The Oamaru Mail TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 1880.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1244, 13 April 1880, Page 2

The Oamaru Mail TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 1880.

The gentlemen who undertook the tough task of blowing away the native difficulty by a breath have discovered that they reckoned without their host. Years devoted to a patching up of old grievances, of pampering the natives and tampering with the laws affecting them, of wheedling and swindling them and the Colony out of native lands, are not to be removed by the wave of the fairv wand of the Commission on Native Affairs. Nor are they to be removed by years of the mere talking and deliberating even of men of superior mental calibre. All unhealthy accumulations, the causes of the failures of half j a generation—together with the antidotes applied must be cleared r awav. Then would be laid bare the old sore: but so much the; better —it could then be grappled j with. "What has the Commission J done T Thev have turned their attention mainly to what they term the settlement of the difficulty that has arisen out of the action of thn Grey Government regarding the Waimate Plains. "With all their parade, they h.-tve been necessitated to attempt the j accomplishment of such a task by, granting to the dissatisfied natives fat reserves. Anybody could have done as much. Even such a sacrifice, which may or may not be legitimate, will not do much, if indeed anything at .all, to settle the native ditiiulty. What about Mnrimoto and Major Kemp ? The Argus speculation claimed this for its own. For years it has endeavored to wrest it from the natives. Kemp, who was in the pay of the Government as Native Assessor, has some claim upon this block. He suffered the aggression of covetous men until he could no longer stand by and witness the wholesale and unscrupulous robbery of himself and the members of his tribe. Even at the risk of sacrificing his position and emolument he determined to oppose this gross injustice. The obtainment of redress from such a Government as the present, with regard to any matter in which land speculators were concerned, hevery properly recognised as hopeless, and he adopted an alternative recognised amongst the natives as being justifiable —that of interfering with enrveyors ti*espassing upon native land. Kemp has been called a madman by the journalistic creatures of the Government and land sharks. This is only A blind. There is not only method in the man's madness, but he lias justice on his side. He has as much right to insist upon having a voice in the disposal of his property as any white man. How will the Commission deal with this case ? To attempt to smother it up would only ' end in a renewed and aggravated phase of the difficulty—they would " Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." We know what should be done. If it is desirable that this land should be alienated from the natives, the Government should be the only legitimate medium i through which its transference should bo affected, —they should not be silent beholders and abettors in plundering the natives. The administration of native lands should not depend upon the peculiarities of the ministry of the day, but upon rigid laws. The Colony has already suffered much in consequence i of a temporising and vacillating native policy. The natives themselves have been staggered at the principle* and outcome of that policy. We need sea reel v cite any other instance than that of the Waimate Plains, which, confiscated at the conclusion of the native war, were allowed to remain entirely in the hands of the natives until the Grey Government interfered. To those who know the predilections of the present Ministry and their ancestors, of which they are the prototype, it is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion than that these plains were preserves intended for ]>olitical partisans. Murimotu was being secured by these numerous and expensive adjuncts of the continuous M inistry and its offspring, and we suppose that the Waimate Plains would next receive their attention. The eourageousness of the Grey Government in asserting the Colony's right to.the Waimate Plains, so that cheap land might be available to those who were in search of it, is one that should atoife for many of their admitted administrative shortcomings. Had they not undertaken this difficult task, this valuable tract of land would not have been heard of until it was mentioned in the public journals in connection with the names of those gentlemen .of the north for whose especial benefit New Zealand appeal's to have been colonised, an expensive native war was prosecuted, and the people are taxed. If this Native Commission pex-forms faithfully the functions of the office with which it has been entrusted, il will not only afford Parliament ever} available particular concerning the Waimate Plains dispute, but it wil] exjwse to the gaze of the colony the mysteries of Murimotu and of all other blocks of native land similarly situated. Let us, for once, be blessed with a little honesty in tpjJ treatment of the native fond question.