Mr. Rees’s Colonisation Scheme.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 267, 2 March 1889, Page 3

Mr. Rees’s Colonisation Scheme.

There is now on the way to New Zealand from the mother country the first instal ment of settlers under the auspices of Mr. Rees’s Crofter Settlement Company. The immigrants are to be located on land lying back from Poverty Bay and purchased on terms from Maori proprietors. 1 he rational of Mr Rees’s Scheme was the formation of a company, with a capital of £500,000, for the purpose of settling 2000 families, numbering in the aggregate 8000 persons. The capital was designed to equip the emigrants, pay their passages to New Zealand, and preliminary expenses, and maintain them until they were able to maintain themselves. The native chiefs are said to have already ceded sufficient land for the purposes of the pioneer settlement and to be prepared to throw open 10,000,000 acres additional if the new colony is found to work satisfactorily and likely to have advantageous results to the Maori proprietors. There is no objection to be taken to associated colonising enterprise, and it is no novelty b<> far as New Zealand is concerned, several of the chief settlements of that colony having their origin in ventures of a similar kind. It d Sers altogether from that State colonisation which has recently been impressed upon the attention of the Imperial Government, and which the colonies look upon with coldness and suspicion. If State funds were to be applied to colonisation purposes the interest of the people who remained behind, and who would be called upon to contribute to those funds, would necessarily have the first consideration so that it might be expected that the least valuable members of the society, and who could consequently be the most easily spared, would be transported to the colonies, and might subsequently be a burden to the colonial Governments. What Newj Zealand has to be very careful about is that if the Rees experiment assumes large proportions, which it in hardly likely to do, a Skye difficulty is not added to its political complications. The repayment of the advances made to the settlers, for cost of passage, the advances for maintenance, and the progress payments for the purchase of the land will collectively represent a heavy tax upon the earnings of the settlers. The rent which the crofter in Skje has to pay for bis croft is insignificant, and and yet constitutes the chief grievance of the crofter. If be finds himself in the new c unity, while struggling with his initial diffi. übies, subject to much hf avier liahi’itie-, miy he not loudly demand relief at the ham’s of the Government of the colony ? The danges of the position will be intensified by the f ct that the payments demanded of him, and W lich he may find it difficult to make, are to go into the pockets of members of a semi savage race. The company w 11 be unable to compel payment of arrears, and the company itself must be a defaulter to the Maori land owners if its proteges are unable or unwilling t > meet their obligations. The proposed eviction of a whole settlement and the resis tance of the settlers to the proceeding are quite within the bounds of possibility, and may involve the Government of New Zealand iu a new na’ive difficul y, ex rication from which could be most easily arrived at by the State assuming the responsibilities of the company. This would amount to a resumption of the policy of free passages and land grants to immigrants, and the people who bad paid for their own passages and for the land upon which they settled would not regard with equanimity the special privileges accorded to a particular class of settlers. —Melbourne Age.