The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY’ GAZETTE PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND Saturday Morning. Tuesday, February 10, 1891. THE, NATIVE LANDS COMMISSION.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 568, 10 February 1891, Page 2

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

Tuesday, February 10, 1891. THE, NATIVE LANDS COMMISSION.

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

Party feeling sometimes dies a hard death. The appointment of Mr Rees to the Native Lands Commission has been the occasion of remarkable comments by the New Zealand Press. Those who take objection do not object on the reasonable grounds that Mr Rees is known to hold decided opinions with which many men do not agree. But it is the party Shibbeloth they will bring in, finding fault merely because Mr Rees does not happen to be a believer in the now deceased Atkinson party. The New Zealand Herald takes up rather peculiar ground and says the enquiries ought to be made by a Minister or his officials. The reply to that is that no Minister, if competent for the special work, could devote sufficient time to it, and as for the understrappers, it is well known that by leaving matters to them much of the bungling now causing confusion has been made. The Herald admits that there can be no objection to the competency or the knowledge of Messrs Rees and Carroll, but then goes on to say that they know too much and are therefore biassed. “ When a barrister is raised to the Bench he abstains most religiously from having anything to do with cases in which he has acted or been consulted upon.” Mr Rees has not been raised to the Bench —the Commission has only power to make enquiries and report thereupon. But is our contemporary so innocent as not to know this religious abstention spoken of has not been adhered to by the different class of Commission now sitting in Auckland, and that in the very first case even the interpreter was objected to because he was alleged to have been an agent in the matter ? Further, that that objection was informally made in Maori and was not allowed to be interpreted, though other informal objections were? The Hawke’s Bay Herald makes a warm attack on the Commission, but Mr Rees being in Napier at the time he vigorously replied in the following letter to the Napier News : “Three statements made by the Herald are either untrue or misleading. So far from having issued fifty writs in native matters shortly before the meeting of Parliament, two actions based upon charges of forged signatures are all the actions to my knowledge commenced by my firm during the last six monjhs. As for the alleged favoritism displayed by the present Government in appointing Mr Carroll and myself as commissioners' the Herald is well aware, first, that Mr Carroll has been a consistent supporter of the Atkinson Ministry for three years : second, that all the landowners of the East Coast requested me to act in getting a final settlement of the present disgracoful state of the native land laws ; that the commission has nothing to do with the determination of individual titles : and, fourth, that Mr Carroll and myself, being members of the Legislature, cannot receive one shilling as payment for the work we have been asked to do. Three months of hard and anxious labor we consent to give for the public benefit, for which by the law we cannot be paid directly or indirectly. How long is the public to be misled by such untruthful and misleading statements ? In addition to this the Herald is well aware, through its Parliamentary reporter, that all parties pressed for this commission, and' were all practically consenting to Mr Carroll a:?d myself acting. If it had any doubt Mr Sv/ap and Captain Russell could have satisfied that doubt. What is the object sought to be obtained? It seems to me that the public welfare is deliberately neglected by such virulent party warfare. This native lands question has now been taken out of the sphere of party politics, yet here in Hawke’s Bay the morning paper seems determined to again to make it the vehicle of party spite. If it succeed? in doing so its own friends and supporters, as well as the general public, will have but little to thank it for." No words of comment need be added to the above letter, beyond a remark that when public-spirited men undertake all this labor without payment in any form it would be supposed that adverse comment would at least be reserved until if is known whether or not the report justifies it. Then it will be time enough to criticise when there is something to found criticism upon.