monopolistic powers to exclude private purchasers and keep the price of land low, which also meant that there was little profit for the sellers to reinvest.2 The Government took advantage of that quasi-monopoly, and of Maori desperate financial need, to insist upon prices well below those sought by vendors. This cannot be seen merely as energetic bargaining on the part of Crown agents. As Oliver points out: 'It is surely beyond dispute that governments, whatever may have been the limits upon their capacity to protect Maori from ... developments [attendant upon colonisation] should not have taken advantage of them and acted in an exploitative manner.'3
Underpinning the continuing transfer of power and of assets into the hands of European Government and settlers in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was the increasing ideological dominance of two precepts: the paramountcy of the 'public good' as an imperative of Government action and of 'equality under the law' as the principle on which New Zealand society should operate. For Maori, however, these ideals were double-edged, threatening past recognition of rights derived from native title and supposedly safeguarded by the Treaty, and those few special protections which had been developed to prevent the wholesale alienation of lands. Thus, 'equality under law' really meant 'equality under common law', and in the case of mining, that the Government should have equal access to Maori-owned as to European land. Requirements for owner consent which had operated in the early years of development were replaced by statutory assertions of the Government's right to control all resources deemed to be of national importance. This move was backed by the argument that Maori landowners were being treated no differently from Pakeha.
Nor did 'equality under law' translate into 'equality of access' to the institutions which made the law. Maori efforts to find a place in the government of the country had been largely rebuffed: the voice of Maori Members of Parliament generally ignored on issues of importance to Hauraki, and political initiatives within the Native Committees and Kotahitanga, perverted to Government perception and purpose. Denied a vehicle in which to give effect either to political aspirations or to the urgent need to exercise some form of practical control over the individual sale of tribal assets, Maori power was limited to largely passive action—not to participate in the court and not to sell—but such a position was decreasingly viable in a world of diminishing access to natural resources, consistent political pressure towards the further opening of cheap native land for settlement, and their growing indebtedness.
A number of sub-themes are given some prominence in the development of this discussion. In terms of the ongoing diminution of Hauraki land resource, the report draws heavily on the block reports of David Alexander found in Volume 8, and concentrates on the period up to the end of 1912, by which stage, Maori were left with only 12% of their original holdings in the district. Particular attention is paid to the transfer of the Hauraki Plains or delta lands out of Maori hands. This loss resulted partly
2 Cited in W.H. Oliver, The Social and Economic Situation of Hauraki Maori after Colonisation, Hauraki Maori Trust Board, Paeroa, 1997, p. 18; see also p. 35.
10