PILING ON THE COSTS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 441, 15 April 1890, Page 2

PILING ON THE COSTS.

We recently referred attention to the exorbitant fees which the Native Commissioners have devised, and we notice that the question has been taken up by some of our contemporaries. The Napier News remarks .-—These heavy fees will come as a crushing blow upon ‘small men 1 who have entered into native land transactions, for it will be almost impossible for any applicant to bring his business before the Commission under a cost of £lOO. Whilst, as is well-known to our readers, we hold that it would be well if many of the gigantic * uncompleted transactions 1 in this province were never completed at all, and that the land should be bought by the Government and cut up for settlement, there are scores of cases where genuine settlers have partially completed titles which require ratification. It is upon this class that the burden of the heavy fees will fall. The Russels, Ormonds, and Williams will not mind the fees so long as they get their tens of thousands of acres through, for they can well afford the expense, seeing that the immense blocks they are interested in have cost them next to nothing, and were merely acquired for speculative purposes. With the genuine settler the case is different, and when Parliament assembles we trust some effort will be made to reduce the fees to which we have drawn attention.