The Wrongs of the Native Race.

Maori Record : a journal devoted to the advancement of the Maori people, Volume I, Issue 5, 1 November 1905, Page 6

The Wrongs of the Native Race.

(Wellington Evening Post.) Even the blase legisaltor who is so exhausted with the labour of doing nothing without intermission for three consecutive months that he thinks it high time to take a rest, should find something to stimulate his jaded intellect and his slumbering conscience in the remarkable contribution on the Native Land question which we publish in another column. “Aotearoa’s” letter may be described as an impassioned yet carefully calculated attack upon “the very grave acts of injustice and oppression which have been perpetrated in the past upon a noble race, and notably since tne present Government assumed office.” The width of his survey is as striking as the severity of his indictment ,and it is clear that he speaks from knowledge no less than from intense conviction. The virtuous self-com-placency which enlarges its phylacteries on the occasion of a Royal visit or of the appointment of a Maori to the Legislative Council, and takes credit for setting an example to the universe in the management of a native race, will receive a severe shock from “Aotearoa’s” obviously faithful description of the ruin which our model legislation is bringing upon the Maoris. The inclusion in his retrospect of the legislation which dates ten years prior to the accession of the present Government to office has the valuable effect of setting the course of recent policy in its proper perspective and of showing that the errors are not those of a single Government. In 1881 and 1884, for instance, measures were passed for the express purpose of locking up, in the supposed interests of the Maoris, of close on three million acres of their lands; and both measures were to be temporary, the assurance being given that the latter would only remain

in operation for two years. Nevertheless, after the lapse, of twenty-four years in the one case and twenty-one in the other, both these Acts, as our correspondent points out, “are still on the Statute-book, and under their provisions the unfortunate natives have been starved into selling very large areas, at grossly inadequate prices, having, in fact, been compelled by the direst necessity to accept shillings from the Crown where private individuals would have given as many pounds per acre.” Rut the pre-emptive right which was practi cally restored to the Crown by the Native Land Act of 1894, and made io apply to all native land without any of the focal limitations contained in the two Acts already mentioned, is what our correspondent properly selects as the most disastrous feature of recent legislation. Designed to protect the Maoris from the rapacity of the private speculator, it has so effectually tied up their lands as to remove it from the market, and has given the Crown an opportunity of purchasing it at the rates which usually prevail with regard to an unmarketable article. “For the last six years,” says “Aoteaoi'oa,” “it (i.e., the Crown) has proceeded to plunder the natives in a perfectly scandalous manner through the Land Purchase Department;” and, in order to escape starvation, the unfortunate natives “have often, for a few shillings per acre, parted with valuable lands, the timber alone on which was worth from £5 to £2O per acre.” The paternal care of the Government for the Maoris is thus not unlike that of the bandit who is always ready to take the stranger in, but it is only a very pious bandit that can boast of his virtue as loudly as the Government, and only a very lucky one that can ever enjoy the same monopoly. What our correspondent describes as “the last straw” has been added to the burden of the natives by the Native Land Rating Act of last session. “This,” he says, “virtually means confiscation, for it is perfectly impossible for them to pay rates on land held in common by hundreds and thousands of owners, many < f whom are absent, or dead, or minors, and which our iniquitous laws absolutely prevent their hj as ing, selling, or putting to any profitable use whatever.” To compel our dusky brother to pay rates on his land while forbidding him to draw rent from it is a fitting climax to the policy of Christian brigandage which seeks to induce him to part with his land to his best friend and protector at a nominal figure. With our correspondent’s suggestion that a special session of Parliament to pass the necessary legislation to settle the question would be cheap if it cost £IOO,OOO we thoroughly agree. We also agree that quite a ridiculous bogey has been marie of “Maori landlordism,” and that to make the Maori a landlord does not make him a criminal. The soundness of the general lines on which “Aotearoa” proposes to settle the question cannot, in our opinion, be disputed. He advocates “setting apart a sufficient area of suitable land for each family group (individualisation and further partitions could, and would, follow in due course); then certain areas must be provided for the numberless minors and other natives the Crown Land Purchase Commissioners have made landless. The residue should then be purchased or leased under the most liberal terms.” So far we are in entire agree-

mant, and we are glad to see that the principles which our correspondent advocates have received a partial recognition in the Maori Land for Settlements Bill which was introduced yesterday, but we are unable to follow him in his fierce denunciation of the proposal to have the land leased through the machinery of the Public Trust Office. He bases his denunciation on his belief that the records of the West Coast Reserves “form the most shameful pages in colonial history,” the pledged word of Ministers having been repeatedly violated and “Crown grants to loyal natives ruthlessly trampled under foot.” We have no means of testing these startling allegations, which are all the more unpleasant from the special knowledge displayed by our correspondent in his treatment of the subject as a whole, but he will surely not contend that the Public Trust Office was in any respect guilty of a breach of faith, or that if surplus native lands were now vested in the Public Trustee, in trust for the owners, the trust would not be carried out to the letter. With this exception we see little to dissent from in his arguments, and it is a bitter comment on the magnificent professions of our statesmen that so true and expert a friend of the Maoris should suggest that probably their best course is to appeal in the name of the Treaty of Waitangi to the Imperial Government for redress.