The Telephone WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE POVERTY BAY STANDARD. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 246, 27 September 1884, Page 2

The Telephone WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE POVERTY BAY STANDARD. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27.

The Native Land Biil introduced by Mr. Wi Pere can never become law. It would be open to the greatest abuses. Experience has shown that committees are not to be trusted, and where a few are entrusted with the power of handling money or the disposal of land, the bulk of the owners are robbed. It is occurring every day in this district. Nearly all the leases of Native lands appoint a certain number of the owners as a committee, called “ Receivers of Rent,” to simplify matters with lessee and lessors. The functions of these

receivers is to receive the rent when due and distribute it among other owners of the land. We do not know of one single case wherein these receivers have honestly fulfilled their functions. The rent is received by them and appropriated to their own purposes, and the law does not assist the other owners to recover it again. In the Acts of 1866 and 1867 valuable lands were vested in committees of ten owners, the power being given invariably abused, the land squandered by the ten, and the large number of outside confiding owners ro >bed of their heritage. In the dealings with the N. Z. Native Land Settlement Co. we have the latest evidence of the untrustworthiness of these committees, valuable blocks being absolutely squandered without the possibility of retreiving a pennyworth of the lost estates, which have passed into the hands of morgagees, consumed by accumulation of interest and expenses. The proposal to appoint jive assessors to sit with one Judge is preposterous. The Judge would simply be a nonentity and entirely powerless. The present system of only one assessor is found to work badly, he often being under the influence of outside pressure or bribery. The Bill is a most impudent piece of jobbery, aiming at an unwarrantable power over lands for ulterior objects best known to Mr. Wi Pere and his coadjutors. The only just and proper course is to frame a law to enable every individual Native owner of land to define his interest by some inexpensive means, and to give them a Crown grant for what they possess, leaving them free to dispose of it, thus placing them on an equal footing with Europeans. The communistic title to lands should be extinguished for ever. The resumption of pre-emption by Government would be far preferable to such a mischievous measure as that of Wi Pere, who has his own objects in view, and has not proved a trustworthy guardian of his people’s estates. We are not prepared to deny the adage “ Out of evil good may come,” but we cannot see much good in such an Act as this, admitting the source from whence it comes.