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Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 55, 24 January 1852, Page 3

The following Petition is in the course of signature throughout all the settlements of New Zealand. It lies for signature at Mr. Alport's Store, at Lyttelton, and at the Golden Fleece, at Christchurch. It is needless for us to impress upon the inhabitants of this settlement the propriety of uniting with all the New Zealand colonists in repudiating the national debt which has bean sought to impose upon them. It is important that the Petition should be signed immediately insider that it may be sent to England by the " Midlothian," in time to be presented to Parliament during the ensuing Session. The humble petition of, &c. Shkweth, —That your petitioners have heard with alarm and indignation, that, by a clause in a bill introduced into your honourable house, during the last Session of Parliament, under the sanction of her Majesty's Government, and styled the New Zealand Settlements Bill, it was provided that the capital of the New Zealand Company should be charged as a debt on the revenue of this colony. That your petitioners beg to express their unqualified satisfaction at the successful opposition which the above-mentioned clause met with in your honourable house, and their gratitude to those honourable members who conducted that opposition. That by expressions used by members of her Majesty's Government in the course of the debales upon the bill, your petitioners are led to believe that the Government, disapproved of the omission of the clause, and that it was only omitted in consequence of the want of time required for pressing an opposed bill. — '")\"\Q

That under these circumstances your petitioners are seriously apprehensive lest a bill embodying a similar provision be introduced into Parliament at a future time.

That your petitioners therefore feel it incumbent on them to lay before your honourable house the grounds on which they earnestly deprecate any such measure, and'beseech your honourable house not to entertain it.

1. The capital of the New Zealand Company was invested in a mercantile enterprise ; if that enterprise had been in a mercantile point of view successful, the Company would have reaped the profits; as it has proved unsuccessful, it ought to bear the loss. In so far as the Company was actuated by higher motives, which your petitioners cordially admit, they believe that the consciousness of having done a great public good is its proper and sufficient reward. They cannot admit that the existence of such motives constitutes a claim of a pecuniary kind. If the principle which your petitioners are now combating were adopted, the speculation engaged in by the Company would be placed in a more favourable position than any mercantile adventures have a right to claim.

2. Even if the Company was entitled to pecuniary compensation for its losses, your petitioners submit that such compensation is due, not from the people of this country, but from the Imperial Government. To whatever extent its reasonable expectations of mercantile success were frustrated by circumstances of a peculiar and exceptional kind, the colonists at least are not responsible for those circumstances. On the contrary, the responsibility has been clearly and repeatedly admitted by her Majesty's present ministers. To make the colonists pay for the loss caused (if it was caused), by the policy of a government, over which they had neither control nor influence, is, your petitioners submit, an injustice so obvious as to render argument on the subject superfluous.

3. Your petitioners would submit further that as they are not called upon to pay the debts of the Company on the ground of implied responsibility for the circumstances which caused its losses, so they are not called upon to do so on the plea of those debts having been incurred for their benefit. It is true that in so far as the capital of the Company was expended on actual colonization, the inhabitants of the Company's settlements were benefited by the expenditure. But this admission is a very different thing from an admission that they ought to reimburse the shareholders. There are innumerable mercantile enterprizes which, wheti.er they succeed or fail, benefit the country in which they are carried on, but it is never contended that that country is therefore called upon to insure the undertakers against loss, But even if the people of New Zealand were so called upon in the present case, your petitioners submit that a most searching enquiry ought to be first instituted as the precise extent to which the alleged benefits have been conferred, an enquiry to which the colonists ought to be parties, by means of accredited representatives. A general assertion that the money in question has been spent for the benefit of the colony, is, in your petitioners' opinion, a most insufficient ground for the establishment of a claim so extensive and so unprecedented.

Finally, your petitioners submit, that whatever may be the rights or claims of the New Zealand Company, the right of the people of New Zealand to dispose of the revenue of New Zealand is paramount and superior to them. If any debt be justly due from the colony to the Company, or to any other person or Corporation, the demand for payment should be made upon the Government and Legislature of the colony ; and it will be dealt with, your petitioners are thoroughly convinced, in a fair and equitable manner. But that the Imperial Parliament should, without consulting the people of New Zealand, appropriate a very large proportion of the revenue of New Zealand to paying the debts of a private Company, appears to your petitioners to be a proceeding diametrically opposed, not only to the rudimental maxims of the British constitution, but to the immutable principles of justice and right.

For the above reasons your petitioners humbly entreat that your lion, house will not euterrain any measure by which it shall be proposed to charge the revenues of New Zealand with the money due by the New Zealand Company to its -shareholders. 1 And your petitioners will ever pray,sfc.