The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday Morning. Saturday, July 13, 1889. THE MANGAHEIA No. 2 CASE.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 324, 13 July 1889, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday Morning.

Saturday, July 13, 1889. THE MANGAHEIA No. 2 CASE.

Bo just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy ooiintry’a, Thy God’s, and truth’s.

Few people imagine the importance of the amicable arrangement which has been come to in regard to the above block of land. It affords a striking illustration of the satisfactory results which may be arrived at by a wise and capable administrator. In this case it has been decided to submit the points in dispute to the arbitration of Judge Barton, whose decision must, to a certainty, give more satisfaction to all the parties than if matters had been allowed to go on in the course to which they were shaping. Anyone who knows anything of the vexations attendant upon dealings in native land does not require to be told of the worry and expense which even the fairest and most honest men cannot avoid, through the defective laws in existence and the unsatisfactory administration of those laws.

The Mangaheia case teaches us what we have to gain by having a capable Land Court Judge to enquire into matters. With the majority of those who have been sent to this distict, there would have been no other result in the case referred to than continuous litigation, and the almost certain ruin of some of the best settlers on the Coast; if not their ruin, one of the greatest blows to the settlement of some of the finest land in the district, for no one would care to venture upon a pursuit beset with such difficulties in regard to the tenure of the land as to be a complete obstacle to success—a loss to buyers, sellers, and everyone else having anything to do with it, but that much abused class whose fortune is so often built on other men’s misfortunes—the lawyers. In this case, however, those engaged can be accused of no self-interested motives, for counsel greatly aided in bringing matters to so satisfactory a conclusion, that conclusion being that Judge Barton is to act as arbitrator. When his partition is made known, all parties may not be satisfied—if there was any probability of that, the delay in regard to the adjustment of titles would not have occurred ; but all parties must recognise that it is better to accept the decision of an impartial Judge, than to allow things to drift on in a state of complete confusion, and with no other prospect in view than dissatisfaction and ruinous expense to all interested. Through admirable tact on the part of the Bench, assisted by counsel for different parties, the Mangaheia Block titles are in a fair way of being settled to the satisfaction of all persons.