Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY. MARCH IS, 1861.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 166, 18 March 1864, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY. MARCH IS, 1861.

The manner in which the present Provincial Government, in theory at least, deplore the lamentable state of things which has led to the virtual repudiation of the Native Land Purchase Ordinance, and the ingenious devices by which they endeavor to render abortive any attempts on the part of the

people to resuscitate that Ordinance, is truly astonishing, and but for the well-known skill of His Honor the Superintendent in throwing dust, would be really marvellous. An attempt was made, or proposed to be made, by the Government to lease the Pakowhai plains for a term of years from the natives, with a view to place thereon a population of small holders, and thus kill two birds with one stone, —put those plains out of the reach of the “ squatter,” and at the same time supply that great deficiency in population of which this place complains.* This scheme, under any circumstances, is a great absurdity, as we have before shown. But it happens that His Honor, being a deep schemer, and one who likes to put a great deal in a small compass, had in view less the prevention of the squatters occupation of the favored spot in question and the placing thereon a healthy and hardworking people, as to make the scheme a cloak under which all those gentlemen who now occupy native runs can hide a claim to pre-emptive right of purchase or of compensation when the time comes for the lands which they now occupy to revert to the Government. Although possibly the Provincial Government would not directly state that any pre-emptive right of purchase or claim to compensation should be held out to the occupiers of the small sections on the plains, still there can be very little doubt but that that arrangement would be tacitly implied, with a view, as we have just said, to secure the same rights to those who hold from the natives on a. large scale, amongst whom His Honor and at least two of His Honor’s Executive will not forget to remember themselves.

Fortunately (so we hear) the General Government has stepped in and put a veto upon this proceeding of our Provincial Legislature, and thus, at least, stopped what, if not worse, was as foolish a scheme for meeting a great necessity as was ever hit upon. It is much to be hope that the next meeting of the General Assembly will result in some measure of a nature to curtail the power of Provincial Governments over the Waste Lands within their Provinces. Composed as our Provincial Government is of men directly interested in the maintainance of a state of tilings by which they individually are profited, it is not likely that any other kind of legislation can come from that body than such as tends to cripple the present resources and future prospects of that country over which they exercise control, and which legislation ensures to them (the legislators) every advantage and every profit which should or would, under a less classical legislation, be divided amongst the community. The late election for the Provincial Council is a case in point. To get rid of a member likely to stand in the way of their schemes was all that the Government required. They did not care what or who took the place of that individual so that he was got out; and the people, carried away no doubt by the love for the present Government, and admiration of the skill with which that Government has fixed upon them a tremendous taxation, have given another supporter to what may truely be considered the most corrupt and the most unscrupulous Government that ever dealt wfith the good things of Hawke’s Bay.