SALE OF LANDS IN FIJI. (Hansard, 16 July 1908)

§ *LORD STANMORE
rose to move for any further correspondence between the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Governor of Fiji relating to the sale of certain lands in the Island of Viti Levu, in continuation of Papers laid before the House last year. The noble Lord said: My Lords, as I have reason to understand that His Majesty's Government do not object to the Motion I have brought forward, it is unnecessary for me to weary your Lordships by going at any length into my reasons for making it. I look forward to the Papers which [ire to be produced under it with more than usual interest, because I understand they contain a sharp criticism of my action thirty five years ago with regard to the Native Land Tenure. But I am lot going to discuss that matter now, 999 or to raise any question about it. In the first place, the controversy would be entirely uninteresting to your Lordships. In the next place, I do not think much time need be spent in discussing the rather comic theory that half-a-dozen successive Governors of Fiji and half-a-dozen successive Secretaries of State, to say nothing of a host of other officials concerned in the matter, have taken for the last thirty-six years a wrong view of the Treaty of Cession, and, in the third place I have not the smallest apprehension that the noble Earl the Secretary of State will adopt this new-fangled theory that the natives of Fiji have no right in the land they hold, except such as the indulgence of the Crown may choose to give. I should not have alluded to the matter had it not been that I think I owe a duty to an excellent public servant who in past times, when I was Governor of Fiji, rendered invaluable service, and to whom I shall be always under obligation and grateful for the assistance then rendered; I mean Mr. David Wilkinson, who, I understand, has in some recent official utterances had his name coupled with mine in regard to what is now supposed to be my faulty action thirty-five years ago. I owe it to that gentleman to say that, whether my views were right or wrong, his is not, as has been represented, the maleficent influence which caused me to take the views referred to. Whatever the case may be, whether I was right or wrong, that gentleman—Mr. David Wilkinson—had no share in the forming of those opinions or in guiding my action. I have no doubt he agreed with my opinion, but, as a matter of fact, I had hardly any communication with him during the first year of my Governorship. My views of the Deed of Cession were founded on communication with those who negotiated it: the late Lord Rosmead and Commodore Goodenough on the one side, and Thakombau and the late Sir John Thurston on the other, and my views of native tenure were chiefly influenced by Sir John Thurston, that distinguished ethnologist Dr. Fison, Mr. Walter Carew, and others. Therefore, after what has been said about Mr. Wilkinson recently, I think it only right to state here in my place in Parliament that the accusation, though doubtless involuntarily so, is unjust 1000 and unfounded. My views with regard to the granting of the Treaty of Cession were formed on the evidence of those who took part in that Treaty; and to charge Mr. Wilkinson with my sins, whatever they may have been, is entirely mistaken and uncalled for.

*THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (The Earl of CREWE)
My Lords, I need not detain your Lordships at any great length upon this important and interesting matter of the native lands in Fiji. It is a question which in this House the noble Lord on the cross benches has made practically his own, and that may be natural, considering the high position he held as Governor of the Colony. The noble Lord has alluded to what has happened in Fiji since the Treaty of Cession in the year 1874. There may be some dispute as to what the precise rights of the natives were over what were then known as the unoccupied lands. The lands were of three kinds—there were some which were already in the occupation of white settlers; there were other lands under actual cultivation by native communities; and there was a third class of lands which were quite unoccupied and as to which a certain degree of controversy has arisen. But that controversy is really only of historical interest, because it has been an undoubted fact that during the last thirty years the claims of the natives over those unoccupied lands have been both implicitly and explicitly admitted by governor after governor in statements made to the natives. That is fully admitted also by the present distinguished Governor of Fiji, who takes a different view from the noble Lord on the cross benches as to the historical merits of the case. He fully admits that in practice the rights of the natives over these unoccupied lands have been recognised over and over again. At the same time we have to bear in mind that it is very important that, so far as these lands are not used by or wanted for the native 1001 communities, they should be as far as possible developed in the interest of the islanders as a whole. That is a proposition which the noble Lord on the cross benches will not dispute. That development must, however, take place with full regard to the rights of the natives over these lands. An influential body of planters have recently presented a petition in which they ask that the lands in actual occupation by the natives should be delimited, and that all remaining lands should be declared to be the property of the Crown, and, as such, put up for public sale and purchased by anybody who desires to acquire them. That is a proposition which we cannot entertain. An alternative, made as a compromise, proposes that the lands necessary for the support of the natives should be delimited, and that the Government should have full power to alienate the unoccupied lands, but should allow two-thirds of the profits to go to the native community, and that lands granted by the tribal communities to individuals should be subject to the consent of the Governor in Council if it was proposed to lease or sell them. With this alternative proposition we do not find ourselves in complete agreement. We take the view that the tenure of these lands has been essentially communal, and that in no circumstances is it desirable that an individual native should be in a position to sell the land and pocket the money. We also hold that the natives do possess full interest in the unoccupied land, but we quite agree that, with the consent of the Council and the chiefs, some of the land immediately required for occupation should be leased on terms to those willing to develop it, but only in exceptional cases should the native land be allowed to be sold at all. When the lands are leased or, in rare eases, sold, the money should be, in our opinion, held in trust for the benefit of the existing community and their successors. That is to say, the advantage to be derived from the development of the land by Europeans should, so far as possible, be wholly reserved for the benefit of the community and not of the individual. I would merely say, in conclusion, that there is no objection whatever to printing further Papers on the subject; and I think it is quite true, as the noble Lord on the cross benches has stated, that he will find in those Papers some observations reflecting 1002 on his own views on this matter, to which I hope he will not find it necessary to take very serious exception.

§ LORD STANMORE
My Lords, if I had known that the noble Earl was going to make a full explanation of the land policy of His Majesty's Government with regard to Fiji on this occasion, I am afraid I should hardly have been so indulgent to your Lordships, but should have thought it necessary to go more fully into the matter. That I shall not do now. I merely thank the noble Earl for promising further Papers, and for the very interesting speech he has made, with the general tenor of which I entirely agree.