The Native Question.

I wish to say a few words on the native question, although I cannot pretend at all to deal with it comprehensively or exhaustively. Some objections have been made to the proposals lately made by Mr. Ballance in his interviews with the natives to pay them for the land taken for the railway. It has been paid that he ought to have asked that the land be given When I explain to you the reasons which actuated us, I think that you will agree with me that not only are we right, but that we could not adopt any other course. If we were to ask the natives to give us this land we should have to take the land from natives whom we might suppose to be the owners, but whose titles are not legalised. If we were to wait until the titles are legalised there would be a long delay. In other words, certain natives would purport to give us the land, but it might be found hereafter that the land did not belong to them; in fact, that we were building a railway and spending a million and a half of money upon land which did not belong to us, to which we had no title, and questions of compensation would be raised, which might agitato the country for years and years to come. I ask you whether it would he prudent for us supposing there might be a saving of a few thousand pounds, a very few, to trust to a precarious title? No, we said this. There is a power given by law to this effect, that where the native title has not been made good, and, therefore, no one with whom to legally treat for permission to carry railways through land, the Land Court shall appraise that land, and that land may be taken and the value shall be paid when the title is made good to the persons who are found to be owners. (Cheers.) Therefore you Will see page break the true policy—the diplomacy of the thing; in other words, the land Court will say, You want so many thousand acres; this land is worth so many shillings an acre. Whenever the title is made good that i land is to be paid for. In the meantime you go on building the railway, and your title is a Parliamentary one. Is not that a prudent course to adopt? Why should we go on building a railway on land which we had no title to, and which we would have to quarrel over in the future, or pay an ex orbitant rate for at some distant period? In regard to the land along the side of the railway, we took last year by Act of Parliament the right to reserve four and a half million of acres of land from sale by the natives to anyone but the Government. In adopting that course we could not have done to if the natives had the impression that we meant to acquire and take possession of the whole of that four and a half millions of acres, and we could not place ourselves or the natives in the false position of supposing that wo should do so. We say to the natives we have taken this land because we desire to see it settled and disposed of in such a manner as will secure its settlement, but we are not taking it with a view to obtaining it from yon, and forcing you to give it up. We are open to purchase large blocks, and we are under negotiation for very large blocks upon the line of railway—under negotiations with the natives in a friendly and peaceful manner, and I wish to say on behalf of Mr. Ballance, there is no Minister who has established such a hold upon the natives. (Cheers.) It is all very well to say he has been too friendly with them; but I ask you to recollect this, there is nothing of more importance to the people of Auckland than that the railway should proceed which is to connect Wellington and Auckland, and it would have been next to impossible, at any rate exceedingly impolitic, if that line had been constructed or commenced in opposition to or in conflict with the natives. Within the next two or three mouths I believe we shall have works in progress upon that line in three portions of the route—at Marton, at the Waikato end, and at some portion intermediate between them. And I say it is a great work, and one of which our Government has every reason to be proud. They commence that railway with the good will of the natives from end to end, and shall have no difficulties from them in doing so. (Cheers.) With your knowledge of native affairs, which is so much larger than mine, because you have lived amongst them so long you cannot help agreeing with me in this : No matter how autocratic or despotic a Native Minister may be, no matter how little we may have to fear from any effects of war, yet if we roused the opposition of the natives from one end of the line to the other, it would be impossible for that line to be commenced. I do not hesitate to say that it is my opinion. This Government is commencing this line, and will no on with the line months earlier—perhaps I might name a longer period—than it would have been proceeded with under other circumstances. (Cheers.) I do not know a desire the Government has more at heart than to see that railway completed. The broad view of the Government in relation to the lands of the natives is this, that we should do everything we possibly can to convince the natives that the one object to be gained is to put that land to useful purposes of settlement, whether by Europeans or Maoris, and not allow these vast tracts of land to remain unused and unoccupied, but to subject them to purposes of settlement by an industrial population. (Cheers).