ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 715, 19 February 1853, Page 3

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

To tlie Editor of tlie New-Zealander

Sir, —If, as a community, wo have heretofore been justly chargeable with want of unanimity when any question of practical utility, or political reform was mooted amongst us, it must be admitted that upon one of the topics of the present day we are, to a man, agreed. From the North Cape to Pirongia there is not a settler to be found who does not condemn, in the strongest terms, the unworthy conduct of the Home Government, in truckling so far to the interested clamours of the Xcw Zealand Company, as to impose upon the revenue of Xcw Ulster their unjust and fictitious claim. On this question, we, as a community, do see eye to eye, and have, to some extent, joined hand in hand to avert the evil blow. The people themselves have petitioned ; the executive, it is said, have remonstrated, and (he people’s representative-; have made appeal against this real grievance. Can anything more he done I Has anything been neglected which indirectly, if not directly, might tend to secure the end in view ? I raise these queries simply for the purpose of keeping the subject before the minds of your readers, and would take tlie liberty of throwing out a suggestion which, if acted upon, might at least place an additional impediment in the way, if it did not prove an effectual obstacle to the realization of the schemes of this grasping and unprincipled company. All the land which has been sold in this province since the 17th of January, is subject to this hateful tax, and as a considerable sum must have been realized by sale; of land since that period, there is nothing, us far as I can see, to prevent the company demanding and the Government being reluctantly obliged to hand over to them onefourth of the amount. Now, would it not strengthen tlie hands of our Executive, and be the means of placing another moral, if not legalbander in the way of the Company, if every man in Xew Ulster who has occasion to purchase land, were to hand into the Treasury, simultaneously with the price, a written declaration of his repudiation of the Company’s claims, and his protest against any portion of the money he was paying in being appropriated to meet it. Would any Government disregard, or any measure of Government be pertinaciously carried, in (he face of such a continuous and systematic cxj ression of the public voice ? 1 leave the suggestion with you and your readers, and remain yours, &c., Nemo. Auckland, February 17, 1833. [Had our correspondent confined himself to (he statement that the settlers, from one end of the Auckland Province to the other, protest against the Xew Zealand Company’s Claim, and would regard tlie enforcement of it as one of the most grievous wrongs ever inflicted upon a colony, we should have unhesitatingly and earnestly added cur testimony to the fact. But we rather demur to las sweeping censure on _ the Home Government. We mean on the present Government, as distinguished from that in which Lord Grey presided over Colonial affairs ; —for we can see no excuse for his Lordship's conduct in- the matter, considering the intimate knowledge he had —or at least ought to have had —of the entire transaction, and {the disposition to uphold tlie cause of the Company, which, —even in the debates of June last, when he was out of office—he too plainly manifested. It is to he remembered, however, that Sir John Pakington had only just entered on the duties of the Colonial Office when c ire quittances forced him to engage in legislation for New

Zealand, and may therefore fairly be supposed to have had little knowledge of the real merits of a question which thei'e is no reason to suppose he had previously studied in any detail ; and moreover, that every exertion was made hy the friends of the Company, sending deputation after deputation, to influence his mind in their favour. The Petition and Letters forwarded from the Great Public Meeting, held here in February last, had not then reached England, and there was nothing before him directly to counteract the efforts of the Company, whose Managers (as New Zealand knows hy costly experience) would not shrink from either the suppression of truth or the suggestion of falsehood, to secure their sordid objects. All that Sir John Pakington has said, written, or done with reference to tie new Act, is consistent with a belief that he means well, and a confidence that, when he discovers how much he has been misled hy selfish and unscrupulous men, ho will he ready, and even anxious, to remedy the injustice into the support of which he lias been betrayed. We would therefore at least suspend our judgment upon his conduct until we shall see how he will .act when he knows the whole case on the New Ulster settlers’ side; on which we arc satisfied that at the time of the passing of the Act, lie did not possess sufficient information. In the suggestion which forms the practical point of our correspondent’s letter, however, wo fully concur. No suitable means of pressing upon the attc ntion of the Impcrial Government and Legislature the immoveable and unanimous determination of the people of tliis Province to contend to the utmost against the imposition on them of the smallest part of the debt pretended to be due to a Company from which New Ulster has received nothing but slander and injury, should he neglected. The proposition that every Land Purchaser, at the time of his making payment at the Treasury, should lodge a vigourous protest against the appropriation of any portion of his money to meet the Company’s claim, seems to ns very judicious. The infliction is so monstrously unjust that steps which, in other cases, might he of equivocal propriety, become not only admissible hut commendable here ; and we should he glad to hear of an universal adoption of “Nemo’s” suggestion. —Ed. N. Z.J