The New=Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 681, 23 October 1852, Page 2

The New=Zealander.

Be just and fear nut : Let nil the ends them aim'st at, be thy Country's, Thy God's, awl Truth's.

AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, OCT. 23, 1552.

In confirmation, if that were necessary of the conclusion which we drew from the paragraph of the Royal Speech relating to New Zealand, that the New Constitution measure i had passed through Parliament, and received the Royal assent, we copy from the columns of our contemporary, the Southern Cross, the following extract from one of the Colonial journals which we had not the good fortune to see previously :— • j " The House of Commons on the 9lh proceeded with the remaining clauses of the New Zealand Bill ; and on the 74th clause, which sanctions (he new arrangement with the New Zealand Company, guaranteeing them one fourth of the claims of the land sales, Sir W. Molesworth moved an amendment, limiting the claims of the company to the strict legal rights they were entitled to under the act of 1847. Secretary Sir 3. Pakington could not undertake to act judicially between the company and those who accused them ; all he had to do was to look to the equitable rights llicy had under the act of 18i7. The Government proposition was ultimately carried, as was another amendment limiting the payment to one-tenth instead of one fourth. Mr. Gladstone moved to limit the payment to the company to a maximum of ss. per acre, but the motion was lost on a division." It is so far satisfactory to find that the evil is much less in its present form than we had reason to fear it would have proved from the powerful influence of the Company, and from the rapidity with which the bill must have been carried through its various stages. If, however, the tax, instead of being a tenth, had been reduced to a hundredth part of the proceeds of our land sales, it would no less become our duty to resist, by every constitutional means, its imposition upon this pro-

vinco. There is no principle of reason or equity upon which we can be called upon for such a tax, whatever may be said in favour of the Company's claim upon those portions of the Islands which have been the fields of its colonizing operations : when further and more complete information shall have been before the public, we feel certain that our fellow colonists will not be found wanting- in spirit and determination to resist an injustice so flagrant. The sneer in which our contemporary indulges at the memorial prepared by the Committee of the Auckland Meeting in February last is, we think, somewhat ungenerous. The business confided to that Committee was the simple embodyment of the sense of the meeting, as expressed in the resolutions adopted by it, into the memorial drawn up —a duty which they scrupulously fulfilled. It was not competent to them to mix up extraneous questions of "direct purchases of land from the natives," or any other topics with those contained in the resolutions, and we must maintain that the ground of "hardship and injustice" upon which the proposed tax was combated, was much safer than the ground of illegality. Its direct legality might be contended for, but the dishonesty of seeking compensation for services which had in no shape or form been rendered to this province could not even by the most prejudiced be upheld.