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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1128, 21 August 1882, Page 2

The Hon. Me Bryce’s Native Reserves Bill meets with much deprecation at hands politi cal and causes no small alarm in circles where the subdivision of Native Lands is a leading topic of interest. To us in Poverty Bay it must necessarily be so, our stujJp of credit aii.l commerce laying as it docs in the vast extent of Native L-nuts in the district. Any attempt to place obstacles in the road of rub division must, therefore, he neutfitiarlly antagonists* to our interest*. mid nni>t be

met and overcome wherever appearance of it is made. The Native Reserves Bill would give to the Government the power of declaring every acre of land owned by Natives within the Colony a reserve, and therefore inalienable, thus at once destroying the staple value of the district and relegating it to a position of comparative unimportance from which it can never recover. If this Bill is carried we are at the mercy of the Native Minister and his colleagues, who have declared themselves inimical to the alienation of Native Lands except by reversion to the old practice, viz., of intermediate purchase by the Government. We have neither time nor space to go deeply into the matter to-day, but if the few words we have written should be sufficient to call public attention to the brink on which we are standing, and provoke discussion oi\t of wlrch may arise energetic 8C *o'l in the m?. ~2 , we shall not have written in vain. In our opinion it would be well if the question of declaring further reserves were left, under the final sanction of the Native Minister, to local bodies. There can be no doubt that what suits Poverty Bay can only be made approximately to suit such lands as the Mokau and King Country, which may possibly soon come under the Courts. The question needs thorough ventilation.