PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 1881.

Patea Mail, 8 March 1881, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 1881.

SCHEMES OF OCCUPATION. What can be done with the Parihaka Block ? That coast belt of open land is an empty wilderness of survey pegs and flax. Settlers won’t look on the Parihaka sections with a favorable eye. New Plymouth has taken charge of that district. Its public men petitioned to have the sale of the Parihaka land, and they succeeded in selling not a single acre, nor even getting a bid. Not so much as a section on deferred payment was taken up. We do not join in the sneer that the fault lay with New Plymouth. It would be more reasonable to say that, under the most favorable conditions, including the special patronage of New Plymouth, the Parihaka sections will not sell. There must be a reason for this. The Parihaka block is of a lighter quality than the Plains, though perhaps as good as most land in the New Plymouth district. It is also too near to the centre of native disaffection to tempt settlers with families. For these reasons some other inducement should be thrown in. Looking at the lightness of soil, and at the special risk to life and property, or those frequent alarms more distressing than actual attack, the price for that land was too high. In a political aspect, the price was absurdly impracticable. The question of price should be secondary to the question of settlement. What the district needs, what the colony wants, is the assurance of peace on this Coast, without the cost of maintaining an army here for an indefinite time. The whole of the Parihaka block, at the prices fixed, would not equal the cost of the A.C. force for six mouths’ occupation. The Government are purchasing that block twice over every year, by keeping an army there. If peace be assured on the Parihaka block, it will be assured all along the Coast. Parihaka is the root of the cancer.

It would pay the Government to have the Parihaka coast settled at a nominal price. Offer it at 5 s to 10s an acre, partly for cash, partly to deferred payment selectors, with compulsory residence as a make-weight for the low price. That would be cheaper, more effectual, and more beneficial to all interests, than the otherwise necessary occupation by Armed Constabulary. So long as the

Parihaka district remains entirely in native hands, a wilderness practically abandoned to them, so long will it be necessary to maintain an army of observation. The colony must pay for that at least £60,000 a year. The A.C.’s have been on this Coast about twenty months since the Maori ploughing brought thorn here in haste, and the cost to the colony cannot have averaged less than five thousand pounds a month —say a total of one hundred thousand pounds to this date. The Plains have been sold, and have not fetched that amount in cash. The A.C. force has swallowed the whole value ol the Plains, with the Parihaka block thrown in as an after-snack. And wc are to go on paying these brave fellows at the same rate till our governing politicians, under the advice of Mr Parris, try the experiment of occupying the Parihaka coast with an army that shall cost them nothing. The Government are making another attempt to sell that land at £2 to £5 an acre. When this attempt has failed, may we hope that our governors will come down to common facts, and try to understand this Parihaka question from the settler’s point of view ? May we hope also they will see the every-day wisdom of exchanging a cheap army of occupation for a force of brave idlers costing £60,000 a year ?