LAND OFFICE.

Patea Mail, 25 September 1880, Page 2

LAND OFFICE.

Tiik West Coast Land District is to be administered without a Land Board. All the powers, functions, and duties usually vested in a Land Board are vested in the Commission of Crown Lands for the said district. The Commissioner is Mr C. A. Wray, R. M., resident at Patea; and ho is to administer the West Coast Land District subject to the approval and direction of the Minister of Lands. The West Coast presents a political problem which can be solved only in one way, that of opening the land to a white population. The natives are a small unit, and may be made troublesome or not according to their treatment by the Government. Is it not palpable, by this time, that the more the natives are “ managed ” by official pakehas, the more troublesome they become ? If the Government would abolish the Native Department, and leave the Maoris alone, these children of nature would come to their senses. They have boon protected and coddled until the native question is become a standing nuisance. Let the Government push on settlement by making roads and settling blocks, and the few natives on this coast will soon cease to be of any account. They need no separate organisation for managing them. They have their reserves, which are so ample that every native may have a secured income as a landlord if they lease to pakehas such portions as are of no use to Maoris. Leasing should bo allowed to go on in natural course, under conditions as to renewals which would prevent scheming lessees from pauperising their landlords.

What this Coast needs is roads. The native question can be abolished only by a road policy. It may bo said that Mr Bryce has now a machinery in his hand which will enable him to extinguish the native question with the least friction. We should put it in this way: Leave the natives alone, push on road-making through all surveyed blocks, sell the sections to create a revenue, and leave the rest to time. A vigorous policy of road-making and settlement would so change this West Coast within five years as to make it another Canterbury, with vastly greater advantages of soil and climate. The new Land Office can do all this. If the Commissioner and the Minister justify their autocratic power in land administration by silently working with wise energy, the people on this Coast will be well satisfied to leave the new machinery to be worked through the Minister at Wellington and his deputy here. Failing these results, a change must follow speedily ; and that change would bo in the direction of a popularly elected Land Board, with a policy controlled by the people. The plan is on trial, and must abide the issue.