NATIVE LAND BUYING.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 826, 14 February 1877, Page 3

NATIVE LAND BUYING.

The report of the Commission appointed to inquire into the report of Mr Wilson, Government land purchaser at Gisborne, has been sent in, and the result has been that Mr Wilson has been dismissed. An occasional correspondent of the Daily Times refers to the report in the following terms ; A report which involves such enormous interests as these land purchases represent, and which has met with so singular a reception, will be sure to excite much comment before it is done with. I have not been able to get a copy yet, but am promised one, and will send it to you when I receive it. I have heard enough, however, to enable me to describe it as a clear and masterly statement of the difficulties in the way of successful land purchase unless the Government and all its servants housefly, vigorously, and

firmly support their own land purchasers, regardless of personal or political considerations. These difficulties I cannot pretend to give from Mr Wilson’s report till I have the expected copy. But from my own enquiries, the most serious have arisen from the manner in which the Native Land Acts were officially administered. Officials are said, in effect, to have played into the hands of those private purchasers who have acquired great landed estates in defiance of the law, and to have given them unfair hdvantages over those who were acting for the Government. The latter have no secret service money at their command for the bribery of natives and others, and the purpose of every penny of expenditure has to be openly stated, and accounted for to the satisfaction of the Colonial Auditors. Of course there can be no complaint of this last. It is perfectly right and proper that it should be so, but it is also right and proper that officers so placed should receive the cordial support and aid of all officers of the Government, to enable them to overcome the difficulties inherent in their position. Some of these points were touched upon in Mr Wilson’s annual report. It caused a profound sensation at the time among those aware of its character, and the gravity of its statements. They were only statements that had been made a thousand times before by private persons, and public writers, but it was the first time they had been officially made by one conversant with everything that had been done. It is also commonly said that so long as land purchasers could show big acreages in their returns, the Government cared very little if the acreages consisted chiefly of sand hills and inaccessible and barren lands ; while, at the same time, private persons (but only rich and influential private persons) were walking off with the fat lands in smaller acreages in the same district. The shells fell to the public. The oysters went to those whose friendship the Government valued, and whose enmity no Government has yet had strength or courage to face. It is admitted on all sides that this has been done, and that, while hundreds of thousands of acres have been bought by rich men, or companies, there is no single instance of a man having been able to purchase a hundred or a few hundred acres for his smaller requirements and personal settlement.

Another grave consideration in connection with these land purchases, is that the Maoris are made dissatisfied and discontented. They feel they are being done, and their minds are further poisoned by private agents whom they find practically supported by Government, and with greater means at their command than the agents of Government possess. The real owners also often find themselves opposed by other claimants intentionally set up by these private agents to induce the owners to come to their terms. I was astonished, on inquiry, to find how serious this last matter had become. To understand its full import, you must remember the innumerable peculiar bases on Which a Maori title can be rested. There are, for example, asserted personal rights from all kinds of asserted relationship, asserted gifts from chiefs long dead, asserted occupation or conquest, asserted marriage dowries, or asserted gifts for alleged aid in helping the tribe of the reputed owners to revenge themselves on some other tribe at some remote date, perhaps ten or twelve generations past. The shifting of boundaries is another good pretext; but these are only a few of the thousand and one grotesque grounds on which native land titles are often based and disputed. Nor should that most complex of all titles—the Mana—be forgotten. The Mana is the right universally recognised by all natives in the chief of a tribe to prohibit the alienation of land belonging to any member of the tribe. The Mana, from its vagueness, is a great card among manufacturers of bogus claims to land for opposition sake. But, when genuine, it is a very serious matter to overlook it, as we had reason to know when the first Taranaki war broke out. That war was proximatcly caused, it will be remembered, by the obstinate refusal of Mr M'Lean, as Chief Land Purchase Commissioner, to acknowledge Wi Kingi’a Mana over the Wailara land sold to the Government by Te Teira.