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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 155, 12 June 1884, Page 2

The following is an outline of the Bill pre-i pared to ba introduced by Mr. Bryce to regulate dealing with Native lands:—From a given date all dealings between native owners and private individuals or companies for the purchase of native lands are to cease. Title is to be ascertained as at present, and that being done, the owners, or a majority of them, as we have already stated, can call on the Waste Lands Board to sell. The land will then be cut up into sections and dealt with in the same manner as Crown lands are dealt with, and the price, after deducting expenses, will be partly paid over to the natives in cash, and parfly made good tc them in annuities. Although private persons and companies will be debarred from purchasing directly from the natives, the Government will retain that power. The main obstacle to the success of the proposed Bill is that at the present moment there is a disposition on the part of some of the leading chiefs to keep their lands out of the market. For a long time past Major Kemp has bent all his energies to convince his followers that it is unwise-to part with any of the land. He is ably seconded by a council entirely devoted to him. Quite recently he met Wahanui, and it is said that the latter approved of what was being done. But this indisposition to part with the land tells with as much force against direct purchase by private individuals or by the Government as it does against a system under which the Wast Land Boards would become, as it were, the agents for the native sellers. It is clear that under any system which is at all likely to be adopted in New Zealand, the willingness of the natives to sell, must be a condition precedent to the acquisition of land for European settlements. The Legislature will use no compulsion, or will consider that the limit in that direction has been reached when the right of deciding that a sale shall take place has been given, in each case, to a majority of the owners. The sudden stoppage of the right of direct purchase of land from the natives would be a grave act of injustice to persons engaged in negotiations, unless provision were made for the protection of their interests. When speaking last session of the difficulties of resuming the pre-emptive right, Mr. Bryce said :—“ A great many purchases, some nearly complete and others not so complete, and some just initiated, have been properly and carefully made by Europeans. Now, it would never do—it would be the greatest injustice—to set aside those claims without considerations. All those cases would have to be considered, and a Commission would have to be issued for the purpose of considering and dealing justly with them ; and I venture to say that a more difficult task has never been imposed upon any Commission than that would jjrove to be.” The passing of the Bill which will be introduced in the course of this session would bring about exactly the state of affairs thus described by the Native Minister, but we have the best authority for saying that although he still recognises the necessity of protecting the interests of those engaged in lawful negotiations for the purchase’of native lands, he has abandoned the idea of a Commission. The Bill throws on Native Land Courts the duty of dealing with such cases, and sufficiently wide powers are given to enable the Judge to make a fair settlement. The tendency of the Bill is not so restrictive as at first forshadoweJ by the Government, and does not go to the extent of pre-emption. Taken as a whole with its provisions quickly and proper administered, might prove a powerful measure in promoting settlement and secure to the natives the actual market value of their lands and to purchasers a secure title free from the black-mailing of intriguing solicitors, and bogus philanthropical land companies.