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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 915, 5 February 1881, Page 4

The Native Land Court proceedings are being watched with intense interest. The application made in Pouawa may be taken to be a test case as to whether the Natives are to be allowed to utilise their surplus lands or not. It is not surprising that the presiding Judges should feel deeply anxious that every step should be sound, so that after their decision there should be no room for doubt. The applicants in this are at one with the Judges. A false step wonld be fatal. The Judges have made their award partitioning this block into two aggregate allotments ; the one, a few hundred acres in extent, representing the interests in the block of the few dissentients, and also those peculiar interests of minors which the law has created, as it would seem, with little other object than to embarass the conveyancer; the second allotment represents tha interests of the greater body of the owners who have vested their several interests in Trustees. The second application then before the Court is that the Trustees shall receive an order to hold thegreatareaof the block, some 18,000 acres, in terms of the Act of 1873, in freehold tenure. This order being granted, a Crown grant follows. The Court, however, is in doubt whether it can recognise a conveyance to Trustees as a boua fide purchase, meaning thereby a purchase for valuable consideration ; also, whether it has power, under the eleventh section of the Act of 1878 read in connection with the Act of 1873, to make an order, vestinan estate in freehold tenure in the majority of owners, in purchasers in freehold tenure. These points of law the Court desires to be instructed upon by the Supreme Court, being outside its own peculiar province. A case, stating these few points, has been submitted for the approval of three Judges, and we understand will go to Wellington to-day, when it is hoped that, in view of the necessitated suspension of business in the Native Land Court, that the Supreme Court will at once give its decision upon the points submitted.