MR. HANSON'S LETTER to the SECRETARY of the SOCIETY for the PROTECTION or the ABORIGINES.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 85, 21 October 1843, Page 339

MR. HANSON'S LETTER to the SECRETARY of the SOCIETY for the PROTECTION or the ABORIGINES.

Wellington, New Zealand, May 24, 1842. Sir — I have taken the liberty of addressing you on the claims of the New Zealand Company to the land which they allege themselves to have purchased, so far as it affects the rights and interests of the natives of this part of New Zealand. I am induced to take this step because I have no doubt that the results of the inquiry instituted by Mr. Spain, as commissioner of land claims, will lead to some attempts on the part of the Company in England to cure the defects of their title by means of an act of Parliament ; and it is right that some persons should watch their proceedings on the part of the natives. I am fully aware that the questions now at issue between the New Zealand Company and the native claimants are so complicated and so fraught with danger as to require some interposition on the part of the Legislature. Ido not, therefore, deprecate the interference of Parliament to adjust and determine the respective claims of the European settlers and the New Zealanders. Nor would I push the claims of the natives to an unreasonable or impracticable extent. lam rather of opinion that this case cannot be decided by a rigid application of extreme principles, but must be settled in a liberal spirit of compromise. On the one hand, I would not assert the claims of the natives so absolutely as to give them the power of closing their country against English colonization ; and on the other, I cannot regard any amount of advantage to be gained from the settlement of these islands by a civilized race as a plea for the infliction of positive injury, under the guise of law, upon their present occupants. Happily, there is no necessary opposition between the attainment of the advantages anticipated from the settlement of the country and the maintenance, in the fullest manner, of the just claims of the New Zealanders. If there be any apparent opposition, I hold that it is incumbent on the British Legislature, at all hazards, to do justice to the weaker party. But I do not imagine that there need be any apparent opposition. There has prevailed in England an extraordinary misconception with regard to the opinions and practices of the New Zealanders in relation to the sale of land. It is very true that immense tracts have been nominally purchased by the Agent of the New Zealand Company, and by others, for very trifling and inadequate considerations. It may, however, be doubted whether the parties by whom the sale was made had any notion, however imperfect, of the sense in which the transaction was understood by the buyers. The utmost which they can be conceived to have understood was that, within certain specified limits, the party purchasing should be allowed to settle upon the same terms as the members of the tribe owning the land. They might have believed that they were conferring a right of citizenship, so to speak, under which the stranger who reclaimed and cultivated land might be guaranteed in the enjoyment of the land which he had thus appropriated. Or, as is equally probable, it was regarded as no more than that the chiefs who signed the deed and received the price conceded to the contracting party the right of purchasing from its actual owner any land which he might desire to obtain for use. At any rate, whatever they did mean, no doubt can be felt by any person acquainted with their usages, that they did not mean to give to any one the right to drive them from their pahs, to occupy and appropriate the ground they had cleared and cultivated, and to restrain them from the liberty of using any unoccupied ground for the purpose of raising the food necessary to their existence. Abundant evidence can be furnished to prove that this could not have been their intention. And if it were more doubtful than is actually the case, they-would be entitled to the protection of a court of equity against the consequences of their own ignorance and improvidence; nor could the British Government and Legislature fairly or honourably affirm a contract founded on misconception and pregnant with injury. The two principal purchases hy the New Zealand Company have been that of the Harbour and district of Port Nicholson, and that from the chiefs of the Kawia tribe of all the land within certain limits defined by degrees of latitude. The former is estimated to comprise about 100,000 acres, and tbe latter includes within its boundaries nearly 20,000,000 of acres. There is also a purchase of land at Wanganui, and one at Taranaki, both of which are, however, included in terras within the limits of the purchase from the Kawia tribe. To the two first purchases, of which alone I am at present competent to speak, there are objections, arising, first, from the nature of the contract itself, and, secondly, from the manner in which the pledges given to the natives have been carried out. In the first place, the purchase has been made from a few of the principal chiefs only, although there is not a single freeman or rangatira who has not an absolute right to portions of the land, subject to no interference or control, either on the part of individual chiefs or of the whole body of the tribe. It is asserted by the great majority of the freemen, and some of the principal chiefs of the two tribes from whom these purchases have been made (with what truth I cannot pretend to affirm), that they did not consent to the sale of their own land, nor even to the sale of the unoccupied portions of the territory, which might be regarded as the common property of the tribe. The names of very few are attached to the purchase deeds, ana these, without exception, admit that they only signed for themselves. Those who have not signed the deeds assert that they were no parties to the sale ; and of those who did the majority now pretend that they were not aware

of the nature and intention of the documents. As this matter has been rererred by her Majesty's Government to a commission, especially appointed to inquire into the sales and alleged sales by the natives, it would be at least premature to offer any opinion as to the trvth of these statements, or as to their effect, if true. But I have a right, as a friend of justice, and interested in the welfare of the native races, to adduce the fact that these statements are made, as a ground for calling upon those who are anxious for the maintenance of the rights of the New Zealanders, to protest against any legislation which may have for its objects the settlement of the questions thus raised, until the report of that commissioner has been received. When that report is made, there will be sufficient materials to warrant a decision. At present, any measures for quieting titles must be founded upon imperfect and exparte statements.

But, in the second place, there are objections, perhaps of a more important nature, arising out of the manner in which the pledges of the New Zealand Company have been carried out. In the purchase deeds as well as in the published documents of the Company, there is contained a pledge that one-tenth of the land acquired should be set apart for the use of the natives. This pledge has been in form redeemed, but in substance it has, as it seems to me, been widely departed from. Reserves for the benefit of the natives have been made, but, unfortunately, they have been made in such a manner as to produce few or none of those immediate results which were anticipated by the intelligent and philanthropic individuals who devised the plan. In the harbour of Port Nicholson, for instance, there are nine pahs or native villages. Of these only three have been selected as native reserves, and one is laid out as a public reserve, leaving five which have become the property of private individuals. In the immediate vicinity of the harbour there are perhaps about 500 or 600 acres, which might be considered as occupied by the natives for the purpose of cultivation ; not that the whole of this was under culture at any one time, but that this quantity had been reduced into possession by individual natives. Of this quantity certainly not one-third has been reserved for them ; I believe I might say not one-sixth ; and, unfortunately, although it may be that the land which has been selected as native reserves may be in quality and position of fair average value, it is so selected as to possess, with only one exception, that of Petoni, but little utility for the present purposes of the natives. The native inhabitants of this place, even those who, in the first instance, resisted the settlement of the white men among them, are reconciled to the settlement, partly from a feeling of its being inevitable, and partly from a perception of the many advantages which they derive from their intercourse with the English settlers. They ask only for a place whereon to reside, and land upon which they may raise food. But if the arrangements of the New Zealand Company are adopted, and the titles of those who have purchased under them are absolutely confirmed by Parliament, a large proportion, if not the majority, of the native inhabitants of Port Nicholson will have neither the one nor the other — at least without an abandonment not merely of their present habitations but of their present modes of life.

I am fully aware of the difficulties by which this question is surrounded. It is no easy matter to adjust conflicting claims, when the property at issue is worth from £10,000 to £12,000. This is the present value of the land which has been unnecessarily and, as appears to me, unjustly taken from the natives, and allotted to purchasers under the New Zealand Company. The English claimants, who imagine that their investment is about producing them from 1,000 to 4,000 per cent., will, of course, resist to the utmost any attempt to deprive them of the land allotted to them ; and with justice. They ventured in a lottery, in which they might have lost the whole of their venture. They have left their native country, and have encountered the perils and hardships of a new settlement, in the hope of obtaining those rewards which are the appropriate compensation for the difficulties they have passed through. They have chosen land, offered for their selection by parties specially nominated for the purpose, and who were constituted by their office guardians of the native interests in the place. Had the land in dispute been reserved for the natives, they would have chosen the land next, and but little inferior in value. Had this been done, their loss would not have been appreciable. As it is, to lose the land they have selected would involve a loss to them of nearly all their property, for which they could obtain compensation neither from the New Zealand Company nor from the Government. In this case to do justice to the natives would be to inflict upon them injustice of a precisely corresponding amount, and against this injustice they may be expected most reasonably to protest. Many of them also have expended large sums in the erection of buildings and in the improvement of their property, and all probably have made arrangements upon the faith of their title to the land in question. These men consequently are entitled to the protection of the Government equally with the natives.

On the other hand there are in the immediate vicinity of the harbour of Port Nicholson about 500 natives who are almost absolutely dependent upon the products of their own cultivation for subsistence. The land reserved for them ia comparatively useless. They have no beasts of burden, and no means of transporting produce except in their canoes or upon their owe backs. Consequently, nearly all their cultivation was along the banks of the rivers, and within a very short distance of their settlements. Land, however valuable in itself, if situated at a distance of four or five miles, is useless to them. Ihe

majority of these assert that they have not sold their land, and it has happened that the only tribe within the district who admit the sale is also the only tribe whose pahs and potato grounds have been maintained inviolate. Those who deny the sale find themselves gradually thrust out of all the land they have been accustomed to cultivate, and which they consider as their own peculiar property. Hardly are they allowed to take out of the soil the crop they have planted, and as soon as the crop is taken out, they are informed that the land is no longer theirs, and that they must go elsewhere. They have been told by their well wishers not to oppose force to the encroachments of the settlers, but to rely upon the justice of the Government ; and they have hitherto awaited with patience the adoption of protective measures by the Crown. But in what manner this protection is to be afforded them is a question of great difficulty. To restore to them their lands would, as I have stated, be to repair an injustice done to them, at the price of similar injustice to equally innocent parties. To confirm the titles of the European settlers would be to deprive the original occupiers of the soil of land which they have never sold, and without which they can hardly subsist.

It will be for the English Government to decide between these conflicting claims. In this place, if any questions arising out of them are to be decided by a jury of Englishmen, there would be but small probability of justice being done to the natives. In whatever manner the difficulty may be solved, there can be but one opinion as to the impolicy of the proceedings by which this dilemma has been created.

The originators of the New Zealand Company, framing their plan in England, without other materials upon which to base thefr opinions than such as were supplied by books written with far different objects, or were gathered from the descriptions of parties whose attention had never been directed to the peculiar circumstances in the country, upon a full knowledge of which any plan for the benefit of the natives ought to have been founded, could only frame a plan in outline, to be filled up on the spot by their agent. That plan proceeded upon two assumptions — Firstly, that all the land within certain extensive districts would be purchased for them ; and, secondly, that the different tribes occupied an extent of land quite disproportioned to their wants, of which the largest portion might be appropriated to the European settlers without any inconvenience. Both of these assumptions have proved fallacious.

The New Zealanders never have consented to the sale of all their lands, and could not, in fact, conceive such a bargain; and although the land occupied by many of the tribes is far more extensive than required, yet it is only in respect of particular portions that an appropriation of land to the English settler can be made without producing great injury to the native. With regard to the first point, all the natives of Port Nicholson, I believe, without a single exception, agree that many, if not the majority, of landholders in the district did not consent to the sale of their land to the Agent of the New Zealand Company ; and they also assert what, from my observations of the natives here and in other parts, I am quite certain is the case, that every freeman has a right to particular pieces of ground, the boundaries of which are as well defined and as rigidly maintained as any estate in the most civilized country. They further agree that no one person, however great maybe his power, has a right to interfere with, much less to dispose of, the property of any freeman without his consent, and that even the majority of the tribe have in this respect no power over the minority, or even over a single dissentient party. According to the customs of the New Zealanders, therefore, the New Zealand Company have no title to the greater portion of the lands which they have professed to sell. And it may be stated with confidence that nothing short of an act of Parliament could divest the native proprietor of his title; nor that, without an adequate compensation. The islands of New Zealand, by whatever title they may belong to the British Crown, have not been acquired in any manner which would .operate to the extinguishment of private right to property, or could enable the Crown to grant land previously occupied under a title valid according to the recognized customs which are the laws of the country. Not merely, therefore, is the assumption of the New Zealand Company that they had extinguished the native title to the large tracts nominally included within their purchases quite unfounded, but the defect in their title, resulting from the omission on the part of their Agent to complete his purchases, does not seem susceptible of any remedy short of an act of Parliament. And, assuredly, the Legislature of Great Britain will pause before it takes from 500 individuals, subjects of the empire, and entitled to all the rights of citizenship, settled in fixed habitations, and cultivating their own lands, the 600 or 700 acres needful to their subsistence.

With regard to the second point, it is quite true, firstly, that the possessions of every tribe are altogether disproportioned to their wants ; secondly, that the reserve of a tenth of the whole country would be far more than sufficient for their subsistence upon a footing of equality with the English settlers. But it is not sufficient to reserve a tenth upon the plan of the New Zealand Company. The accessible lands are, in many districts, and particularly in the Port Nicholson district, comparatively small, and a large proportion of these — large, at least, as compared with the actual reserve— had, before the arrival of the Europeans, been occupied by < the natives. While, then, less than a tenth of '■ the whole district might be adequate to t&ej support of the natives, they would require a • much larger proportion of the immediately «fe---'

oestiible lands. In this respect their position differs widely from that of the English settlers : these latter bring into the colony with them capital and skill, of both of which the New Zealander is destitute. They have, moreover, habits which allow them, without inconvenience, to live alone with their families or dependents in the forest, satisfied with occasional visits to the town, and contented to wait until the progress of settlement supplies them with society, and secures that increased value of their land to which they look for ultimate independence; while the New Zealander, always accustomed to live in the midst of his tribe, would find nothing in the most extravagant anticipations of future wealth, even could he be made to understand the proceas by which this was to be realized, to compensate for the enforced sacrifice of all his habitual pursuits and associations. The European also can take with him a sufficiency of food, tools to abridge labour, cattle to perform the most toilsome works; he has besides means of conveying his surplus produce to market, and of bringing to his home the articles of necessity, convenience, or luxury, which that surplus may enable him to purchase. The natives have no such means at their disposal, and nothing has been done to supply this deficiency. Living upon the sea coast for the convenience of fishing, assembled in pahs for the purpose of security, the New Zealanders cultivate just so much ground in the neighbourhood of their residence as may suffice to furnish them with food and enable them to obtain blankets, tobacco, and a few other articles in exchange for the surplus. It may be, perhaps, a question whether the natives would not be happier for some change in their habits, which should assimilate them more nearly to Europeans. But there can be no question that it would be alike fruitless and cruel to attempt to introduce such a change suddenly and forcibly, by depriving them of the land from which they had been accustomed to draw supplies, and driving them to scattered locations in the depths of the forests, or on the summits of the hills. Any change, to be beneficial, must be gradual and voluntary ; must flow from an acquisition of a taste for the cotpforts of civilized life and a perception of the advantages of European habits : not from the compulsory deprivation of all the accustomed means of support. It must not be imagined from this that the land required for the use of the natives could not be reserved without injury to the settlement. No doubt, assertions of this nature will be made, and it may even be asserted that there is an absolute incompatibility between the preservation of the natives in their old modes of life and the progress and prosperity of English colonization. Nothing can be more unfounded. Out of nearly 10,000 acres of fertile land which have been surveyed and selected in the immediate neighbourhood of Port Nicholson, 600 would have amply sufficed for the present wants of the natives. Out of the 1,100 acres of which the town is composed, only eight are occupied by the native pahs. Had the land actually occupied or reclaimed by the natives been reserved, it would no doubt have been rather more than one-tenth in value, though far less than one-tenth in extent of the land which some of their chiefs nominally ceded, and which the New Zealand Company now claims under that cession. But this reserve would have satisfied the natives, and it would have enabled the New Zealand Company to obtain a valid title to their possessions. That such reserves were not made is absolutely unaccountable.

As an illustration of the mode in which the native reserves in this district have been selected, I will proceed to describe the general character of the most important, in reference to the various native settlements around the harbour.

The natives of the pah Te Aro, on the southern shore of what is now termed Lambton Harbour, who were never consulted as to the sale, and not one of whom signed the deed conveying to the New Zealand Company, had cultivated from sixty to eighty acres of land on the hills immediately in the rear of their pah, and had gardens on the space now occupied by the , town. Every one of their clearings and gardens as well as their pah has been rolected for the purchasers under the Company, and they have been required to give up possession. This, however, they have not yet done. There is one section immediately behind their clearings'; and there are three others at a distance of about two miles further, which are, however, of little value, except for grazing. They do, nevertheless, possess in the one section in the rear of their present clearings one valuable section, which, in a year or two, they will probably occupy and cultivate; but it would have been more just and more prudent to secure to them the ground they had actually cleared. The natives of Kumutoto, on the west shore of Lambton Harbour, have Been allowed to retain one acre on which part of their pah stood, but they have not within all their district a single acre of country land. The natives of the pah Pippitea have retained their pah because it has been selected as a public reserve, and there are about twenty acres of native reserves within that part of the town which belongs to them ; but they have not a single country section. The natives of Tiakiwai have neither pah nor country land ; all has been taken from them. The natives of Kai Wara-wara, whose pah is situate beyond the confines of the town, and might have been reserved without the slightest public inconvenience, have had their pah and the whole of their cleared grounds taken from them. The same course has been pursued with the natives of Ngauracga. The natives of Petoni, more fortunate than any of their brethren, have had three sections, including their pah and die whole, or nearly the whole, of. their clearings reserved. Th« natives of Waiwatu have neither pah or

clearings left them. Two sections have been reserved in one part of the land they claim, which will eventually possess a very considerable value, but at present less than a fifth of these reserves is available, the remainder being a swamp. There are, also, two other sections, out of which perhaps fifteen or twenty acres would be available, and upon which they formerly had some small potato grounds; but these have been abandoned since the death of their chief, Puhakawa, who was murdered there by a hostile tribe, about two years and a half ago. I should qualify my statement with regard to these last, when I said, that all their clearings had been taken away, since the two sections last referred to did contain some clearings. The land thus cleared, however, belonged to the murdered chieftain, and had been utterly abandoned by his family before the selection. With regard to the second purchase, that from some of the principal chiefs of the Kawia tribe, it is difficult to conceive that any claim can be seriously founded upon it. The deed professes to comprise not only all the land belonging to the Kawia tribe, but all the land between the 38th degree of south latitude on the West Coast, and the 43d degree of south latitude, including the possessions of several independent tribes, as well as all the places occupied by the tribe to which the parties to the deed belonged. To suppose that the persons who signed the deed had any idea of its nature, would be opposed to everything which experience has disclosed with reference to the native character. And with regard to this alleged purchase, the chiefs who were parties to the contract have vigorously, and hitherto successfully, resisted every attempt on the part of the purchasers under the Company to settle upon their territories. In Port Nicholson, the inconveniences resulting from the pretensions of the New Zealand Company to dispose of land to which they have no valid title, have Been mainly felt by the natives. • In the neighbouring district of Porirua, alleged to have been purchased from the Kawia tribe, the inconvenience has fallen upon the colonists. There are among the settlers of this place gentlemen who nominally possess land purchased from the New Zealand Company, and selected at Porirua, which would eventually be worth from £10,000 to £20,000, of which they are unable to obtain quiet possession of a single acre. These persons who nave embarked their all in this colony, and who have greatly contributed to its success, naturally watch with the deepest anxiety the proceedings of the Commission of Inquiry, upon the result of which everything depends to them ; and they look to the English Government to secure them in possessionl which they have fairly purchased from the New Zealand Company, and have selected in the belief that the land had been equitably and validly purchased from the natives. It may, however, be doubted whether it is in the power of the English Government to afford any relief. The extinction of the native title is a necessary preliminary to any grant from the Crown ; and this must be done, not by procuring the signatures of a few chiefs to a deed conveying immense tracts, of which but an inconsiderable portion was their own property, but by a separate bargain with every individual claimant for his separate holding, and with the body of the tribe for that land which is their common property. Still, in this district, the existence of any dispute might have been prevented, bad any trouble been taken to treat with the native owners, and had the reserves been made with due regard to the necessities -and wishes of the natives. From the first moment of the settlement, however, to this present time, although the validity of the alleged purchase by the New Zealand Company has never for a moment been recognised by the inhabitants of this particular district, no effort has been made to procure their consent to a sale, and the reserves have been made with an almost total disregard of the natural wishes of the natives to have their pahs and potato grounds preserved to them.

In the first place, then, the alleged purchases by the New Zealand Company have been made from the parties who had no right to Bell more than an inconsiderable portion of the land included within the deeds ; and, in the second place, the proposed reserves for the benefit of the natives have been so managed as to augment instead of removing the difficulty thus created. If, therefore, the settlement of this part of New Zealand is to continue, something must be done by the Imperial or Colonial Legislature to remedy these two sources of dispute. What I am anxious to witness is, that any remedial measure may recognize the rights and protect the interests of the New Zealanders. And this, I conceive, may be done without any injury to individual settlers. It would be, I think, equally unreasonable and imprudent to urge the absolute rights of the New Zealanders to all the land which they nominally possess. To argue that a few thousand people scattered along the sea coast, and on the banks of the rivers of this country, and occupying not more than a hundredth part of the available land, should, by virtue of their position merely, be entitled to exclude others from the vast unoccupied and fertile districts of the island, would appear equally repugnant to justice and to policy. But, on the other hand, to found upon the circumstance that the natives of New Zealand have not occupied the greater part of their country, an argument for depriving them of the land which they have cleared and cultivated, would be even more unjust and impolitic. What they are entitled to retain would appear to be all the land they have actually reduced into possession, and such a portion of the remainder as would, according to their mode of cultivation, be necessary for their subsistence within the next few yean. It is true, that this would include many spots ab-

solutely essential for the profitable settlement of the country, but no difficulty would be found in purchasing these Bpots at a fair price. It is also true that by this procedure the English settlers would be precluded from occupying ground which had been cleared by the natives, and which, therefore, they could bring into cultivation with far less expense than the neighbouring ing forest; but this is a fair and legitimate result.

There is indeed nothing of which the New Zealanders have complained more, or with more justice, than of the manner in which the European settlers have appropriated the land they had just cleared, and upon which they had expended labour, worth, at the estimate of the settlers themselves, from £8 to £12 per acre. By such an arrangement as I have suggested, the natives would be, and would feel that they were, benefited by the colonization of their country. They would have both the inducement and opportunity to assimilate their habits gradually to those of the civilized race. They would be preserved in idea and in reality, independent and equal with the colonists. Perceiving that justice had been done them in this most important particular, they would have neither fears nor jealousies of the settlement around them. They would welcome the arrival of Englishmen in their district, instead of seeking to repel them. And there would be a probability, almost amounting to a certainty, of their preservation and improvement. I remain, &c. (Signed) R. Davies Hanson.