed to annex the islands to the crown of France. This is a very extraordinary jumble of . dates and supposed facts, not one of which is correct. There is absolutely no connection between De Thierry and the arrival of the Tory in 1839. There is ample proof that from Tahiti, in. 1835, tho Baron de Thierry declared his intention of establishing himself as an independent sovereign in Now Zealand; that he announced that he ‘was waiting the arrival of an armed ship from Panama to enable him to proceed to the Bay of Islands with strength to maintain his authority’; that he did not arrive at the Bay of Islands in his armed vessel, but in March, 1837, issued ano-

ther address to the white inhabitants of New Zealand; dated from Sydney, in which, moderating his claim to sovereignty, he stated his intention of visiting the country in a peaceable attitude; that early in 1838 Baron de Thierry landed at Hokianga with a large European following, mostly

.pickedUp in the streets of Sydney; that he failed to establish his claim to some 40,000 acres of land which he supposed Mr Kendall, the missionary, had jhireliased for him in 1822 (for thirty-six axes, as it is said); that he commenced cutting a road to the Bay of Islands, but his exchequer failing his subjects threw off their allegiance ; that he was allowed by the natives to squat upon a piece of ground for which he promised payment at a future day ; and that in 1839, at the time when your reviewer supposes he was following in the wake of the Tory from Europe, the Baron was 'found

by a visitor at Hokialiga ‘living in a humble way for a' sovereign prince, and Jjad no "retainers to obey his command but bis own family. I remember frequently meeting the old Baron in 1862, and some of the following - years, when lie was living near Auckland in very poor circumstances. He was by birth and education a gentleman.” • Remarking that the story of how New Zealand was saved from becoming a French convict settlement has yet to be properly told; it lias been presented from time to time in rtiany ■incomplete and different shapes, mostly very inaccurate, Mr. Allom calls “special attention to Dr.- Garnett’s remarks that had not Wake-, field compelled the British Government to send Hobson out, or had the Treaty of Waitangi fallen through,

there, would have been nothing to prevent the French from taking possession of Akaroa in the jVliddlo Island. The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, he says, had removed the great legal difficulty, and the Queen could assert her sovereignty to the satisfaction of State -lawyers. On the other hand, as Mr. Pember Reeves has pointed out: ‘Had Captain Hobson been able to conceive what was entailed in the piecemeal purchase" of a country held under tribal ownership It is difficult to think that he would

have signed the treaty without hesitation.’ ” Mr. Allom then goes on to observe: “I think Dr. Garnett in

his biography of Wakefield went -a.ittlo too far when he recited as supposed facts the on dit: ‘Wakefield thought it, Buffer wrote it; and Durham signed it.’ I see from the letter >f Mr. Beekles Willson that Garnett, having after a lapse of three or four years considered the question, lias asiigned to Lord. Durham’s own pen ine-half of the report, or 122 pages

out of a total of 246. This may be iamewbat nearer the truth. Secondly, f have never believed that the report imanated entirely from Wakefield’s iwn pen as well as his brain, though ! t seems to me very likely that he had even a greater share therein than Or. Garnett’s later verdict has given him credit for.”

With respect to the famous report '.tself, Sfr. Allom says in conclusion: “The British Quarterly Review for November, 1549, while reviewing Wakefield’s ‘Art of Colonisation,’ maintained not only that the Durham report was principally the work of 'Wakefield, but that also that Buller himself had publicly disclaimed- the loading share an the Canada report. Buller himself had died in 1848. We can scarcely conceive that"those who desired to refute this remarkable statement would not eagerly have availed themselves of the opportunity of doing so had they possessed the means. I have had some , official training, which first commenced when residing with Wakefield himself in 1848. I know something of the way in which official reports are produced, and a good deal about Wakefield’s literary methods. I think no original manuscript would be likely to survive after the first printing of the report, and it is most improbable that' the original report as sent in to the Government would be in the handwriting of either Lord Durham or Wakefield. Whilst in process of manufacture" the various topics would be discussed from day to day by Durham, Wakefield, and Buller by means of a probably, voluminous series of memoranda, which would he destroyed when fair copies had been made by the.official clerks. . . I am the only living person who can prove that the cop.’ for the press was dictated by Wakefield and written down by me, from

day to day, at Boulogno-sur-Mor, during tho last three or four months of the year 1848. lam the only person who can prove that thoro novor was a manuscript copy in Wakefield's handwriting, and that the copy which went to the press as writ ton down by mo was hurriedly packed up at midnight on Christmas eve, taken on board tho London stoamor, and by me delivorod to Wukofiold’s friend Rintoul, in London, on Christmas morning, 1848.”—Post.