OUR LANDED GENTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 47, 17 August 1911, Page 4

OUR LANDED GENTRY.

Some little pity is lavished on the diminishing Maori race, and there are plenty of touching stories told of the landlessness and poverty of some Maoris, the wickedness of the pakeha in his dealings with the native, and so on. The presumption seems to he that native owners should he awarded better protection than pakeha owners, and that, as Mr. Justice Edwards remarked the other day, New Zealand will be permitted to produce a "Maori landed aristocracy." The State knows, and the Maori knows, and we know that the Maori's salvation as a people lies in work. The great Maori landholders, like the lilies of the field, "toil not, neither do they spin," and the excessively complicated nature of the Maori interest makes it difficult to even tax the big, lazy landholder adequately. Most of the landed aristocrats acquired their holdings without a struggle and have not the slightest difficulty in sustaining a big rent roll with the aid of the pakeha. The big Maori landholder is not a good citizen. He does not help the progress of the country. Tie spends none of his easily accumulated money for the advance of roading, railroading or cultivation. Although it is pretended he is a communist who materially aids his poorer brother, he does not do so, except in a few cases in a perfectly futile and useless way by such hospitality that does but increase the Maori sin of laziness. The pakeha helps the poor Maori because he is obliged to. The rich Maori should be made to toe the mark in this regard. The rich Maori becomes the landlord to the pakeha, and the pakeha, if he is a good pakeha, works hard and improves the Maori's land, gets it roaded, and adds to the Maori's banking account while the brown aristocrat simply squanders the proceeds. It is inevitable in the future that the Maori lands must be closely settled, and almost wholly by the pakeha, and it is equitable that the land now lying rusting or leased in large grazing areas should be alienated to the Government and the Maori owner left with enough to make it necessary for him to work it, or lose, it. The bulk of the Maoris will not work if there is a chance of avoiding it, and the way in which much of their land is held makes it unnecessary for them to do anything hut collect rents and to live on the pakeha. If it were possible to get the average Maori to do the same amount of work as the average pakeha must perform to keep himself from applying for charitable aid, there would be no talk of the decay of the race. The "Maori landed aristocrat" is a menace to his race, although he may not recognise it, and he ought to be its leader and emancipator, for he has brains and ability to be just a? good a man physically and intellectually as tke best of the pakehas.