RETURN OF MAORIS TO WAIKATO.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 930, 8 June 1878, Page 2

RETURN OF MAORIS TO WAIKATO.

Sir, — It is usual where one has a grievance, however alight, to fly at once to the " Editor " for consolation. I have one now m common, I conceive, with my neighbours. Some seven or eight years ago I was told by one who ought to have known, and evidently did know, that it was the intention of the then Government to discourage settlement on. the Waipa with a view to giving as much of the land as they could back to the natives. I disbelieved him then, not thinking that even a New Zealand Government could lend itself to so disreputable a policy. Facts, however, have fully borne out my informant's theory. The district has been systematically kopt back all these years through the want of roads, n» general Government money ever being available to help the unfortunate settler m the endeavour to get something like a road through the district. The surburban lands about the town of Ngaruawahia have been held up for years where they might have been sold to advantage to settlors who would have been s* credit to the district. Some of the choicest portions have already been given away to some of the rankest rebels among rank Hauhaus upon conditions they never offered to keep ; and now, after all these years of waiting, the long watched for prize is most rudely snatched away as a means to the carrying out of the more than questionable policy of settling Maoris amongst a European population : a policy that was conceived by the late Sir Donald McLean, whose measures were so freely condemned — and lightly — by the very men who now would carry out his scheme. lam an admirer of Sir George Grey, but am not one of those who allow the " king can do no wrong." In this instance I say he is doing this district a great and grievous wrong m proposing to settle Maoris — especially rebels - amongst the whites. Apart from the injury it doe s the district m the market, it is a direct injustice to those settlers who have lived here all these years — grabbing on and improving their farms and the district generally — for the benefit to be reaped by a parcel of scrubby savages. It has been my misfortune to live surrounded by friendly natives for the last twelve years, and nothing bat the direst necessity oould ever make me do it again for one quarter of that period. There is nothing m common with the two races, and as a mixture they are a decided mistake. If the good of the country necessitates the Maoris having more land, give it them where tKey are not likely to be a nuisance and a perpetual blister to the pakeha. I hope you will excuse this long and somewhat rambling letter, Tmt it is upon a .subject about which I feel very strongly, and I feel sure that a very great wrong is about to be done the district. — I am, sir, A Waipa Farmer. ♦