West Coast Settlers' League.

Opunake Times, Volume III, Issue 129, 27 September 1895, Page 2

West Coast Settlers' League.

The following is the Public Trustee's remarks on the petition forwarded by the West Coast settlers protesting against the administration of the native reserves: —To the Hon Mr Ward. Sib, —I have not seen the petition itself, but I could not read the text as it is reported in the Taranaki newspapers without a feeling of shaflie that any body of men, calling themselves settlers of New Zealand should expect the Legislature to listen patiently to the proposals of the petition. The principle of the " West Coast Settlement Reserves Act, 1892," is an administration as entirely in the interests of the beneficiaries as if those beneficiaries, all of whom are called native owners, were not natives, except that to the lessees whose leases were granted before the Act was passed, a few concessions are authorised by way of a compromise of the difficulties and disputes which were the legacy of the past. The trust property is the private property of the natives, but the petitioners do not appear to realise this fact, or are supposing that the rights of private property belonging to other persons than natives should not be extended to the property of natives. If these petitioners were the tenants of the private property of a colonist, the idea of such a petition as they have made would appear preposterously unjust even to themselves. They would not then expect more than they should be entitled to by their leases, and could never claim with any decent propriety the right to insist that the terms and conditions of the tenancy should be dictated by themselves. The colonist, or his trustee, would regard any such demand as outrageous, which it might not ba to the interest of the property to concede, and would answer, •' I can, in the interests of my trust and consistently with my obligatbus, offer the land on these terms. You are free to take it or leave it. If you take it I shall carry out my contract and I shall keep you to yours." The petition is for legislation to authorise a wholesale spoliation of the private property in land belonging to one race of the inhabitants of the country. If a proposal like this could be en*, tertained for a moment, if it should not be scouted as an insult to our sense of justice and to our conception of what should be the character of our legislation, all hope would be destroyed in the native race of any security in our laws for their vested rights —of any protection to their property. I am commenting on 'the petition only as far as it may'pray for legislation. The petitioners doubtless know that any proceedings to attack my administration of the trust would fail, and they are asking that the law may therefore be altered. If such a petition were to come respecting the property of persons not of the native race, the inference might be that the petitioners had reason to suppose that their grievance of having no just claims under the law would be redressed by the amendment of the law. The force of all law would be destroyed by granting the prayer of such petitions as this. The statement that the natives are in accord with the petition, and are signing it, must surely be made on the assumption that we have forgotten that the motive for setting up the trust was the necessity of protecting the natives from those acts of their own by which, when they are left to deal freely with their own land, that land invariably passes out of their possession. I wonder that the petitioners should have been so shortsighted as to propose to furnish in the signatures of concurring natives another example of the prudence of the protection which the trust affords them. The wrongs done and attempted in the past on the signatures of natives are too notorious to require more than allusion.

I do hope for the sake of our common morality that this petition will be rejected with indignation. J. K. Warburtok. Public Trustee.