THE NATIVE LAND BILL

Observer, Volume 6, Issue 152, 11 August 1883, Page 3

THE NATIVE LAND BILL

" Womeu and land are the causes of all • trouble," says an ancient Maori proverb. There is more terse truth in this than any similar proverb in the Anglo-Saxon language that we know of. From time immemorial, land has been the great element of disturbance among the Maori tribes. They came here as conquerors, and established and maintained their title to the 3oil by " The good old rule, the simple plan, That they should take who have the pow§r, And they should keep who can." There are some who believe that had we maintained our footing in New Zealand in the same i way, we should have smoothed away many of the difficulties that arose in after times — that though ] colonisation might have been somewhat slower at first, once having got root, it would have developed without serious interruption to its growth. At all events, the Maori would have understood it, and there would hive been a clear issue raised. But this subject does not come within, the scope of the present article.

• .«. Among a race possessed of no material wealth ! save rude implements of war, of hunting, fishing, ! primitive agriculture, and slaves, land naturally ! acquired a high value ; and with no well-defined i boundaries or written titles, and a complicated and fluctuating system of ownership, disputes about land were a fruitful and constant cause of strife and bloodshed. In combination with a fierce delight in war, the Maoris were imbued with an intense love of the soil. It was their " Mother," the source of everything they possessed. Yet they opened their arms to welcome the first pioneers of European civilisation, gave them liberal grants of land, and on the whole th© two race 3 lived in friendship and harmony. But when a form of Government was established, and the British ensign floated in the breeze over a" commanding stockade, garrisoned by red-coated soldiers, the Maoris fancied they saw in the new order of things a menace to their territorial manor. The missionaries had taught them to read the Bible, and they knew the story of Naboth's vineyard by heart. «

Later still, when they saw vast areas bought by the Government for a mere bagatelle, and resold at a profit of a hundredfold, they grew discontented, suspicious, and hostile. They saw colonisation advancing like an overwhelmning flood, sending out little, thin rivulets into the heart of the country, which widened into mighty streams, uniting with the main waters, and repeating the process. They saw that the foot of the white man never receded, that his grasp never relaxed, that the strangers came and increased like the sandflies in summer. Realising his danger, the Maori flung himself with the fatalism of an Oriental against the torrent, and strove to stem it, only to be swept back bruised and bleeding, while the flood, gathering more strength from, having been temporarily pent up, sped onwards as resistless as destiny. The Maoris realised that they were face to face with a new power, and ohanged tkeir tactics. They banded themselves together in organisations like the Land League and the King Movement, established aulcaiis, and endeavoured to dam back the advancing tide. They might a& well have followed the example of Canute, and bade the waves of the sea stand still. Within ! those very organisations were the elements of j their own dissolution. Hunger and greed are | ever stronger than sentiment or even patriotism, [ in spite of the dreams of romances and poems. I The Maoris had tasted the flesh-pots of Egypt;, | and they hungered for more. They had acquired new habits and appetites. Civilisation was forcing them into new grooves. But in exchange for the gifts of civilisation they had nothing to b.arter but their lands. Naturally indolent, their industry was spasmodic; naturally improvident, j they asked like the Spaniard, "Who has seea to-morrow ?" '* Let us eat and drink and b? I merry, for to-morrow we die." . t

r o . /£ ! They sold their lands to the highest b^raiSoften sold them many times over, and genevsSgfir | contrived tq>.pbtain what to them was fair com- ! penaation for what they could not use, and wßuld not use if they could ; They sold land to the Government andpithe speeulator — to both if they couldjdSpd, having spent the proceeds, either tried" to ;rep§Siate the bargain, or put forward fresh claimaitg who might have dropped fronv fehei skies, for jail knowledge of their pVe.vioua existence, ; And jail this.. time the GtovewMneat, by ita own Taeill^tion and . make^shift expedientg.

ihiew the whole system of land-purchase into confusion- and chaoe, and opened the door to fraud and chicanery. At one time it entered into, fierce competition ■with private purchasers, tent hordes of agents to scatter "ground-bait," an<l gave a fictitious value to native land ; at 'another, it resumed the pre-emptive right, drove all ' competitors out of the market, constituted itself a large privileged monopolist, and arbitrarily fixed its own price; and anon it precipitately retired from the field, tightened its purse-strings, and invited private purchasers to carry on the T^ork which it confessed itself unable or unwilling to perform, for want of those very funds which it had. wasted in lavish, indiscriminate, and foolish speculations.

— *- But no sooner had theße private purchasers invested large sums of money in a business which the Government had declared legitimate, and become involved in the tedious and vexatious machinery which the Government had interposed between buyer and seller, than the Ministry — taking alarm at some breeze of popular clamour, more- noisy than real — suddenly changed front, and at one fell stroke, swept away from private purchasers the fruits of their labour and capital. One Ministry, seiSed with a Budden zeal, would make a bid for popularity by the announcement of a grand cut-and-dried scheme of settlement ; ' the succeeding Ministry, bent on economy and retrenchment, would discover that the schemes of their predecessors had resulted in an extravagant fiasco, and there would be a complete bouleverseinent. This game of see-saw has characterised the policy of successive Ministries ever since the first establishment of Responsible Government in New Zealand. To the Maori mind, however, these constantly -recurring revolutions were inexplicable, distracting, and irritating. The natives found no stable market. They were bandied about like shuttle - cocks between the Government and private purchasers. They were mere pawns in the game of party politics. At one moment the Native Minister of the day warned them to shun the private purchaser as a greedy cormorant ; the next, it handed him over to the tender mercies of that voracious bird as a friend and saviour.

_-^ — When Codlin Bryce came into office he warned the natives against Sheehan, the dissimulating Short. Codlin was to make straight the crooked ' paths of the Native Land Purchase Department. .and Native Office, and very soon there was to be no Native Office at all. It was to abolish its own raison d'etre, and perform the happy despatch so soon as it had accomplished its self-imposed task of establishing a comprehensive system of " sympathetic accord" between the two race 6, with one law for the European and the Maori. Mr Bryce ushered in these beneficent reforms with a grand flourish of trumpets. The Land Purchase system "' had broken down, collapsed with its own weight. Henceforth the Maori owner and the private purchaser wore to deal face to face, while the Government joined their hands, and pronounced a paternal blessing. Mr Bryce retired from the negotiations for the purchase of the Patetere Block, and invited private speculators to step in, merely etipulating with his customery hardfistednesa for re-imbnrsement of Government advances. _ -a — '.

But either the old Adam of vacillation, or Mr Bryce's keen business instinct, soon re-asserted it6elf. Traffic in native land was too tempting a bait to a Government which aimed above all things at a surplus in its budget. Mr Bryce began by nibbling at certain small blocks on the West Coast, and having whetted his appetite, issued a sweeping proclamation shutting up from settlement three-quarters of a million acres in the Rotorua District, and obstructing a great colonial work, designed to foster and develop the resources of the country. Having thus swallowed his former professions, Mr Bryce is troubled with no scruples about going the whole hog. He now proposes in his Native Land Laws Amendment Bill, not only to perpetuate that Native Department which he declared it was his mission to abolish ; but to create another large department, a strange monster, half Maori dry-nurse, half cormorant — which must continue to live, and to be fed, aa long as there remains a single acre of Maori land unsold. He proposes to^ interdict under severe penalties all private dealings with native land, not merely until the title has been ascertained and individualised, bxit until " a day to be fixed by the Governor by proclamation in the Gazette? such day to be " not less than 30 days after publication of the proclamation, and within sis months after the issue of the certificate of title."

But the Government expressly places itself outside any restrictions, and thus gives itself a clear start of six months over private purchasers — six months of pre-emptive right—during which it may manipulate the natives as it pleases, and, •with a view to render its position all the more impregnable, it gets all the lawyers out of the way. It can dictate its own terms to the natives, and may so fix the sittings of the Land Courts as to play into its own hands. Our experience of the natives, if it has taught us one thing more <jlearly than another, has shown this — that above and beyond all their natural suspicion, they are imbued with a deep and irreconcilable suspicion of the Government in the matter of land purchase, and "would far rather prefer to deal directly with private purchase™. Of course, at present the natives know little or nothing of the Bill. It has never been circulated, co that there could be no opportunity of pronouncing nn opinion upon it. It has bcon J<ept back, and only launched at a late period of the session, to ";-be, 'forced through, by the foregone >otesof an ig^eaient majority. But we venture to predict what "should the Bill pass — and if it does our deserve a reception like thai, of Priestley at Onehunga — when the natives awake to a realisation of their position, bound hand and foot as they will be to a Government monopoly — they will be excited to a p^oh^psspe^ation. 1 ' "y^Hr- "-" "

\Cfne or two other immea||f#k, results also fl^' from this precious measnrie// Ifc wilt plaea ih%'iiiture progress of settlement in the" North ■—^wifllgi nti trh * fivfvv of the^bvernment of the

which controls the Government. Mr Bryoe may be actuated by a spirit of pure benevolence towards Auckland; but who knows that, with his inability to appreciate the " aesthetic " tastes of the people, he may not regard it as for our advantage that our eestheticism should be effectually checked for the next decade or so by keeping the native lands in this part of the North Island in a primitive state of wilderness ? In such a ease we might express our feelings somewhat in the language of the man who exclaimed : — " Of coTn-ae, it was right to dissemble your love, Bat why did you kick me down stairs P"