Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1861.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IV, Issue 194, 30 September 1864, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1861.

The report of the Special Committee for the purpose of considering the subject of the illegal occupation of the Ahuriri Plains, and which we published some short time since, falls short of the expectations entertained of it. The language used is the mildest of the mild, and, as far as that sort of thing goes, reflects great credit on the extreme mildness and moderation of the committee ; but the case before them was one in which the value of mild treatment had long since passed away, and as it is well known in most desperate cases desperate measures are necessary, so, in the case of these squatters, some determined course should be adopted. It is no use mildly remonstrating ; it is no use calmly and with the placidity of philosophy objecting —the case before the committee had hum ago got beyond that treatment. Those gentlemen who are now occupying the estate of the Province with their sheep, are not to be mildly remonstrated out of such an excellent and profitable location. Nothing hut ejection will effect the object sought by the committee, and ardently longed for by the people. That vast tracts of the finest lands in New Zealand should be given up entirely to the grazing of sheep, and sheep alone, is bad under any conditions; but that the progress of an entire Province should he grievously retarded, that a few people without right or title should be allowed to grow wealthy at such a price to the community, is. in our opinion, the very deepest depth to which bad Government can go ; and it is to be hoped, but is still very doubtful, that having attained that depth, it will be impossible to find a deeper. If the gentlemen who thus for their own interest retard the onward inarch of Hawke s Bay were men who had opened up the and who, in spite of innumerable obstacles and difficulties, and in spite of all sorts of vexatious obstructions, both natural and Governmental, pioneered the way to our fertile and beautiful Province, some excuse might be offered for the course now pursued by them ; but when it is known that, for the most part they are mere adventurers who have dropped in here to reap the harvest of prosperity which was sown with care and trouble, ami much physical ami mental labor by our old settlers, it will be seen at once that not the most remote particle of a valid excuse can be found for allowing them to remain in occupation for any purpose of that part of this Province, without which she is as hopelessly inanimate as a man without his heart. It certainly seems like a preposterous contradiction that we admit the right of the natives to their lands, ami pretend to be exceedingly scrupulous about not infringing the right thus conceded to them, while at the same time we will not allow them to do what they like with their lands after all, and bind them to certain arbitrary conditions under which alone it is possible for them to reap any benefit from that right. There can be no doubt about that. But the matter is not mended, nor modified, nor ameliorated in the slightest degree by allowing a few strangers and sojourners in the land to step in and take from us even the remote perspective of obtaining certain lands which are essentially necessary to our well-doing. If these squatters, while largely contributing to the general confusion which pervades the Native Lam! question, and who are directly tho cause of that confusion becoming worse confounded, were to contribute as largely, and more substantially, towards the maintenance of the tremendously expensive system of government which this difficult question obliges, then there would be some more tangible and wholesome reasons for the tacit

if not the legal recognition of their occupation. But as matters stand at present, they sow not, neither do they reap, to the good of the country, hut they are, on the contrary, the indirect, if not the direct cause of the difficulties we meet with at every turn, in endeavoring to come to some definite and satisfactory arrangement with the natives upon the question of their lands—lands which to the Maoncs as separated from us are valueless, but which to us are of iucalcalable value, whether the Maoris be or be not. The burden of taxation which is rapidly accumulating upon our backs, is a burden which the uum who has invested his capital, and the man who Ims invested his labor, his time, and energies in the country, with a view to raise up to himself and his heirs for ever, a home and an altar, will have to pay. Those men who, like mere summer flies—those insect types of the squatter—come amongst us to eat of the good things with which we may be for the time surrounded, and squat themselves down upon the fairest portion, and when they have got their fill, are off to the ends of the earth, for aught we know to the contrary, and are, while with us, as destructive as the locust, and more annoying than the flies, and will pay no more towards the setlement of the difficulties and repairing of the damages they themselves have caused and created. They have no abiding piace with us ; their hearts and their wishes are far away from Hawke's Bay; therefore we say they are not of us, and'tis the saddest of all thoughts that those who toil fur their country as their country, should have to pay so heavily for the advantage derived from these few men out of it. In fact we look upon every one who mukes’monev by squatting as a man who indirectly makes that money out of the more enduring and hard-working settler, who will, most certainly, have to pay for it some time or other, and that not long hence. To those upon whose shoulders the payment of rates ami taxes will soon fall, wo appeal once more, to unite in one determined effort to abolish squatters, the most deadly enemies to progress and prosperity, and the great cause of taxes. Squatting would be all very well on the ruins of Babylon, or the site of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and such like places, which have had their day of prosperity and have passed away. But, to squat down like a hideous nightmare upon the belly cf a young and lusty country just bursting into vigorous life, and thus crush and smother its energies, and cause infinite disquietude and alarms to it, is carrying the system of nightmares, at all times and under any circumstances objectionable, to that point of endurance beyond which it is impossible to go.