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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 148, 4 June 1884, Page 2

TO THE ELECTORS OF EAST COAST. Gentlemen, —Permit me to take this opportunity of addressing you upon the Native land question. The question that above all others so affects this electorate, and indeed the whole of the North Island. The policy of the Government is, as you are aware, to reserve the right of Pre-emption over Native lands. Upon this important question, Mr. Locke, one of the candidates contesting the honor of representing this district in Parliament, expressed himself as follows to the electors of Gisborne, on the 26th May, just passed (aide P. B. Herald, 27th May,) “Mr. Locke wished to explain in reference to Mr. Sheehan’s remarks. The Pre-emptive Right question was down in his notes but it had escaped him. He did not consider the Preemptive Right should be resumed over any lands which had not been dealt with or on which money had been paid. It was another question as to whether it should ba applied to the King country for a few years, as none of the lands had been dealt with there.” (The italics are mine.) There are many hundreds of thousands of acres of land belonging to Natives along the East Coast. Between Wairoa, Gisborne, and the Nuhaka district there are about three hundred thousand acres of Native land which have not been dealt with, and upon which money has not been paid, these lands are to be adjudicated upon at the first sitting of the Native Land Court at the Wairoa, Tologa Bay, and other places in this district, and I ask the electors of the East Coast, and Wairoa in particular, how can