EXPEDITIONS TO NEW GUINEA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5438, 31 August 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

EXPEDITIONS TO NEW GUINEA.

(From the Melbourne Leader.) It would be well if persons intending to take part in any expedition to New Zealand were to acquaint themselves with the constitution of society amongst savage aud primitive races. If they choose to remain in ignorance on the subject, or allow themselves to be influenced by misleading statements, they may possibly be involved iu transactions of a questionable character. Take, for instance, a statement which is reported to have been made the other day by the gentleman who presided at the delivery of a lecture on New Guinea by Mr. Minton. The statement was to the effect that if the chiefs or people of New Guinea were willing to sell their territory to white men, and to allow them to settle on the land, the white man had a perfect right to take possession, and no one had authority to interfere. Mr. Cameron, the gentleman who made the statement, ought to have known better, than to talk in such unguarded fashion about the people being willing to sell their territory to white men. The fallacy lurking in such statements is patent to all who hayejnquired into the system of land tenure in a primitive state of society such as exists iu New Guinea/ The land is held as the common property of the tribe, and the idea of parting with any portion of it is utterly foreign to their mind. To talk of either chiefs or people being willing to sell their territory is nonsense, because it is impossible to make them comprehend what selling territory means. By inducing the appearance of compliance on tho part of an ignorant people with usages that they in no way understand, tho very elastic consciences of pioneer settlers are presumably satisfied ; but since the idea of selling is. alien to the mind of the seller, and since any adequate conception of the value of the land is by him quite incomprehensible, the transaction, speaking honestly, can be nothing but a fraud. Nor is the character of tho transaction improved a whit because tho bargain may have been made with a chief, for chiefs have no right to sell land which is not their own property. Far otherwise, for the fraudulency is only aggravated when to the original illegetiraacy of the transaction they add deception towards their own people, whose common property they have bartered for a few beads or a tomahawk. The result of such transactions between grasping Europeans and untutored tribes has been again and again manifested in trouble and conflict when the latter have made the discovery that they have been tricked out of their territory. It was in just such transactions that the Maori wars had their origin, and, had not the British Government interposed in time and accepted the protectorate of Fiji, there would certainly have been similar conflicts there, and a similar extermination of the natives. The story must not bo repeated in New Guinea. No one imbued with just and honorable sentiments can contemplate with complacency the possibility. Appeals iu the interests of civilisation and humanity may probably fall on heedless ears, but they must be tried nevertheless, and with the appeals may be expressed the hope that, preceding the occupancy of New Guinea by any party, steps will be taken to ensure Government supervision in some shape,