CORRESPONDENCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IV, Issue 168, 25 March 1854, Page 13 (Supplement)

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times. Sib,—Your correspondent X. Y. Z. accuses me of audacity in venturing to doubt the legality of some of the Association's acts, in opposition to Mr. Sewell's assertion, and also of obscurity in expressing my views on the subject. With regard to the first objection, even had Mr. Sewell's success in managing the Association's affairs been more brilliant than it has been (in the department of the shipping account to wit), the position he occupies here as the legal advocate of the Association's claims, relieves me from the necessity of believing any opinion of his as to the legality of the Association's title to the lands in dispute as long as it remains unsupported by proof. As the case is not, as X.Y.Z. states it to be, one of Alfred Barker against Henry Sewell, but one between the Association and the Colonists, and as its results will affect the latter in a very sensitive part of their organization, viz., the breeches pocket, I am sanguine enough to believe that I shall yet obtain a patient hearing for what I have to say on the subject. If my statement of the case has hitherto been perfectly unintelligible, I can only say I am very sorry for it, and will do my best to remedy the imperfection. The Association claim as their corporate property all the land reserved for miscellaneous purposes under the authority of the first Act of Parliament, and conveyed to them in trust fcr the colony about a year afterwards, they paying at the rate of £3 per' acre for the Park, Government Domain, and Town Reserves, and for the remainder £48 per acre—professedly with money belonging to" the miscellaneous fund under the authority of the Bth clanse of the 2nd Act of Parliament. The objections to this part of the transaction are, first, that all the Reserves having been made under the Ist act, could not be reserved and' appropriated under the 2nd act, it not being retrospective. Secondly, regarding the purchase of the Parks and Town Reserves, &c;, that the Bth clause of the 2nd act requires that for every acre of land so reserved and appropriated, that part of the funds of the Association which is applicable to the purpose for which such land^is declared to be reserved and appropriated, shall be chargedVith and subject to the payment of a sum of money equal to the current price of every such acre considered as charged to an ordinary purchaser. Now the parks, like the roads, are lands >yhich could not be sold to an ordinary pur-

chaser at any price, and therefore the Association are equally debarred from buying them. While the Town Reserves being part of the Town, (as is evidenced by these facts, among others, that the 1000 acres reserved for Christchurch cannot be made up without them, and that the conveyances issued by the Canterbury Association in speaking of the road outside the Town Reserve —call it the Town Boundary) could only be sold under the regulations to which town land is subject. These may be found in the 3rd condition of the 2nd clause of the Ist act, which enacts that the land shall be sold at not less than £24 the half-acre allotment in the capital, and £12 the quar-ter-acre in other towns. The Association had a right to reserve land for public purposes both under the Ist and 2nd acts, without paying any money for it, but this did not suit their purpose ; they wanted to be able to saddle the Jand with their debts, and in so doing they spent between £3,000 and £4,000 of monies entrusted to them in a manner perfectly useless to the parties they professed to act for. Such conduct appears to me to be j little less than fraud. It has been said that the Government Audi for having passed these items by unquestioned, and the Government having accepted payment of the 10s. per acre due to it, is thereby debarred from: complaining, and that no one else has any concern in the matter. Can this be 80? If the Government, as guardian of the rights of the people, delegates its trust for a while and under certain conditions to the Association, the Association possessing these rights, acts as the seller as well as the purchaser, and the Government has surely a right to assume that each individual purchase has been made according to the terms it prescribed. If the Association sell under other conditions, it is at their peril. The act indeed protects any ordinary purchaser from the consequences of such illegal sale because he might be-ignorant of its illegality, but the protection does not extend to the Association, which must have been cognizant of the fraud they were perpetrating. Secondly, the Association finding that they had, contrary to the express provisions of the act, largely overdrawn the account of the miscellaneous fund, borrowed from the trustees i f the Bishopric fund the sum I of £10,000, which had been set apart for the endowment of the Bishopric, giving as security a mortgage over those lands reserved for miscellaneous purposes which they pretended; to have purchased. It is, I believe, more than doubtful whether the Association had the right (of course they had the power for the time) to mortgage the property of one fund for the benefit of another, to its own detriment; and whether the parties most concerned in the miscellaneous reserves, being all the colonists, whether dissenters or churchmen, have not a right to object to those reserves being absolutely alienated to a church, of which only some of them are members. This mortgage deed gives the mortgagees, I believe, power of foreclosure at the end of twelve months from the date of its execution, and I cannot help admiring the courage of the man who could in his letter of last March deny indignantly that the Association had any idea of alienating the Town Reserves, when, at the very time he must have had this mortgage deed in his possession, giving the mortgagees (some five gentlemen of whom Lord Lyttelton was one) power to foreclose the mortgage six months or so before the date of his letter; so that if this deed be anything but waste paper, the Reserves are at this moment at the mercy of the aforesaid gentlemen in trust for our own future Bishop ! Now Mr. Sewell has come here, we are

told, to negociate the transfer of this assumed property of the Association to the Provincial Council, and his terms are, " pay our debts and you shall have the property we hold in trust for you. If you won't " — " What then r" Hid Honor the Superintendent in stating the case to the Provincial Council, says that this transfer is what is referred to in the 76th clause of the Constitution Act. With all due deference to. his opinion I think he is-mistaken. The 76th clause speaks of a transfer by the Association to the Council of certain " functions, powers, and authorities," alluded to in the 75th clause. The 75th clause states " that on the expiration or sooner determination of the functions, powers, and authorities now vested in or lawfully exercised by the said Association, the provisions of the present Act shall come into force," &c. Leaving us fairly to infer that when the provisions of the Constitution Act have come into force, then all the powers, functions, and authorities, &c, must have previously ceased. Now it is obvious that we are experiencing the action of the 72nd clause of the Constitution Act, which empowers Her Majesty (or her representative) to regulate the sale, letting, and disposal of the lands till the General Assembly shall otherwise enact, so that it is evident that the "functions" &c, cf the Association have ceased, and if this transfer of property and debt is part of what is meant by the ! lerms "functions, powers, and authorities," it is quite clear that the Association's power to effect such a transfer has long since passed away. The question is, Did Sir J. Pakington, in arresting the action of the Association, go so far as to deprive them of power over their trust or corporate property? Or did he merely deprive them of power over all land not absolutely conveyed to themselves ? The cessation of the Association's power over Canterbury is twice alluded to in our public documents. In the letters patent it is provided that the Queen may revoke the charter. In the Bth clause of the .isL Act she is empowered to declare their poxcer of disposition over the Canterbury block to have determined. Are these powers identical? It is a nice question which I do not pretend to answer, but it certainly behoves us to make out clearly whether they are so or no, before purchasing these lands of Mr. SewelPs; because should it turn out that the Association's powers are really forfeited, the lauds belong, not to Mr. Sewell, but to the General Assembly to dispose of. This question, however, does not in the slightest degree touch upon that as to whether the Association has any right to deal with the Miscellaneous Reserves. That I deny on the ground, firßt, that they weie properly reserved by the first Act, and, secondly, that as far as regards the Town Reserves and Parks, they have never been paid for. And that the Association's conveyances of these lands to themselves is merely waste parchment, I believe no one is so thoroughly convinced of as Mr. Sewell himself. I would not have it inferred from what I have said above that I would be sorry to see the Provincial Council repay back to the several members of the committee of management the sums of money they have so generously advanced for our benefit (provided of course it can be proved to have \ been really spent in our behalf). But as these debts were most Of them incurred illegally, so their repayment, if effected at all, should be as a debt of honour, and even to do that we must be ready to forgive and forget the reckless extravagance with which the colonists' funds were squandered in the,first instance, and which principally rendered this advance necessary.

Mr.- Sewell's attitude at present reminds one of the beggar in Gil Bias. While begging charity for God's sake, he presents his blunderbuss at our heads! He must drof his blunderbuss if he wishes the Council tG enter with an unbiassed judgment into the consideration of the accounts. Trusting that I have this time at least rendered my meaning sufficiently clear to the slightly obfuscated intellect of my friend, X.Y.Z., and apologising for again trespassing so far on your valuable space, I remain, * Your obedient Servant, Alfred C. Barker.

5y To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times. ;:: -J Sir. —You state in your last number that "It was mentioned by Mr. Tancred, in bringing in the estimates, yesterday, that two hundred and forty thousand acres, out--side the block, had been selected." Allow me to correct the error into which your reporter appears to have fallen, and which might cause a misconception of the real state of the case. lam the more anxious to do this, as from my p. sition in the Council as representing the government, any statements attributed tome might be supposed to emanate from an official source. Now the fact is, that I know no mere than yourself, what land has been purchased outside the block. I have heard numerous reports of very large sales of land, but what truth there may be in them, I have no means of judging. . My object in making any mention of the sale of land at all, was to convince the Council of the reasonableness of assuming that at least £20,000 would be available for the service of the Province from the proceeds of the land revenue. I certainly did. allude to the reports which were being1 circulated, but I thought I had taken especial care to allude to them merely as reports, and not as matters upon which I had any cer-: tain or official knowledge. I remain, Your obedient Servant, H. J. Tancued Chriatehurch, March 20th, J854.

To the Editor of the Lyltelton Times. The Plums, 13th March, 1854. Sir, —I thank you for inserting my letter in your Journal, but allow me to say in reference to the remarks you make upon it, that I differ from you in the construction you put on the expression "Public ivorii" as you consider the official residence of the Superintendent not comprised under that term. Now, it appears to me, that any building created at the public expense, solely for an official purpose, must be considered a Public work, whether it be for a Superintendent, a Governor, or the Queen herself. lam no advocate for profuse expenditure, and we need not perhaps at present aspire to a building that should vie with the House of Commons, but, quo ad ejus fieri potest^ I should like to bee such an edifice as would reflect credit on our settlement. Trusting you will excuse my again intruding upon your columns, I remain, ' Yours faithfully, VINDEX. [We hare not space to discuss " Vindex's" criticism: but we still hold the opinion that many more essential things are wanted to be done before we build for the Superintendent an " edifice that woirld. reflect credit on our Settlement," and fri thia we think we.express the opinion of a'great majority of the people of the Province.]