The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Personal Volume
Further Memorandum on the same Subject by the Native Minister
Further Memorandum on the same Subject by the Native Minister.
I should like to add a few words to Mr. Domett's minute, that the nature of my objection may not be misunderstood.
The Bill granted an absolute right of sale of their lands to the Natives, free from any tax or fee. If European buyers were content to hold and sell under the Maori certificate and a proper conveyance of it, they could do so; but, if they preferred to come in and exchange their certificate for a Crown page 44 grant, or to get the certificate sealed, which gave it the qualities of a Crown grant, for that special advantage they were to pay 2s. 6d. an acre. Now, the Legislative Council's amendment said that no Native should sell at all unless he had paid a tax of 2s. 6d. an acre on his land to the European Treasury.
In one case, the European paid for a privilege which converted his tenure under a Maori certificate into fee-simple according to English real property law—he paid a price for his English title, and the payment of it was optional with himself. In the other, the Natives' property was taxed absolutely, since he could not sell it without paying a tax, for which he literally got nothing in return.
The promoters of the amendment knew perfectly well that such a tax was ruin to the whole working of the Bill, and, not being able to defeat it directly, they resorted to this apparently indirect mode of securing to the provinces a revenue out of land which did not belong to the provinces.
F. D. Bell.