HOW TO SETTLE PATETERE.

Patea Mail, 16 December 1880, Page 3

HOW TO SETTLE PATETERE.

The Waikato Mail having written against the purchasers of the Patetere block, about 80 of the settlers in tinneighbourhood of Cambridge signed a letter which appears in its advertising columns and is couched in the following terms :—“ To the Editor of the Waikato Mail.—Sir, the undersigned settlers and residents of the Cambridge district entirely dissent from much that has of late appeared in the columns of your paper, more especially that relating to the Government and their notification re their intention to withdraw the proclamation from the Patetere district. Their seven years’ negotiations have resulted in an utter failure from a settlement point of view. They have spent £14,000, only a few hundred pounds of which have reached the native owners. For this £14,000 and their seven years’ labour they have got nothing, not an acre of the 250,000, nominally under their negotiations having been surveyed or passed through the Native Lands Court by them. These facts alone prove the incompetency of any Government to deal successfully in Native lands, and arc an ample justification of the demand of the taxpayers of the Colony, that the Government should summarily desist from all Native land purchases. The immediate occupation of this large tract of Maori King country by hundreds of small settlements under the Patetere Land Settlements Company, or some kindred association, would in our opinion be most beuefical to the best interests of the colony, and tend greatly to the material prosperity of this Provincial Dictrict. Will you be good enough to publish this letter, with the signatures attached, that the outside public may know what are the views on this subject j of those living on the spot.