PORT NICHOLSON.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 51, 25 February 1843, Page 203

PORT NICHOLSON.

By the Imp we have received the iView Zealand Gazette to the llth instant. We regret that we do not get our Wellington papers up to the day on which vessels leave. It often happens, as in the present instance, that three or four publications are due. We find, on inquiry, that the Imp left Wellington on the I.9th; we ought, therefore, to have received the Colonist of the 14th and 17th, and the Gazette of the 15th and 18th.

The following extract from the Gazette, which refers to the progress being' made at New Plymouth, is highly satisfactory :—

" We continue to receive highly favourable accounts from this settlement. Numerous settlers arrived from England in the Blenheim and Essex, with considerable capital, have given a fresh impetus to the already decided tendency of the proprietors of land to agricultural pursuits. The absence of a harbour, so far from being an injury to the settlement, has been positively advantageous, by forcing the settlers to the cultivation of their fertile land, instead of speculating in town allotments and water frontages, or the fashionable colonial habit of storekeeping. The roads made by the New Zealand Company, particularly that running the whole length of the settlement to the Waitera, facilitates the occupation of the land and the transport of produce to the town and anchorage. " The entrance to the Waitera river has been carefully buoyed, and beacons erected. We give the sailing directions for it in another column. Whilst large vessels can hold to the moorings in had weather, smaller craft may find a safe harbour in the Waitera.

" The Essex emigrant ship and two small schooners were safely discharged of passengers and cargo in two days and a-half. " The road to Wanganui for horsemen and cattle will be completed during this month. Fine coal and limestone have been discovered at Mokau, forty miles north of the Sugar Loaf Islands. The river will admit vessels of 150 tons burden.

" It is rather a curious statistical fact that, of thirty births which have occurred at New Plymouth within these few months, no fewer than twenty-eight were females. Only ona death has occurred in the settlement during five months. The white population numbers nearly one thousand souls."

We take the following from the Gazette of the Bth and llth: —

" The schooner Governor Hobson was launched from the slip on Saturday last, after having undergone a thorough repair. We believe the barque Indemnity is the next vessel to be placed on the slip. " The barque Eleanor, 496 tons, Captain Holderness, which arrived ih this port in November, 1841, from Sydney, and sailed for Bombay, was totally consumed by fire on the 27th September last, whilst lying in Allepee Roads, supposed to have been set on fire by the crew. The Eleanor was bound from Bombay to Calcutta, loaded with salt and coir rope." " We some time back urged on the town council the pressing want of a market-place. No steps have as yet been taken to remedy the evil, though the want of such a place of resort is becoming more apparent every day. Through a market not being in existence, Wellington presents the curious anomaly of five or six different prices being obtained for the same articles, in various parts of the town, at the same time. We consider a market-place one of the few things that would really benefit this borough. " No less than six hundred vessels have arrived in this port since the first formation of the settlement, a period of little more than three years. We wonder if this bears out the statement that no vessels can beat into our harbour, when one-half of the above number have worked in against strong head winds. Only one or two slight accidents have occurred ; and we question if many harbours can show such a list of arrivals without at the same time having to record more fatal results than we have."

We are indebted to the captain of the Imp for a Colonist of the 17th. "The following extract is a reply to an article on the land claims, which appeared in the Gazette on the day previous. As we have not seen the latter paper, we can give no opinion on the question on which our contemporaries are at issue, but the idea of the settlers resident on Te Aro giving up that portion of the town to the natives, is certainly too absurd to be entertained.

" We have understood, though only from rumour, that in consequence of some circumstances which have recently transpired in evidence before the commissioner of land claims, an attempt has been made, or some preliminary proceedings have been adopted, in order to procure from the natives of Te Art) a confirmation of the New Zealand Company's title to the land which they claim, and that the natives have positively refused to agree to or confirm, any sale. Now this, assuming it to be true — and we believe that, at present at least, it is not very far from the truth— affords an opportunity of testing the validity of the principles laid down by our contemporary. Within the district claimed by the natives x»f Te Aro are situated the largest warehouses, some of the best constructed and most expensive dwelling-houses : upon one country section Mr. Martin has expended, we believe, upwards of £1,100 in clearings and improvements; and more, perhaps, has been done within that district than in any tract of a similar extent. Now we ask, not of our contemporary, because we know what, upon

reflection, will be his answer, but of every person of common sense, whether it would be endurable, or even conceivable, that the settlers should be deprived of their residences and places of business, turned out of their clearings, and ruined, in order that the natives might have what to them would be of no value, or at least of none in comparison with that which it now possesses ? We say, that the very idea is preposterous, and that its execution would be impracticable.

" To attempt to argue a question like the present upon any maxims of courts of law, or to talk of obtaining from the Company compensation with costs, is idle in the extreme. It is not a question of right between man and man, to be settled by technical rules : it is a matter of grave public policy, to be determined by those principles which, in such questions, Governments have always employed in their solution. If argued as our contemporary argues, it would be a question of the existence or the ruin of this settlement, which would be settled at the next Supreme Court, by an action of ejectment on the 1 part of some individual native. But it is one of those points which no Government ever has, or ever will, permit to come into question. No Government can, consistently with its own highest functions, allow to be brought into question the very basis upon which a settlement like this is established. And we are quite assured that if any such result as that which appears probable, had been anticipated with regard to the town of Wellington, some provision would have been made in anticipation by the Government for the quieting of the titles of the settlers, by providing the means of adjusting the nature and quantum of the compensation to be given to the natives. But neither the New Zealand Company nor the Government have ever learned from Colonel Wakefield that these questions existed. On the contrary, at a time when it was a matter of perfect notoriety to every person here that the natives of Te Aro denied having sold their land, and were resisting the surveys, the New Zealand Company, in reference to some statement on the sublect, made.

we believe, by Mr. Shortland, contradicted it, on the sole ground that they had never received any intimation of any such dispute. It was not to be anticipated that they should take measures to provide against dangers of whose very existence they were ignorant. And we may suffer in the prolongation of a state of excitement, and to some of uncertainty, solely because the Agent of the New Zealand Company has not adequately informed his principals of the nature and extent of the objections to his claim urged by the natives.

" And this suggests one other consideration : the settlers must put their own shoulder to the wheel. It is now more than three years since Colonel Wakefield was inrormed that the principal chief^ of Pipitea, and the majority of the natives of Te Aro, who had not signed his deed, asserted that they had not sold their land. In that period what has been done to extinguish these claims— what to provide for their adjustment, by means of compensation to be given to the natives, if it should appear that they had not sold ? We cannot say — Nothing. But we can say that, having always felt a considerable interest in the question, and having laken some pains to ascertain the facts, we have never heard of any measures taken for the purpose. The question, therefore, now comes for settlement laden with the accumulated difficulties of three years ; and it will be, probably, no light matter to remove these difficulties. But will the settlers leave their interests to be treated with the same apathetic indifference with which all questions touching the claims of the natives have hitherto been treated ? or will they not rather, seeing that a crisis has arrived in which they are personally interested, take some measures for urging upon the Government their peculiar claims ? We trust that, for once, the interests of the settlement will prevail over the feelings of party, and that in this matter all settlers will unite to further their common cause.

" If it.ahould happen that the Commissioner is of opinion that the people of Te Aro, for instance (we put this merely by way of illustration), have not sold their land ; and if it is found impossible to come to any compromise with them on the subject ; it is to be presumed that the Commissioner will make his report. This report will, we should imagine, be transmitted to the Home Government, and it ought to be accompanied by a memorial from the settlers, stating their case, and praying the Government to do what is a matter of almost daily occurrence in England, to take these lands for the great public purpose of founding a colony — giving to the natives compensation to be awarded according to some equitable basis. We feel quite certain that such a memorial would obtain instant acquiescence, and that claims so just and reasonable would be at once recognised. " We end, however, with what we have before said in this matter. The claims of those settlers who have occupied and improved land must be maintained."

The Horticultural Society of Wellington had its first exhibition on the 14th. We congratulate our neighbours on the progress they are making in cultivation, and rejoice at the evidence given that the " barren hills of Port Nicholson" can successfully compete with the Hutt in the production of grain, as well as in Horticulture, many of the prizes having been awarded to the residents of Wade's Town. Notice is taken of a melon grown by Mr. E. Johnson, measuring twenty-seven inches in circuinfeieace, weighing ten pounds, and a cucumber, grown by Mr. Moles worth, twenty"three inches long, and seven inches in circumference.