MORE SIGNS FOR THE SQUATTERS.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 757, 16 July 1853, Page 2 (Supplement)

MORE SIGNS FOR THE SQUATTERS.

(From the Sydney " Empire," June 17.)

In accordance with our intention to supply our readers with full and accurate information of the movement for a partition of the lands in the neighbouring colonies, it is our duty, to-day, to notice a few important facts of a progressive character, announced in the latest intelligence from New Zealand.

The first matter is in the nature of a precedent upon the subject of claims for compensation. The New Zealand Company—that chartered organisation of absentees, who desired to open a profitable retail mart in London, with a stock-in-trade consisting of a fine island at the Antipodes— appear to have been a provident board of monopolists. They first pocketed their immediate profits, t*nd then fastened alarge and weighty "claim'' upon he .resources and future wealth of New Zealand.

Their claim amounted to £268,370, with arrears of interest. The pirates intended to scuttle the ship after plundering her. In the district of Auckland, an instalment of £9OOO was levied upon the proceeds of the land sales. A memorial to the Governor, presented by an influential deputation, expressed clearly and forcibly the injustice of the case—"not one shilling of that Company's money had been spent in any way for the advancement or advantage of the district, nor have they received from it any benefit or service whatever ; bo much indeed the reverse, that during the ten years of its existence, the Company sought every occasion to calumniate and injure the Northern Districts, and the settlement of Auckland in particular." If a popular deputation happened to arrive in Sydney, in contravention of the expressed opinions of the Colonial Office, and of the vested interests of our monopolists, we can fancy the prolonged chuckle of the Colonial Secretary and Mr. Wentworth when informing them that, in the .Ordinary transaction of official business, the money had been sent to England. In any ordinary cafe of a Governor mesmerised under the influence of an oligarchy, the application would be futile.— Against a claim, compared to which a squatter's lease, with pretensions to possibilities of future compensation, is as a cobweb beside a net-work of iron—a claim with the authority of the Supreme Court, and the hand and seal of the Home Government stamped upon it—against such a claim the prayer of the memorial might well have appeared hopeless. But in New Zealand, the rights and interests of the people tending to the advancement of the colony, are admitted to exclude every unjust or selfish monopoly. The money was safe in the Government chest; not sent to England, but in its place a strong remonstrance from the Governor against ever sending it.

The other facts which remain to be noticed* are s-till closer to the purpose. We perceive the people rallying round the Governor in his contest with ihe Canterbury Company, and other large monopolists, for the partition 'of thelahds. The land Land Association" have presented hira with an address, expressive of their warmest thanks and gratitude for the new ordinances which regulate the present sales of land in the colony. And this appears to be only the forerunner of several others, being framed, we are informed, " after the model of the address on the same subject, from the inhabitants of the province generally, which is now in course of signature." In the next place, the size of the allotments of land has become a fundamental consideration Avith the people and the Governor. It is very significant of the future agricultural condition of New Zealand, according to the Governor's comprehension of the matter. It would be to little purpose to open the lands, if one monopoly were to be succeeded by another—if chartered companies were to be uprooted, only to be replaced by individual monopolists, measuring their possessions by square miles instead of acres. In this respect, the plan of the Auckland Land Association, projecting beyond the present wants and circumstances of the country, is worthy of some of the best models in Europe. It is the struggle of the people in all the old countries, still oppressed with the remnants of feudalism, to plant the soil with a generation of small proprietors; hence, in aiming at the same result, this association are beginning at the right end of the matter. Their design of interspersing the land sales very thickly with fortyacre allotments, if carried into effect, will be the foundation of a land system in New Zealand probably destined to endure for ever. It was, therefore, of real importance to urge this view of the case upon the Governor; and it must have been in the utmost degree satisfactory to find the Governor's ideas coinciding in the same direction, and going beyond them. He not only assures them of his intention " to afford every facility to those whose limited means only permit them to purchase small farms," but in proof of the maturity of his designs, refers them to his proposal to the Legislature two years back to legalise the Building and Land Societies Ordinance, or a code of organization after the model of societies in England, which, by small weekly or monthly subscriptions from each member, are spreading a net-work of small freeholds, for the purpose of the elective franchise all over the towns of England, and which, we believe, has been used in Ireland for establishing a peasant proprietary upon lands purchased under the Encumbered Estates Court in that country. No reference could possibly be more conclusive proof of the decided bent of his Excellency's mind in instituting the present system of land sales in New Zealand.

Well, then, we have seen an organised and legalised monopoly of the lands set aside by Government ; we see the produce of the mines passing daily by our doors, across our territory, to fructify into permanent wealth in a remote island; we perceive the peopleof New Zealand supposed to be so far behind us in refinement and even in civilization, thoroughly awake and in earnest in opening the lands to receive the vast increase of wealth and population, even wise and profound in their plan of distributing and permanently establishing them. Still we continue as apathetic as if there existed no monstrous system of land monopolies in New South Wales—as if the movements of wealth and population concerned us no more than a phenomenon in the stars. We wish somebody, somewhere or other amongst the people, would begin to stimulate into action the feeling of oppression which lies dormant in the popular breast, since we cannot have a second Sir George Gipps, or even a second Sir George Grey (that New Zealand cannibal), as a volunteer on behalf of Government, to grasp the squatting system by the throat.