Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1863

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 88, 9 February 1863, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1863

In a former number we animadverted upon the Waste Land Regulations, their abuse, and the consequences. We will now show wherein may be found a remedy for the evil, —a remedy which, though strong, is sure, and which must sooner or later be applied.

We have yet remaining out of our once considerable landed estate, a residue of about 700,000 acres, of what quality we shall not at present stop to enquire; it is sufficient to our purpose that there it is, and that we are bound to make the most of it. With this view, therefore, and seeing that Hawke’s Bay, instead of fulfilling the promise which was entertained of her at her baptism, is upon the eve of a crisis which will render it imperative for the people to dismiss their Provincial Government, as incompetent and imbecile, and to lay claim to the protection of the General Government (which would be, by the way, calling upon the monkey to divide the cheese), something must be done. We ourselves, looking at the matter from the vantage ground of disinterestedness, confess that the only course now left open is at once to proclaim all the land unsold as reserved for 40 years, and lease them for a term of 21 years. Thus we secure from spoliation what yet remains of our lands, and place those lands in a fair way, in the event of a reaction in the state of the country, of becoming a source of wealth and of income. Money must be raised somehow or other, and we must do so partly by borrowing and partly by extracting it from our landed gentry and from our merchant princes. Nothing, therefore, is easier than for the owners of such fine lands as there are in the interior, and for all persons who are occupying Native land, at once to make some restitution to the Public Treasury in the shape of a land tax at say sixpence the acre for 10s. land, and for lands of inferior kind to pay in proportion, guided by this the maximum amount. Then behold the effect. A considerable revenue is immediately raised, and we borrow money upon the strength of that and of the 700,000 acres of leased land, and we proceed at once with a feasible scheme for the improvement of our Harbour, and nothing then remains to secure to Hawke’s Bay a first-class position than the settlement for once and for ever of the Native question. We hear, in imagination, a gathering storm—a hurricane, coming up from the S.E., to sweep away, to demolish, and to utterly blight and destroy this bright scheme

of ours while yet it is but in the bud ; but we fear no storms, our plant is a plant grown in the seventh heaven, and no mortal breezes can hurt it; —it is made of adamant, and defies the blighting powers of our opponents. But blow' high or blow low, this taxation of the landowner, great and small, must inevitably occur ; it is therefore no use longer postponing it. A king will presently arise who knows not Joseph, and will lay on taxes and rates, and a general imposition, without regard to him. Our friends in the interior, if not able to meet this demand upon their resources, must knock under, and give place to men who can ; or, better still, subdivide their large estates, and let in the element of smaller holdings to consolidate and strengthen the already too much weakened frame of Hawke’s Bay. The late lamented Provincial Council took one step in this right direction, but there, unfortunately, it stopped. When that august body had decreed that the lands should not sell at ss. an acre, but should realize 10s. or nothing, they had, unwittingly, we think, (for they were not, upon the wdiole, a particularly bright body,) touched upon the skirts of themostimportant,infact, the vital question affecting the province of Hawke’s Bay. Had the M.G.A. for Clive done the Province the kindness for once to let her alone, matters w'ould have gone on swimmingly, and we should, from the simple fact of the prohibition of the sale of any more ss. lands, have drifted end on upon the very proposition which we now lay before our readers for their consideration.

With Mr. M’Lean, the representative of the squatting, as well as of the landed interests in their present unhealthy condition, at the helm, little hope of effecting any permanent change of the present state of things can be indulged in. That gentleman has been for many years a squatter on Native land, and has also profited considerably by the ss. land scheme, therefore he eminently represents the present fallen and degraded state of the Province which hehasbeen called upon to save from destruction ; and we can* not conceive, seeing that he himself is so intimately mixed up with the causes of our unhappy condition, how on earth he can improve that condition without doing violence to his antecedents. But as nothing surprises us, not even a leading article in the columns of the Herald, we should not be in the least astonished if Mr. M’Lean was to inaugurate his new Government by the introduction of a bill for the raising of revenue upon all lands occupied throughout the Province, taking good care to lay on the rates pretty thick in the case of those lands belonging to the Maoris and occupied by Europeans, himself among the number. If he does this, we will immediately throw up the sponge, cross over the way, and drink a bottle of our excellent friend of the Herald’s best claret, and, returning home elated, sing Hallelujah!