Untitled

Lyttelton Times, Volume VI, Issue 367, 10 May 1856, Page 5

To the Editor of the " Lyttelton Times

Sir, —Would you be kind enough to inform your readers, as to what in law constitutes a vested right. Can any man claim that thing as a right, for which he has given no special consideration ? Did the land purchasers pay for their pre-emptive rights ? They paid £3 an acre for their land specially, and they paid so much a year for their pasturage licenses specially, b-.t ther paid nothing specially for their pre-emptive right.

I can therefore, look upon pre-emptive rights in no other way, than as a mere promise on the part of the Association, to give the holders the first refusal of the land, but. as no special consideration was given, such promise can hardly be considered binding on their successors.

Of all your correspondents, on this subject, "Iota" appears to me the grandest. Shylock like, he would not only have his " pound of flesh, " but. he would not scruple to take the ** heart's hlood too, " if, he only knew the law would grant it. How grand b,» is ! He doth bestride his rights like some Colossus in all the lofty magnificence of self, and petty purchasers must creep about beneath his huge legs in fear and trembling. T do ;iot think the members of the Provincial Council, would so i\n forget themselves, as to admit for a single moment such a thing as compensation, or a reduction in price. Such a step wo.ild be followed by most alarming consequences, and would be a most vicious precedent. I can fancy lota, on heaving that some one had become the happy possessor of fifty acres of barren shingle bed at 10s. an acre, posting off to demand compensation, because he had paid £.'2 an acre some years before for the tat of the land. It is consolotary in the midst of so much selfish scrambling and confusion, to know, that there are some, who even while they

hold what they believe to be a right, yet would rather forego that right than give up the possession of the kind regard and warm esteem of their neighbours, to them a far more valuable possession than aprivilege, which would merely enable them to perpetuate their names, as the holder of so many dirty acres. Yours &c. V. E. O. Lyttelton, May Sth, 1556.