Notes on Sir William Martin's Pamphlet Entitled the Taranaki Question
Page 80
Page 80.
"There are absentee claimants whose claims"….
No one has arbitrarily denied these claims. No one has decided that they are not sound and just. No one has decided that the pah was not built on ground belonging to the persons who built it.
If there exists any valid claim of ownership it is saved to this day, as has been so often shown: and there is nothing for any proprietor to do but to come in peaceably and establish it.
But the manner in which this statement is made requires notice, Is it contended that when the Government is engaged in the purchase of a piece of land, when it has openly invited all claimants to advance their claims, when the rights of ownership of all who were not parties to the sale have been expressly saved, when nearly twelve months of patient investigation have been spent without a single adverse claim of ownership being proved, it is lawful for any one who may pretend to be a claimant to build a war pah on the land, gather a body of armed followers, and execute war dances by way of assertion of title?