ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 703, 8 January 1853, Page 2

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the New Zealander. Sir, — I shall feel obliged if you will insert in your Saturday’s paper the letters respecting my land claim, as inserted in the Southern Cross of yesterday. I remain, GUra respectively, . J. Newman. Remuora, sth January, 1853. Remuera, 3rd January, 1853. Sir, —I hog you will insert the enclosed letters in your number to-morrow. It will show, that the old system of spoliation towards the land claimants is still carried out—and that anything like honesty from the Colonial Government, is hopeless—until the power is entrusted to our own representatives. Allow me to say to my friends and the public generally, that upon more mature consideration, I have decided not to oppose the sale of my land referred to above, beyond a legal protest—at the time of saleleaving the public freely to compete for the prize, resting satisfied in the justice of my claim, and feeling assured that when the present staff have made way for honest and unbiassed men, I shall then receive compensation according to the price realised. I therefore hope it will sell for its full value. 1 remain, yours, &c., J. Newman. Remuera, 17th December, 1852. Sin, —I beg you will state to His Excellency the Lieut.- Governor, that the Farm Allotment No. 82—91 a. and part of No. 31, advertised for sale on the 11th January, 1853, are my claim under pre-emption certificate No. 148. That I have received no intimation from the Colonial Government that the claim was disallowed. 2nd. That the impossibility of producing the Native evidence before Commissioner Matson’s Court, in 11 days (owing to sickness and distance) was the only reason why it was not then settled. 3rd. That I can see no reason why the same privilege cannot be ceded in this case, which is invariably granted in a Court of Justice in England, by ‘taking the evidence when offered, which has since been done, both personally and by writing. 4th. 'That I never received any compenstion for the '.mount (£SO) expended in extinguishing the Navive title, and that the Colonial Government have positively no jusi title to the land in question; and lastly, without any wish on my part to throw obstacles in the way of the Colonial Government, in self-defence I shall feel bound to protest against the sale, and exert all my influence to prevent its being sold. Under these circumstances, I beg to suggest to lib Excellency the propriety of withdrawing the said allotments. I have, &c., Joseph Newman, To the Hon. the Colonial Secretary, No. 416. Colonial Secretary’s Office, Auckland, 22nd December, 7852. Sir, —With reference to your leter of ills 17th instant, protesting against the sale of certain allotments on the 11th January, 1153, and suggesting the propriety of their beiig withdrawn; I am instructed by the Lieutenant Governor to inform you that he regrets your icquest cannot be complied with. I have the honor to be,&c., Andrew Sinclair, Coloiial Secretary. Mr. Joseph Newman, Auckland.

Wellington. at <he public expense, a number of workmen, corresponding in calling and number to those carried oft’ hy Captain Holism,” —an arrangement acceded to by the Secretary of State, and carried out at the expense of the fund arising from the sale of Land at Auckland. 2. fn the year 1843 the Company obtained, by agreement with the Secretary of State, tne right to a large quantity of Land in the Town and District of Auckland, and in the exercise of that right they became conditional owners of a considerable portion of the best Land in the Town, Suburb-', and Country, at the same lime taking upon themselves an “ obligation in honour to cany out to the best of their ability the colonizing views which they expressed” when the agreement was made. Ihe Company always evaded this debt of honor, and nod never took one step towards carrying out at Auckland their colonizing views, but held the best Lands of the District in utter barrenness for several years, to the great and manifest injury of the Settlement • and your Petitioners fimly believe that the Directors, from the commencement, never intended any other course, but acted throughout with a determination to throw obstacles in the way of the progress of the Government Settlements, in order to enhance the comparative importance of their own, —a conclusion fully justified by their conduct in the transaction, and confirmed by their published documents. 3. * When the Territory of New Zealand was divided hy the Governor-in-Cbief into two Provinces, the Company’s small settlement of New Plymouth was included in the Northern Province with the government settlements, an arrangement strongly objected to by the Directors as “ seriously prejudical to the Company,” and “ likely to entail considerable inconvenience on their settlers,” and the Secretary of State for the colonies, Earl Grey, yielded to the request of the Directors, and gave his consent to such an alteration of the boundary line, that even this slight connection should no longer exist between the Company’s settlements and those founded by the Government. 4. In March 1851 the Directors of the New Zealand Company stated to Earl Grey. “ hat the bulk of the expenditure incurred in this country ( England) on behalf of New Zealand, had been the direct and Unavoidable consequence of the impolicy which fixed the seat of the Local Government on a desert spot, remote alike from the European population and from the commerce of the Island” —a statement in every particular —the very opposite of truth, the last that has come to your Petitioners knowledge of a series of hostile, disparaging, and calumnious attacks made by the Directors of the New Zealand Company on the settlement of Auckland, commencing with its found.ition and continued even after the Company itself hau terminated its existence. 5. f The New Zealand Company’s Principal agent, Mr, Fox, speaks of “ the Company’s debt as one, with which the Northern colonists have had nothing to do;” and the Settlers of the Southern Colonies admit the right of the Government Settlements to exemption from this charge. That in the year 1847 the affairs of the New Zealand Company fell into confusion and embarrassment,and after somo negotiation with Earl Grey, the then Secretary of State for the Colonies, that nobleman without any investigation, that your Petitioners areawareot, admitted the Company’sclaim, upon their own statements to a most extravagant sum, amounting to upwards of hall a million sterling,—nearly one half of which has already been paid by the Imperial Government, and the remainder is now sought to be made payable out of the proceeds of the Land Sales of the whole of New Zealand. Thai: your Petitioners are wholly at a loss to comprehend upon what principle a Joint Stock Company of an entirely commercial character, commencing its operations in defiance of Her Majesty’s Government, anil after being warned by the Secretary of State that that Government could not be held responsible for any disappointment that might ensue, could possibly have any reasonable claim upon the ground (even if true) relied on hy them, for compensation, for losses sustained in the prosecution of their business and the failure of their speculations. That, as regards the settlements founded by the Company, if a proper enquiry had been instituted, and on allowance madetothj Company—not for extravagant expenditure, but for the Emigrants they had sent out, and the public works they had performed-for the advantage of those Settlements, there would have been some show of reason and fairness in the transaction, hut your Petitioners fully belie-e that if such a course had been adopted it would have been found that the New Zealand Company ha<e already received, from their Settlers and the British Public, a much larger sum than any advantages which they have conferred could fairly entitle them to expect. That the ground upon which Earl Grey consented to remit to the Company the whole of the advances made to them by the Imperial Government appears to your Petitionersaltogether untenable,inasmuch asit is assumed that the failure of the Company was to he attributed to the proceedings of the Government, whereas it is well known, in New Zealand at least, that that failure was unquestionably brought about particularly by the oisputes ant! difficulties, the necessary consequence of their own injudicious and impefiect arrangements for extinguishing the titles of the aboriginal owriefs to the one-third of New Zealand which was absurdly professed to have been purchased; and brought about generally, as Lord Grey himself stated on the 2nd reading of the New Zealand Constitution Bill, by deficiency in worldly wisdom and prudence, —by too readily adopting plausible schemes of a clever, but not otherwise trustworthy projector, from the unfitnes of companies without efficient check or control, to produce satisfactory results in these matters, and from the difficulties incident to the founding of Colonies in distant parts of the world —reasons more than sufficient to fully account for all (lie disasters of the New Zealand Company ; and your Petitioner’s deeply regret that reasons so obvious and well known were entirely overlooked, or at lea,-t passed by unnoticed, in 1817, and others assumed or too readily admitted to justify an expenditure of of public money, to assist in their difficulties a putely commercial Company, become bankrupt through ill advised and badly conducted speculation. That the pretext tor burlhening a young colony with a crushing debt appears to your Petitioners not to be borne out hy a shadow of reason. The assumption that the New Zealand Company were entitled in 1817 to 1,07.3,483 acres of land overlooks altogether the condition on which that right was to be based, viz.: that they had made a valid purchase to that extent from the aboriginal owners; and your Petitioners cannot but feel that if Lord Stanley’s proper and prudent in-tructions of 1843, to ascertain that the title to any iand accepted from the Company could bo satisfactorily proved (an enquiry readily disposed of hy reference to the Reports of the Government Commissioner, who elaborately investigated their claims) had been followed in this instance, the colonists of New Zealand would have been spared the infliction of an unjust and oppressive debt. That it does appear an extraordinary mode of dealing out justice, that Earl Grey, after admitting “that injuries more to he deplored even than those to which the Company had been subjected had been inflicted on the great body of enterprising settlers”}* —“ persons most deeply injured” should overwhelm the latter with a debt for the purpose of indemnifying the former, or, in other words, should make those whose injuries were most to be deplored, pay the losses of those who were deserving of less sympathy. But whatever opinion may be formed of the propriety of saddling any of the Settlements ol New Zealand wit a the losses incurred by a Company in its commercial speculations, under pretence of compensation lor Land which they never possessed, your Petitioners do not hesitate to believe that a simple acquaintance vrith the facts cannot fail to satisfy every unprejudiced mind, that the New Zealand Company have not morally theshadow even of a claim against those Settlements which were founded by the Government, *~ That the charge is the more vexatious and unjust, as the Crown, in the Province of Auckland at least, does not possess an acre of waste land, properly so called, all the public lands having from time to time been purchased from the aborigines with money raised from your Petitioners and the other settlers, and notone farthing of which has been contributed by the New Zealand Company. That your Petitioners feel aggrieved that in the year 1847, when the arrangement was made between the Secretary of State and the Company, the enormous sum of £268,370 15s. was summarily imposed on these Settlements, without affording an opportunity to the parties most interested of being heard against so ruinous a measure, find your Petitioners do feel that these Settlements have been sacrificed hy those to whom they had aright to look for protection, to serve the interests ol a Company to whom, upon the principle of reciproc 'ly. nothing was due but hatred and retaliation.

£arl Grey to Governor Grey, 28th February, 1848 \ „*’* 'Six Colonies, p. 4S. * “awes to Mr. Harriagton, April, 1847,

That your Petitioners fully believe tin t Parliament was induced to consent to so gross an injustice in ignorance of the circumstances attending it, bit they cannot comprehend how the Directors of the \ 7 ew Zealand Company, if they really possessed but a portion of the honour and disinterestedness which have been attributed to them, could, with a perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances, permit themselves to be thenaeana of attempting to extort a sum of money from those who, upon every principle of honor, fairness, and honesty, they well knew had a right to be exempt from the liability. That as long as the Act of Parliament 10 and 11 Viet. o. 111/, remained in force, your Petetioners felt that practically no liability existed, as by the 20th clause of that Act the charge was made payable “ out of the proceeds of all future sales of the demesne lands of the Crown in New Zealand, after deducting the outlay for surveys, and the proportion of such proceeds which is appropriated to the purposes of emigration,” and the 31st clause of the 12th chapter of the Royal Institutions of 1846, had already appropriated to emigration purposes the net balance ol the proceeds of Land Sides, rents, and royalties, after deducting only the costs, charges, and expenses of, and incident in any way to, the sale, survey, administration, and management of the demesne lands. That at the commencement of the year 1852 the colonists were astonished and alarmed to find that, at the latter pare of the Session of 1851, an unexpected attempt to convert this charge into a first mortgage of not only the proceeds of the Land Sales, but of the general revenue of the Colony, had nearly succeeded, and petitions, signed by almost every inhabitant of Auckland, were immediately sent to England, for presentation to the two Houses of Parliament, praying that no portion of the New Zealand Company’s Claim of £2(18,370 15s. might be continued as a charge on the Province of New Ulster. That your Petitioners now find that another attempt to render the New Zealand Company’s Claim a charge, available to them, and onerous to the colonists, has succeeded, and that by an Act of Parliament passed in the last Session, —“ An Act tc grant Representative Institutions to New Zealand.” one-fourth of the proceeds of the Land Sales of this Province are to be paid over to the Company till the sum of £268,370 15s. be paid from the L'ind Sales of New Zealand. That this vast burthen, inflicted without even an opportunity of explanation or remonstrance, will, at least for the present fall almost exclusively on the district of Auckland, where alone sales of public lands to any extent are effected ; so that, in violation of all reason and justice, those wholly unconnected with the Company are really to he taxed to pay their losses, whilst those who derive their very existence from that Company are virtually exempt —doubtless a great triumph toscheming speculators, regardless of what both honourand honesty would dictate, to have spared their friends, and at the same time inflicted a deeper and more lasting injury by this last blow on those they have always treated as enemies, than ten years’ previous unceasing efforts had been able to accomplish. That no benefit or advantage whatever could accrue to this Province by the surrender of any lands the Company mijrht have possessed, even if the quantity had been ten times greater than was even alleged, and Lord Grey's reason for imposing the charge on this Province —“ that the price due for the lands acquired from the Company by the Crown must be a charge on the whole of the Crown Lands of New Zealand,” as the purchase was “ essential for securing a proper value to the whole of the Crown Lands throughout the entire extent of New Zealand,”* is only looked on by those acquainted with the localities and circumstances as a weak and insufficient excuse for what there was no substantial reason to justify. That so distant from, so unconnected with, and so independent of, each other are the Government and New Zealand Company’s Settlements, that an alteration of the price of Waste Land in some of the colonies of Australia, would produce more effect on the Settlement of Auckland, than if the Company had resolved to make a present of all tiie Land they ever possessed to the first corners ; and Lord Grey himself does not hesitate to use the want of connection between the Northern and Southern districts as a defence against one of the complaints made to him by the New Zealand Company, when be informed them “ that it certainly did not occur to his Lordship, that the continuing this privelege, (a remission of purchase money to Military and Naval officers) in the Northern Province, at a distance from all the Company’s Settlements, would he deemed an infringement of the agreement he had raade.”t That, even the Roval Instructions of 1846, framed while Earl Grey was Secretary of State for the Colonies, prescribed that a separate account should bo kept by the Treasurer of each of the Provinces of New’ Zealand, of the gross proceeds of the Land Sales, Rents, and Royalties, and, after deducting certain charges therein mentioned, that the net balance should be held in Trust for defraying the cost of “ introducing into the said respective Provinces emigrants from the United Kingdom.” That your Petitioners are, however, well pleased to see that the very questionable practices of the Directors of the New Zealand Company, as brought to light by Sir William Molesworth, have been the means of a Par liamentary enquiry into their affairs being called for, and your Petitioners feel assured, that the results of a fair investigation must be to relieve New Zealand altogether from a charge, of which your Petitioners cannot. at least in its present shape, admit the propriety as regards any part of the Colony, and which, beyond question, in any shape whatever, as regards the Government Settlements could only be most unreasonable, most unjust and oppressive. That an attempt to enforce the payment of any portion of the New.Zealand Company’s debt against the Province of Auckland, as constituted under the Act conferring representative institutions in New Zealand, cannot fail to he productive of discontent, confusion, and animosity,'amongst both races of Her Majesty’s subjects, for it cannot be for one moment supposed, that they will ever consent that money raised in this District, from any source whatever, shall be handed over to reimburse the losses of a Company from whom, for upwards of ten successive years, they have received nothing but injury and injustice ; —to he charged, in fact, with a debt to cover the losses of an Australian Land - Company would he less offensive and create less angry feeling, for in such case the debtors would at least not he smarting under other wrongs infl.cted by the creditor. That your Petitioners would never consent (o repudiate, or throw any difficulty in the way of satisfying, a just debt; but on the other hand, they feel in common with every other man in the Province of Auckland, so strongly the gross injustice and indignity of being charged with a debt to the New Zealand Company, that they believe every possible means of evading the payment of it, not only' to be justifiable, hut called for as a duty; and they are willing that the Province should suffer any loss or inconvenience, to the extent of stopping all sales of Public Land, even by giving that Land away, rather than submit to the degradation of a fraction of their money being appropriated to such a purpose; and the efforts of your Petitioners, ns also they feel assured will [those of the other Inhabitants of this Province, he unceasingly directed to relieve themselves of so monstrous and intolerable a grievance. Your Petitioners however have full faith and confidence that Parliament, when in possession of all the facts, will not fail to deal with their case as honesty and justice require; and they therefore humbly and most respectfully, hut earnestly pray that the Province of Auckland may be at once relieved from the payment of any portion of the £268,370 15s. now charged against the proceeds of its Land Sales and from every other charge and claim whatever on behalf of the New Zealand Company. And your Petitioners will ever Pray, &c., &c.