The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, Saturday Morning Saturday, August 17, 1989. BLOWING BUBBLES.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 339, 17 August 1889, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, Saturday Morning

Saturday, August 17, 1989. BLOWING BUBBLES.

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

Kindly reader, as your eye loiters over this column in search of some slight modicum of information or amusement, we are tempted to ask you if from experience you know how engaging is the pleasant pastime of blowing bubbles ? If this delight be not known to you by experience, we despair of being able to impart a conception of its pleasure by description. If it be known to you, you at least will pardon us while we babble about bubbles for a little while. First their creation —the gradual construction out of nothing of the globular microcosm of the world ; then the taking of colour and the painting with reflected imagery of the scenery around; then when with sleight of hand the new creation is to be liberated from its too mundane connection to become a thing of beauty and of joy for ever —then alas I it eludes us for evermore.

And the making of laws is truly a blowing of bubbles, a most engaging pastime to those who so perseveringly play the game. There are at present (excluding the ” Lords ”) some gj legislators, each with individual legislative idiosyncrasy, and the fun grows fast and furious, and more disastrous in its consequences year by year. This session is no exception and the bubbles are a-blowing. Where the consequences not so tragic we could idle away a short space in detailing the ludicrous side of legislative patchwork. Mr W. Cooper has told his story of the effect of uneven legislation in the one matter of Native land administration. At the risk of repeating what he has so well said we purpose to look in outline at the past history of this subject. First there was the treaty of Waitangi guaranteeing to the Natives their lands and reserving to the Crown the right of preemption. Next we find record of the suicidal sacrifice of the Crown’s right, to satisfy the humor or the appetite of the day. Then freedom of contract was heralded as the legislative panacea, and then was evolved the creation of Native title by the Transfer of which contracts could be entered into and executed. Again a kaleidoscopic turn, and we find penalties were imposed upon purchasers for using the means offered to them, and a modified right of preemption by proclamation established for public purposes. After this, total prohibition was enacted, in turn to be succeeded by freetrade offered under conditions which rendered the gift but as smoke to the eyes and vinegar to the teeth.

In all this jumble of legislative experiment there have been two things which have ever been left out —the welfare of the Natives and the settlement of the Native districts by an improving population. Sales of Native lands when allowed have been surrounded by such foolish and expensive technicalities that the residuum of cash out of purchase money for the Native vendor has been reduced to a microscopical vanishing point. The purchaser who would gladly have paid his purchase money without shrinkage in the lump to the tribe or hapu from which he purchased has been reluctantly compelled to pay interpreters, attesting witnesses, travelling justices and lawyers who have not thought it incompatible with the fitness of things to recreate themselves in the country at the modest remuneration of one guinea per head. He has had to buy knowing he could not complete a perfect title without the most extreme difficulty and this consideration must have sadly impaired the price proposed to reach the vendors. Out of 100 Natives whose shares he wished to purchase some would die, when from his point of view the one thing which it was their duty to do was to live. On the other hand the prudential vendor who would only sell for an annuity proved the tendency of the Maoris to be to live to be centenarians. Children, uncles, cousins, and aunts have been and are selected with delicious disregard of all known laws of descent as successors to those who have so improvidently died. Children’s guardians have to be caught, bought, and taught. Then at the last, when the deeds after the most jealous scrutiny are pronounced fit for the trying ordeal of the Land Court, it is then perhaps that the whole body of the vendors suddenly discover that the sale is a mistake; they did not understand what they were doing. They did not sell collectively, but were caught isolate and napping, and being tempted with the Pakeha’s gold they gave way and signed the paper writing which they were told brought the land back again to them in some way which they cannot explain. On the whole, in the interest of the race and to check improvident speculation by their Pakeha friend, they think they had better in the face of the Court, which cannot act without their consent, keep the land and the money too. Perhaps, too, another European may come along with another wooden head and a full purse, wanting to buy, and the process may be repeated in the interest of morality. And still the legislative experiment makes annual progress. Still the Great Panjandrums of the Supreme Court with suave but incisive words denounce the " land jobbers ” of the North who in spite of their decisions will not understand that all Native title deeds are waste paper, and that legislative enactments declaring them to be something else are founded on mistake. “ The Legislature did not mean,” so at least say these pundits, " that these deeds were good deeds: at least they have not expressed such a meaning if they did mean it; and for the rest, if they did mean it and expressed it we cannot fit their spectacles to our eyes, and we prefer, with the greatest deference to the Parliament of the country, to set up Judge-made law against imperfectlyexpressed statute law.” And this year is to be no exception. ; There is still to be a new edition of ; patching and tinkering, and once more ' there are to be attempts to explain one 1 obscurity by creating two more in its J place, and good men are doing the best i they can to further some tiew Act which i

is to cure all the ills which we suffer under in Native districts, and bring about the Utopia of the Native agent and the European purchaser. O, the pity of it all. A Native title which the Natives did not want is created by every Land Court which sits to cause ceaseless confusion. The Crown is divested of title in favor of the Native, to simplify (save the mark) the acquisition of the surplus lands by purchasers. A Crown title is degraded and scarred with all manner of defects, and endless waste of time and money is the result. But for .’stive Office traditions and legislative bubbles all European purchasers of Native lands might have had title from the Crown direct. Individualisation of Native title has failed all along the line. It has robbed the best Natives of their controlling influence. It has exposed the weakest of the Natives, one by one, to the seductive temptations of the purchaser’s agents. In many cases it has ruined the European and now bids fair to hasten the extinction of the Native race.

Still we are prepared to be thankful for all mercies, and we will throw our caps in the air and toy our bubble for 1889 as we have been wont to do. But for all that we are compelled to think that there is room for a strong man with a statesman’s breadth of view, who will have done with bubbles, and with common sense will devise means to put down all shams, whether legislative or judicial, and secure some actual benefit for the Natives out of their lands and indisputable titles direct from the Crown to the improving settlers of the North.