The Lyttelton Times. TUESDAY. DEC. 27, 1881.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LVI, Issue 6500, 27 December 1881, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. TUESDAY. DEC. 27, 1881.

Tub Native policy to follow tho breakup of the Parihaka settlement is a Jtnbject of considerable interest; to European minds on account of the questions of justice and good faith which are involved to that policy; to the Natives interested by reason of the close connection the subject has to their life prospects. It is a subject upon which Minister* are not communicative. They are eloquent enough, each to his own fashion, about the past. Tho Premier makes appeals for sympathy for a Government of injured innocence, the chief feature of which is that they are illogical. Mr Belles ton, who poses as a fighting man, is as illogical as the Premier, and ©scapes Into cloud surroundings. The Native Minister makes postprandial efforts of that special pleading which is so peculiarly his special gift He quotes Buckle at To Whiti; he denies the undeniable; he insists, to spite of the evidence to the contrary which he himself has accumulated with scandalous illegality, to asserting that there always waa danger of war; he pretends to see a conspiracy of specials to have him shot But he does not say very much about the intentions of the Government to the dispersed Natives to the matter of land. The Proclamation professes to confiscate the property of everyone who did not leave Parihaka before tho famous filth of November. Since then we have bad a lew grandiloquent expressions of the Ministerial intention to be generous, but that is all. While the expense of occupying the West Coast districts, which the policy of vigour was to reduce so materially, continues unabated at a cost linger than it was before that vigour commenced, the organs of the Government are not more communicative than the Ministers themselves. Beyond informing us that Sir Dillon Bell umpires the London dailies with contradictory sentiments upon New Zealand Native affairs, the oracles are dumb.

A somber of Natives bare beat sent to their homes in different parts of the western district, £rom the White Cliffs to Wanganui. Allot these were the recipients of some sort of promise respecting land. Some were promised of their own as a reward lor con* loyalty, others were promised lands as a condition of timely sttbmis* mm after rebellion, and others were promised lands, in an indefinite kind of way, as a token of the generosity of victors who had been either too lazy or too timid to prevent the spoils of war (the conquered lands) from falling back into the hands of the vanquished. The Proclamation, if there is any meaning in English words —which there is even when English words are approximated to the “pigeon” form used by the Maoriea—cancels all these promises in the case of certain Natives. Are we to understand, then, that the reserves for Titoko want's people of 25,000 acres, besides sacred places, on the Waimate Plains, are cancelled; that the Opnnake block. Matakatea’s country, is re-con-fiscated to the Crown, as well as the Stony Biver block, and all the Farihaka lands P Natives from all these blocks were, if we are rightly informed, at Farihaka on and after the fifth. The question of what these people are to snffer at the bands of a generous Gov* eminent for being where they had a perfect legal right to be, is of more than theoretic interest. A report has been published by the Press Aasocia* lion and not contradicted by anyone, that a party of surveyors is at work in the Stony River block. The ‘report adds that the Natives are polling up the survey pegs. The question at once arises, what are these surveyors doing there: clearly they are there for one of two purposes. Either they are survey* mg the boundaries of land promised to the Natives and now to be granted, or they are surveying blocks for European settlement. Now, if the Proclamation has cancelled all promises, the surveyors most be surveying blocks for European settlement A Govern* moot that cared for justice and fair dealing would settle all doubts by letting the object of this survey be publicly known. But to let things he publicly known is not the fashion of this Government It was only after an unfortunate series of unfortunate exposures that two Ministers saw the necessity of saying publicly that some one had given the Natives full purlieu* krs and descriptions of all the reserves intended lor them by the Government; and even then both Ministers withheld the gentleman’s name. In connection with this survey it will be as well to remember to whom the Stony River Block belongs, and how it came into the possession of Its owners. The owners are the Ngamahaaga tribe, who obtained restitution of their land under the Proclamations of 1834 and 1865, which held out a promise to that effect to all rebel Natives who should make submission by a certain date. The Ngamahanga having submitted before the date named, their country was restored to them formally in 1866. That restitution proved to bo illegal. Two or three attempts were made by legislation to make this and other restitutions legal, but they were failures,

T&® mmSt ta tbit the wort off lit# Qumm'd Guwmmciai to tho Maori lias in the*© mm rtmudiukl unfulfilled for a period of fifteen y«ifi. Tli® Cbm* luiarioaer® to their report treat thou® mforamlitloa m merely technical. The lands they woof nine na' absolutely and tooontrovcrtibly -tho property of the ■Native*. ■ Thiir reooaitne&daUon is to take legal '.power at once to remove the technical illegality which stands in the way of completeness of tho Native title. That title is morally too strong lor any proclamation to affect. Tho land having been exempted from confiscation by the Government of the day, no power on earth can deal with it as con* fisoated land) whether tho exemption was technically legal or otherwise. To deal with that land as confiscated land would ho an act of rapine and of the grossest had faith. There arc other lands to tho Taranaki country to which IheoamcthtogisappUcable. For instance, there is theOponakoblook.WilUamKtog Matakatea’a country which waa restored to him, (exempted from confiscation to reality) on tho ground of his loyalty to 1863-64. There is also the country, which has never been defined, to which To Whitt who remained loyal is entitled by virtue of the Proclamation, which guaranteed all loyal Natives the possession of their lands. Wc presume tbai the Government is aware that over lauds of this kind they have uo more power than they have over tho sections in Cathedral Square. Wo should be loth to believe that they have any designs upon either of the two first-named blocks. As lor the' country to which the Parihaka tribe is entitled, that, wo fear, is almost past praying for. But, to the case of the other two, there is a definite formal surrender to overcome, which cannot by any fair means be overcome. It would be so foolish of the Government to attack either the Stony River block or the Oponoke block, that any mere rumours of their intention to do so would be incredible. But the proclamation, which claims for Government a right of confiscation, cannot be ignored; and the presence of surveyors on the Stony River block has to bo explained. Are these two things to be featnm as connected with each other P If so, the Government is engaged to a transaction which the Queen’s representative has been advised to endorse, which is neither just nor equitable nor humane.