CORRESPONDENCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 27, 12 July 1851, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the Lyttelton Tirries,

Sir, —As the trial of the action brought against Mr. Brittan and Mr. Fitzgerald, would so soon have brought before the public the real merits of the case, and justification on which those gentlemen seem to rely for their most wanton and malicious slander, it was not my intention to have noticed your report of the proceedings of the Special General Meeting of the Society of Laud-Purchasers, published in the Lyttelion Times of the 28th ult., unfaithful and untrue as is that report in many respects, fully believing that the good sense of the colonists present and a discerning public would at once discover that the proceedings of tlie meeting were conducted, both by the chairman, Mr. Brittan, and by Mr. Fitzgerald as a speaker, in the full violence of party spirit, and that the report was but a garbled and one-sided statement of what then actually transpired, wholly omitting'some of the most important features, mistaking others, and bearing evident marks of having been dressed up to suit the views arid party feeling of those individuals who are believed to exercise so much control over the matter admitted into the Lijttelton Times. But, Sir, as you have pursued the subject in the leading article of your last week's paper, and have again thereby directed public attention to the

subject, already too deeply and injuriously affecting; my private and professional reputation, I now demand of you to rectify such, at least, of those errors and false impressions as may be in your power to do, by the inserting this letter in your current week's paper. Had you enlightened the public by inserting Mr. Godiey's letter' to the Council, and my reply to it, which were read at length at the meeting, your readers would have had the main points of the case more fairly before them, and would have been better able to estimate the propriety of my conduct, and the resolution I formed, when, in March last, (on the occasion (as is very absurdly alleged, and equally untruly) of my having threatened that I would biing actions against the Association (my then supposed clients) for employing other and unauthorised persons to prepare the conveyances,) I informed Mr. Godley that if he pursued the course he contemplated— that of having the legal documents and conveyances by the Association, prepared by unauthorized, unqualified, and irresponsible persons, without my concurrence, I should decline to act any further for the Association, for, Sir, I was unwilling to become a catspaw in the hands of the Agents of the Association, to do their bidding, without the liberty of exercising my own professional judgment, or to allow my professional reputation to suffer by the issuing of conveyances prepared by other parties, whilst I shouldostensibly appear responsible as the solicitor of the Association. I feel the more justified in the determination to which I then came, since I have been required by various land-purchasers to inspect the forms of conveyance, deposited at the Land Office, which upon examination I consider no purchaser can be advised to accept, unless he be prepared to abandon part of the valuable rights assured to him by his contract with the Association, or to take a conveyance which he could not, upon a subsequent sale, compel an unwilling ..purchaser to accept. I conceive I should have been placed in a very false and injurious posi- ■ tion, had I done otherwise. Since that time Sir, I have never acted, or been called upon to ac,t, in any way whatever on the part of the -Association.

_ Whether this be " the. removal of Mr. Damipier fronru the position he held," or not, referred ;toin your. report, I know not, but I am not >aware.of ana' other; and if it were, I think that "*asa rather entitled to the honor of having dec\mel'? to act 0T l^e Association under such civcutostances, tJ'an of having been removed Tjy 'ts a^ciit, in aii'v sense of the word. When in 'A^ril la* 11 found the gentlemen of the Land-office taking' upon themselves the dangerous responsibility of proceeding to the sale of sixty lots of'iaitfd without protective conditions of sale of airf ftnd, and apparently without reference to any professional adviser, or any communication whatever with me, I conceived, and naturally enough, I think, that my intimation to Mr. Godley had been accepted, and that he no longer intended to avail himself of my professional services, and it was under such circumstances that I gave notice to the auctioneer previously to the sale, of the right I conceived myself to possess of purchasing the town sections

I occupied in Lyttelton, at the fixed prices published by the Association in London, when I left -'England in July, no other regulations having' been made in the terms of purchase as to the lots being sold by auction until a subsequent period. In this belief, and with this intention, I obtained permission to occupy the sections on my arrival here, and acquainted the resident agent of my desire to purchase them so soon as the first body of colonists had made their selections. I conceived the Association fairly bound to those colonists who left England under such circumstances to allow of their taking the sections they might require, at the fixed prices stated. This at any rate is the view taken of the matter by many early colonists, and I submit not unreasonably. It was to maintain this right I gave the notice to purchasers, and as I found that the Association's agents had no sympathy with my interests, I did not feel called upon to sacrifice my own private rights by neglecting to do so. The report in your, paper too, states me to have said " that the road (at my section on the Heathcote Ferry Road) had so far deviated from the course laid down as to reduce the 50 acre section for which I had contracted, and which abutted on that road, to 47 acres," meaning, as I understand it to infer, that I proposed to acquire, by removal of the road, an additional three acres ; this was neither stated by me-, nor is the fact. The fact I alleged and which I am prepared to prove, (notwithstanding the assertion which Mr. Cass seems to have been called upon to make,) is that the road made has diverged from the reserve set out on the plan on which the selection was made, and that part of it is put upon my section, although only 47 acres instead of 50, contrary to the plan on which the selection was made. It is not necessary that I should further refute Mr. Cass's letter appearing in your paper of the sth inst., and as the subject will probably be matter of discussion elsewhere, I will not now anticipate the case by any further explanation of it. It is for complaining of this intrusion upon my property, and desiring the contractor to put the road back, or I should report him, that is converted into a foundation on which the gentlemen referred to have engrafted their malicious libel. I make no further allusion to the., report of Mr. Fitzgerald's speech than that~:for so much of it as is truly reported, he will have to account elsewhere. I think it will now be sufficiently evident to the Land Purchaser's Society and the public, that I have been compelled, however unwillingly, to adopt the course ;I have pursued. I think it will be equally clear too, that whilst under such imputations, I could not with any propriety resign my seat in the council, and that my proceedings having been directed against two individuals only, it was somewhat hasty, if not puerile, in the other members to resign their seats, and so to abandon the interests of the Land-Purchasers, if they contemplated being re-elected; for the constitution and regulations of the society would not admit of the new election to any other than vacant seats, notwithstanding the ruse de guerre that was ostensibly adopted at the last meeting for svant of previous notice and alteration of the fundamental regulations of the Society. Were such proceedings as these last to he repeated, it might well be expected that the society would rather " sink into a farce," as suggested in your leading article last week, than " develope into a legislature." I am, Sir, yours obediently, C. E. Dampieb. Lyttelton, July Bth, 1851.