3

G.—2.

admitted by " aroha," or love. In cases not infrequent the family or liapu of one groat chief would own more in a particular block of land than a majority of all the owners made up thus of slaves, dependents, and owners by " aroha." In most purchases it is, as a matter of course, the people, who own little or nothing in the land, that first sell; but, notwithstanding this, the tendency of the Native Land Court has been, in cases of subdivision, to make all the owners equal, and this although Act after Act has been passed by the Assembly declaring that the owners of Native land shall not be held to be equal. Harsh as is the Act of 1873 by reason of this habit of treating owners as equal, yet another injury which it inflicts upon the Maori owners is still more harsh. Although there might be three hundred owners in a block, yet directly a European who desires to obtain it receives a'few signatures to a lease, he enters and takes possession. This is often done in defiance of the wishes of an immense majority of the owners. These owners cannot turn the European off by force, because they would be prosecuted and punished by law; nor can any Court turn him off by legal process, inasmuch as he can plead the leave and license of some of the owners ; indeed, for this purpose the permission of one out of five hundred would be sufficient. Once having possession of the land, the European, by various means and through the instrumentality of Maori agents and interpreters, would easily increase the number of signatures upon his lease, and by-and-by commence to purchase, for a few pounds or a small supply of stores or spirits, interest in the freehold itself. In this way, scarcely paying any rent for the use of the land, the European can, from the profits derived from its occupation, purchase the freehold from individual after individual until, having at length thus obtained a majority of owners to the deed of sale, the purchaser is able to apply to the Native Land Court and obtain a title in fee-simple to a great part of the block so occupied. It must not, however, be thought that the evil effects of the law descended only upon the Maoris. The great principles on which a system of land transfer fitted to the genius and wants of a civilized people must rest, are : (1) Certainty of title ; (2) facility of subdivision ; (3) simplicity of transfer; (4) promptness of completion; (5) economy of cost. So far as these requisites are fulfilled and no farther is the public welfare secured. In the same ratio as these principles are contravened, the public welfare is neglected and injured. It is not asserting too much to say that, under " The Native Lands Act, 1873," and other Acts now in force, everyone of these conditions is broken. If a system had been desired which should embody principles diametrically opposed to those here laid down, no human ingenuity could have devised a more successful scheme than that which has for so many years been the law of this colony upon the subject of Native lands. It would bo tiresome to wade through examples and illustrations of the statement here made. It is sufficient to say that the endless expense and anxiety borne by would-be purchasers; the records of every sitting of the Native Land Court; the petitions to and debates in every Parliament; the cause lists of every Supreme Court in the North Island ; the columns of every newspaper ; tbe long catalogues of crime and debauchery and shame, which are matters of history, show all too plainly that the whole course of legislation and procedure upon this subject has been a-gigantic failure. And the results have been commensurate with their causes. The Natives have been degraded. The chiefs and leaders, who had both power and will to guard their people, have been tied hand and foot by our laws, and with bitter hearts have stood hopelessly by, seeing their tribes debauched and plundered under the protection of the law. Nor has the dominant race escaped. Nothing has done so much to lower the tone of public and private life in New Zealand as tho trafficking in Native lands. The public generally have suffered. It has been impossible for the great mass of the people to obtain any share in the scramble for the lands of the Maori. All dealing in that line has been a close monopoly. A few great fortunes have been made, and a few great estates obtained, but at a cost to the Natives and to the community as a whole which can never be known. Trade has languished, the progress of districts has been delayed, and in a thousand ways tho public have been made to suffer. In vain has Parliament year after year passed laws to protect the Natives. At this day the same things are being repeated boldly in the open day. And so until the Natives are enabled by law to deal tribally with their lands will it continue to be. The only effort ever made to reduce the settlement of Native lands to a fair and just system has been attacked almost throughout the colony as a monstrous scheme of robbery, and those who, in common with myself, have attempted by it to obtain justice for the Natives, have been accused, often by those who ought to have known better, of evil and selfish designs. I will take one actual case in illustration : A block of land of 4,500 acres is passed through the Native Land Court. There are found in it 106 owners. This block, we will say, is within a stone's throw of the Gisborne Post Office. How is it possible to deal with this land, or parts of it ? No one man, nor any number less than all, can sell or lease a single acre of it, for no one piece belongs to one more than to another. But let us suppose an impossibility, and say that all consent to cut it up into lots of from one acre to fifty or a hundred acres, which would, in truth, be greatly beneficial to the district. It would be found that practically they could not do it. Then after surveys and wranglings innumerable, each deed must be signed by every Native, must be interpreted, taken before the Trust Commissioner, and then before the Native Land Court. Before all these processes were complete, the expenses of the conveyances would far more than equal the value of the land to be dealt with. But no such case has ever occurred ; nor can the Natives use the land themselves ; for here again all would have to consent and to be bound, which, in reality, could never happen. The only way left open is to lease or sell the land as a wjjole. Here, again, difficulties, delays, vexations, expense, and perpetual annoyances are met at every step, until, in nine cases out of ten, the lessee or purchaser, like Job, curses the day which gave him birth. How easily might all this be remedied. If the tribal owners were made a quasi-corporate body, with a committee and a seal, all the. difficulties would at once vanish. The land could, by the decision of a certain majority, be cut up by the committee, and all sales or leases, made in private or public, could be effectuated by the committee, and the seal under the cognizance of the Native Land