THE NEW ZEALAND LAND AGITATION.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 1014, 20 December 1881, Page 4

THE NEW ZEALAND LAND AGITATION.

Rightly or wrongly, the public mind has been somewhat exercised by the recent letters and telegrams from New Zealand. The letters have been giving an account of a land agitation among the “ cockatoos,” the telegrams of the progress of Te Whitt’s movements at Parihaka. The former, if true, regarded as at least as serious as the latter. This is how the “ cockatoo ” agitation is summarised for the readers of the Daily News For many years the governing power has been pretty much ■in the bauds of the squatters. They are monopolists, and have legislated in favour of their own monopoly, the fencing ordinances and impounding •ordinances all being traces of the disposition to favor the large holders at the expense ef the small ones. Even the Road Boards were used with that end in view. Practical result —a dozen owners in one district (South Canterbury,) share no less than 437,000 acres of freehold land between them. Reform demanded—let large laudowners pay towards the taxation -of the Colony something proportionate to what these estates would have produced had they been settled by population.

The view taken of the Parihaka •difficulty does not greatly differ in the different newspapers which have discussed it. The Times looks forward to the inevitable decay of the Maoris. The Daily News hopes that diplomacy ■will do something to keep the difficulty from becoming" one of bloodshed. The following communication in the St. James’s -Gazette, signed “ Pakeha Maori,” seems to contain the best colonial information. It is a reply to the view of the situation taken in that independent journal ::—-“I think,” ■writes Pakeha, “in your article you have somewhat exaggerated the difficulty with the Maoris of Parihaka, -and the power of Te Whiti to disturb the peace of New Zealand. Te Whiti’s influence is very partial ■ and slender among his- own countrymen—neither has he nor his doctrines been accepted by the great body of the independent Maoris in the interior even as a prophet, much less as a leader. He not even the chief of any tribe, but only a, wild talking man, crazed with a belief in his mission—a kind of smaller ■* Williams ’ with a single conscience, or more fanatical Parnell, with the difference that very few believe in him. Of the 40,000 Maoris in New Zealand, of whom practically all are in the Northern Island, a very large proportion, probably the majority, are perfectly well affected to the English settlers, and certainly are too far enlightened to cherish the extravagant notion that the islands are theirs, or that the land of New Zealand belongs to them. The true head of what may be called the still independent Maori tribes —namely, the representatives of those who fought against us in the last two wars—is Tawhiao, the titular Maori King, who has nothing to do ■with any land disputes at Taranaki, who has repudiated Te Whiti and his teaching, and who by all latest accounts is just now in an unusually amiable and Pacific frame of mind towards the British Government. As the volunteer force of New Zealand now muster 3133 men, including 770 cavalry and '950 artillerymen, who are really a militia better trained and organised than our own, there is no reason to fear that any disturbance arising out ef the land disputes on the West Coast will lead to a Maori war. The colonists are perfectly right in denying that there is any native question -at all; and certainly, if there should be one, they are thoroughly well able to settle it without any assistance from England, either in the shape of material force or moral exhortation.” And that is the extent to which the •discussion has been carried here.