MAORI TERRITORIAL RIGHTS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 13, Issue 665, 18 March 1869, Page 4

MAORI TERRITORIAL RIGHTS.

(Pall Mall Gazette,) The so-called Treaty of Waitangi had been made; a treaty apparently between the Queen and certain native chiefs, really between the Queen and a few British land-jobbers who wanted to bake capital of the supposed rights of the tribes. It was held incumbent on Government to maintain faith by recognising the " territorial rights" of the chiefs. Those rights were to be interpreted in the only sense of English lawyers; "in the nature" of a fee simple, with all its incidents; a notion as unknown and uucongenial to the savage mind as that of the feudal system, or indeed more so. One man — Lord Grey—saw the mischief of the proceeding, and he was at the head of the Colonial Office. He argued, in, the interest, not of settlers, but of natives, that the right to the soil, in an *' occupied" colony, must be held as belonging to the Grown for the use of its subjects, white and colored ; that we must not be deluded into parting with that right essential to good government by the construction put by Eng lish lawyers on the words of a treaty which natives would probably under stand (if they applied their minds at all) in some widely different sense; that true justice would lie in adhering rigorously to its spirit by extinguishing no practical native right of chase or° partial- and occasional cultivation without the natives' own consent, or (if necessity prevailed) without ample compensation. But Lord Grey was unpopular. He was the weak point in the Government fortress of that day. Well-meaning, impulsive, religious, philanthropic people were easily recruited and pressed into what was really a mere party service. The Bishop of New Zealand, on immense authority in those days, seeing that he had just gone to his diocese full of good intentions and crowned with ecclesiastical fiittery, and knowing nothing whatever about, it, was made to lead the attack. He \ented pages of eloquent unreason in a controversy with Lord Grey, which will be found in those blue books of ours, containing the record of good intentions enough to pave a considerable quarter of the infernal dominions. The cry prevailed. Lord Grey gave way, instead (as we fondly hoped) of going out. The Treaty of Waitangi was set up with exultation; it was established that the native tribes had an absolute right to their land, and could sell only to Government, a prohibition jn many ways evaded; and from that moment, between cheating land-job-bers on the one-side, and ignorant, capricious, passionate natives, with alleged rights constantly conflicting, on the other, the islands have never known substantial peace, and the natives have dwindled to a few resolute malcontents and a submissive but disaffected majority. Parliamentary faction and the close balance of parties may have done ser» vice on the whole at home; in colonial government they have been simply ruinous.

The burden of native administration has been shifted for the last three or four years (not before it was full time) from the home to the colonial authorities. These last are responsible to their own legislature, constituted on the widest basis of independence compatible with allegiance. We should hope that it is not absolutely too hopeless that they may repair, to some extent, the mischiefs which were perpetrated under their eyes by those to the inheritance of whose errors, as well as triumphs, they have succeeded. We can conceive it yet possible to establish in the Northern Island a state of Government tutelage for the remaining Maoris, getting rid of all that is really extravagant and irreconcilable with reasonable government in their land claims, according them the suffrage and other rights only as consequences of tried good conduct, and firmly protecting them in the exercise of such minor rights as may safely be conceded them through a branch of Government organised for that especial purpose. But the old despondent burden " too late" would ring in <many ears at the mere proposal.