NEW ZEALAND

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IV, Issue 199, 4 November 1864, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND

(From the Westminster Review.)

(Continued from our last.)

We must now make mention, in the fewest possible words of the war in the south, which began at the Hutt, near Wellington, spreading to Porirua and Wanganui. The Company had made one of their usual loose purchases, and the natives objected to the occupation of a piece of land on tile ground that some of the owners remained unsatisfied. The Company’s agents stated that the land had been paid for three times over. This may or may not have been ; but the question still remained, whether the money had been paid to the right men, and to all of them. The Company who bought in a hurry, were not aware of the extreme care required in making purchases. The punctilious fidelity of natives to their land bargains is remarkable ; but the extinction of title must bo absolute and complete. The Company should have taken a lesson from the warier anil more experienced purchasers in the north. The primary rule with them was to institute the most searching inquiry for all the owners, and never to make sure of complete success. Those who were to receive the larger portion of the purchase money would come forward readily enough ; hut it was always possible that two or three of those those share was inconsiderable would keep in the background, for tbc pmqiose of raising a difficulty at some convenient time, and being bought off on good terms. The sum originally agreed upon being paid, the buyer would hear nothing more about the matter, possibly for years, until entering into actual occupation. Then, after a while, a native would slalk into his whare, sit down for half a day without a word ; but intimate at last that he bad not yet been settled with. No'surprise would be manifested, for some such visit had been expected. The fellow might demand—sav, a cask of tobacco; he would be quietly talked down (the groat secret with natives) perhaps to a single fig of it, value threepence ; would walk away perfectly content, never to reappear: for the correct” thing had been done. But this same man would have died on the land, sooner than abandon bis claim. He would, if he could, have said, with Hotspur : " I do not care; I'll give thrice so much land To any well deserving friend ; But in the way of bargain, mark ye mo. I’ll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.” The troops were ordered up to the ground in dispute, where they burned a small chapel; an accident that was made the most of by Eangihaeta, though himself a heathen. A murder—the almost invariable native preliminary to war—was committed. During the consequent hostilities, Martin Luther, a prisoner of war, was hanged as a rebel. He was a Wanganui native ; and this execution appears to have been the cause of the outbreak at Wanganui, which was only hastened by the accidental discharge of a pistol in the hands of a midshipman. This war came to a conclusion in a most indeflnate manner. The last authentic fact discoverable is, that the natives, after invitin'* the soldiers to come out of their stockade and fight, took themselves off, politely informin'* us that they wore going to plant their potatoes, but would willingly come back again when wanted. Let us now give a few words to the New Zealand Charter of 1816, and its accompanying Letter of Instruction. Earl Grey, the author of it, had come into office with views differing much from those entertained by Lord Stanley. He favoured the Company, and proceeded to dispose of the laud question on a new principle. The political merits or demerits of this shortlived constitution are beside the present purpose ; we have to deal with it only as it affects the land. It met with no favour in New Zealand, either from colonists or Governor,.being far too complicated and|fanciful for use. With the exception of the thirteenth chapter of the Letter of Instruction, it was laughed at ; but that exception caused consternation among all those who understood the natives, and were aware of the tenacity with which they would maintain their rights over even a sinelo rood of land. Lord Stanley had administered a

severe rebuke to the Company for desiring to set aside the treaty, after obtaining the advantages derived from it, even though it might “betreated by lawyers as a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment.” But Earl Grey’s Instructions do most clearly violate that treaty. It is true, that in the accompanying despatch, ho accepts the treaty as unfait accompli guarding himself, in words, from being supposed to entertain the intention of disturbing it; he also, in subsequent despatch, defending himself from the imputation, reminds Bishop Selwyn that his observations concerning the treaty were only theoretical. But the fact remains, that by the Instructions, winch are definite and precise, he over-rode it. He probably did not himself perceive the effect of them; but about that elfect not a shadow of doubt can exist.

The question had been often asked in New Zealand—“ What are the demesne lands of the Crown ?” There was no land in the country without an owner ; the natives had been guaranteed possession of their own ; the land acquired from them by the Government had been purchased with the money of the colonists ; and there was none other left but the surplus land, i.e. the land confiscated from the estates of the original settlers. Lord Grey introduced a very short and elf'eetive mode of creating “demesne lands of the Crown.” By the fifth and sixth clauses of the chapter in question, it will be seen that, in the first place, an officer appointed at the pleasure of the Government, is colled upon to find out claims to register provisionally, and within a given period, the land of the aborigines within his province : in default thereof—within a time not specified —all lands not claimed, or thus registered, are to be escheated to the Crown. But there is no guarantee to the natives that the officer will be able, or willing, or competent to fulfil the conditions of these clauses. The rights which had been secured to the natives are now made to depend upon the fallibility, or even the wilful neglect, of an individual.

Land courts, whose decision is final, are also constituted, to which the natives arc compelled to submit their claims. The court is appointed by the Crown, presided over by an officer of the Crown, and limited in its judgment of the validity of claims by rules laid do jvh by a functionary of the Crown. The injustice of such an appeal is flagrant, and would never have been submitted to. The rules laid down by this functionary had he been left unrestricted, might have been fair, and so far not repugnant to the treaty. But the Instructions proceed, on the theory of labour alone constituting right of property in land, to define the rules by which the Laud Court shall be guided in the adjudication of such claims as are referred to its arbitrary’ decision. “IX. No claim shall be admitted in the said Land Courts on behalf of the aboriginal inhabitants of New Zealand, to any lands situate within the said islands, unless it shall be established to the satisfaction of such Court, that either by some act of the Executive Government of New Zealand, as hitherto constituted, or by (he adjudication of some court of competent jurisdiction within Now Zealand, the right of such aboriginal inhabitants to such lands has been acknowledged and ascertained, or that the claimants or their progenitors, or those from whom they derived title, have actually had the occupation of the land so claimed, and have been accustomed to use and enjoy the same either as places of abode, or for tillage, or for the growth of crops, or for the depasturing of cattle, or otherwise for the convenience and sustentation of life by means of labour expended thereupon.” Setting aside the fact that the land which has not been subdued is of the greater vulue to the natives ; that they abandon the land which has been worn out by use, not practising the four course system of farming, or understanding the mysteries of guano, but working progressively forward into the heart of the forest, upon virgin soil ; to say nothing of the easting the onus pro-ban-di on the native owners ; of the expenses attendant on proof; of the certainty that they would refuse, as many of the colonists had already refused, submission to an ex post facto law ; it is enough to observe that the treaty recognised the native title unconditionally, even guaranteeing the chieftainship over the lands. The thirteenth chapter of Instructions is simply a scheme of confiscation under colour of law. The Governor could not be brought to admit that a breach of treaty was committed ; but he appears to have stood alone in his opinion—at least in the North : for among the Company’s settlers many held Company’s views. The receipt of the Instructions was followed by a period of extraordinai’y excitement, both among Maoris and Europeans. Nothing hindered the natives from rising but the strenuous exertions of Bishop Belwyn and the missionaries, by whose influence they were induced to give time for a reference to the Queen.

The judgment passed upon the Instructions by the Northern settlers was, we believe, unanimous. Public meetings were held ; memorials drawn up ; the local press laboured to the utmost, but while protesting against Chapter 13, refrained for a while from giving it publicity, in order that the natives should nbt learn precisely what was intended for them. The Chief Justice put forth a pamphlet, in which he proved, unanswerably, the breach of treaty : the Bishop addressed a protest to the Governor, which caused some very sharp correspondence, in which the two parties went so far as to come to issue about a matter of fact. But we must avoid reviving old griefs ; for, though Mr. Labouchere asserted in the House that “he did not believe that there really existed, on the subject of waste lands, any difference of opinion between Governor Grey and Earl Grey,” the former appears to be entitled to the credit of ha ving obtain ed an abnegationof intent, with which the natives were satisfied. The Governor also procured a suspension of a portion of the Charter and Instructions on grounds less disagreeable to the Secretary of State ; but it is remarkable that the objectionable clauses were suffered to remain nominally in force though never acted on.

We pass lightly over the break-up of the New Zealand Company, and the interminable complications connected therewith, as being a mere mo-ney-matter, not directly affecting the government

of the colony, and interesting only to political antiquarians. It is enough to say, that Earl Grey admitted what his predecessors did not, that the Company had been aggrieved by the Home Government, and granted it terras of extraordinary favour. Now the whole point in dispute between the Company and the Government was, whether they had fairly extinguished the native title to the twenty millions of acres claimed in right of purchase at the rate, it has been calculated, of a halfpenny an acre. The great and ultimate grief, to which all the rest are merely incidental, had been the refusal of the Government to recognize the title of the Company without proof of equitable purchase. On the assumption that the natives had no right to any more land than they cultivated, the Company had a good grievance. On the assumption that the treaty guaranteeing to the natives the whole of the soil of their country, was based on principles of justice and equity, the Company was as clearly out of court.

An Act, intituled the New Zealand Company’s Colonization Ac, was passed, by which, firstly, all the demesne lands of the Crown in the Province of New Munster —that is to say, all New Zealand except the northern half of the northern island—were rested in the Company in trust for certain purposes. Secondly, power was given to the Treasury to advance to the Company, by way of loan, £136,000 in addition to £IOOO,OOO authorized under a former Act. Thirdly, the Company was enabled to relinquish the undertaking, at a given time, should it prove unprofitable; and fourthly, by Section 20, which well merits an attentive persual, all claim to either of the said loans was remitted, upon reversion to the Crown of the lands belonging to the Company, and the sum of £263,370 was to bo paid to the Company out of the proceeds of all future sales of the demesne lauds of the Crown in New Zealand, being after the rate of five shillings for each acre of certain lands to which the Company were entitled.

It can cause no surprise that the Company, taking advantage of terms so favorable for winding up, should have relinquished the undertaking at the appointed time. But how such an Act could have passed through the House, it is less easy to understand. The views expressed by liarl Grey concerning the treaty explain the bringing in of the Bill; but we must tail back upon the immense parliamentary influence possessed by the Company—at one period strong enough to shake the ministry of Sir Robert Peel—to account for its being passed. It would be idle to waste a word upon what appears on the face of the Act; but there is more behind. When the management of the waste lands of the Crown was entrusted to the colonists, it was made a condition that they should take upon themselves the reduced debt ol £200,000, against the Company’s estate, which was given up to them. They found that after satisfying the liabilities contracted by the Company, the estate would not nearly meet the charge, at the rate per acre named in the Act. They were then informed that even if not a single acre were left, they would still be liable lor the whole debt. And, indeed, upon close examination of Section 10 it will be found that vhe first impression conveyed by it is not the right one. Again, the debt was charged against the whole colony, including the Auckland settlement, which was unconnected with the Company, and had only been injured by it. Much to t'ne credit of the southern provinces, they agreed to relieve the Auckland province from the share imposed. We now reach the Constitution Act of 1852, the colonists at last came into their estate: being invested with a trust the most important that could be confided to a subordinate authority—that is, the administration of public lands. Notwithstanding what wa have said in reproof of the suspicion with which the colonists had been previously regarded, we must admit that it would have been better had the estate been more closely tied up.

(To he Continued.)