Parliamentry Papers.

New Zealander, Volume 10, Issue 880, 20 September 1854, Page 3

Parliamentry Papers.

NEW ZEALAND COMPANY’S DEBT, AUCKLAND. Committee’s llrponr. The Select Committee of the House of Representatives, appointed on the 29 th day of June, IHJ4, to enquire whether or not, in justice, the Province ol Auckland ought to be at once relieved from bearing any portion of the New Zealand Company’s Debt (to consist of Messrs Fitzgerald, M* Andrew, Wortley, Mackay, Porter, and Air. E. G. Wakefield, the mover), have agreed to the following Report: — . Your Committee would observe or the subject which they were appointed to investigate, that it is neither of a comprehensive nor a complicated character, but may be understood by reference to a few simple facts, which are involved in no obscurity, and about which moreover there is really no dispute. Accordingly your Committee have been satisfied to examine only three witnesses, two of them being the persons at Auckland deemed most competent to lay the case before the Committee, ami the other being examined only for the purpose of ascertaining the real facts with regard to an alleged abandonment by the New Zealand Company of highly valuable property m the Province of Auckland, The essential facts of the case appear to be as follow ) —* • • i 1 • i The New Zealand Company s right or claim to receive compensation for its losses, in land or from bind revenue in New Zealand, has rested throughout, and the ultimate charge given to the Company by Parliament rests altogether, on the assumption of certain colonizing operations performed, and intended to be performed by the Comnanv, of certain property and property rights ‘icnuircd by or assured to them, and on the surrender to the Crown of all their private property, and their property rights—every relation of the Company to New Zealand, whether of colonizing operations, property, property rights, or surrender ♦A the Crown, was absolutely confined to a certain portion of New Zealand, The abortive attempt on the part of the Home Government to make

the Company acquire land and colonize in another portion of New Zealand appears to he one of that description of exceptions which are said to prove the rule. Between the Company and that portion f f New Zealand there never wore any relations, e.vcept a continual jealousy, repugnance, and hostility. The two portions of the Colony were separated by a line about which there cun be neither mistake nor doubt. All the Company’s relations to New Zealand were on the South side of the line. Excepting as to jealousy, repugnance and hostility, the Company never had any relations with the land or the people on the north side of the line, any more than if that portion of New Zealand had been a distinct Colony, or a part of New South Wales, with which the Company was at variance. If the Company’s colonizing operations, such ns acquisitions of land from the natives, sending out of enaigiunts, making of surveys, employment of labourers, supplying provisions in the early days of settlement, and measures of defence against the Government, conferred any benefit upon any paif of the Colony, if any part of the Colony has derived any advantage from the surrender of the Company’s property, rights, and relations with New Zealand, that benefit, and that advantage have accrued exclusively to the South. The North has had no part in them. No portion of the actual Province of Auckland lies to the South of the line of demarcation which has always been the most northern limit of the Company’s operations. And these are the principal facts upon which the Province ot Auckland rests its denial that it can be justly held chargeable with any part of the Company’s debt. Although y< ur Committee have not sought to take evidence in the form of mere opinion, because they thought that the facts of the case are the grounds on which their decision ought to be made—yet they have learned incidentally that the injustice of charging the Province of Auckland with a share of the Company’s debt has been publicly recognised by many whose opinions deserve weight, and, in particular, by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Speaker of the Legislative Council, the absent Governor of the colony, the Officer now administering the Government, and her Majesty’s present Secretary of State for the Colonies ; whilst, on the other hand, your Committee has been unable to learn that such injustice lias ever been denied by any one whose opinion would have authoritative weight with the House.

It appeals to your Committee, that, according to the direction of the House to them by the terms of their appointmen', the question referred to them is one of justice only, excluding considerations of legality, of technical right, of convenience, of expediency, and of policy, your Committee accordingly have limited themselves to the simple consideration before them. Viewing the question in the light In which, as aforesaid, it has come to them from the House, your Committee are of opinion that, in justice, the Province of Auckland ought to be at once relieved from bearing any portion of the Company’s debt. E. G. Wakefield, Chairman. House of Heprosen tati v es, Auckland, July 20, 1054. . . PAPE II Laid before the Committee h;j the Attorney-Central at his examine tion , on the B th July, 185-!. The question has been asked, but never satisfactorily answered, how it was, or why it was, that provision was made in an Act of Parliament, enacting tha', in case the New Zealand Company should fail in their colonising operations in the Southern portion of New Zealand, the debt which might then be found to he due to that body should be charged upon the Demesne Lands of the Crown throughout New Zealand, including the Northern District then being colonised by the Crown, on terms and conditions prescribed by the Crown, and guaranteeing to purchasers of land that the money paid by them for the purchase of land should be expended in promoting Emigration and on Public Works. With reference to the subject of the present inquiry, I would suggest, for the consideration of the Committee, a point which I believe has not before been raised, and from which it may not unreasonably be inferred that the present legal liability of the Northern District of New Zealand foi- the payment of the debt due to the New Zealand Company, has arisen from the interpolation, or the inadvertent use, of a single word in the Act in question. 'Die sum of £288,000 has hern charged upon the Waste Lands of the Crown by the New Zealand Constitution Act, on the ground that Parliament had previously, by the Act to Promote Colimiz ilion in New Zealand,” 10 andli A ict, c. 112, guaranteed the payment of the sum to the New Zealand Company out of the proceeds of all future sales of the Demesne Lands of the Crown in New Zealand. With reference to the question as to the claim of the Province of Auckland to he exempted from liability to the payment of that sum, L would draw the attention of the Committee to the provisions of the 10 &11 Vic., c. 112.

It cannot be disputed that the Constitution Act 15 and 10 Vic., charges the sum of £200,000 upon the sale of the Waste Lands of the Crown in New Zealand at large, or that a similar charg; was made upon the Demesne Lands of the Crown in New Zealand by the Act of Parliament 10 and 11 Vic., c. 112; but an attentive consideration of the ‘‘Act to Promote Colonization in Ne v Zealand,” 10 and II Vic., will, 1 think, lead the Committee to the conclusion that the words “ New Zealand” in the 20th section of that Act were improperly inserted instead of the words “ New Munster.”

It will be observed by the Committee that the Act in question, 10 and 11 Vie., recites that the Company had acquired large tracts of land in the Colony, and that many of Her Majesty’s subjects, at the'instance of the Company, bal expended their capital in forming Settlements on lam’s belonging to the Company. Although the word Colony is used, it was well known that the actual operations of the Company had been confined to the Southern Districts of New Zealand.

The Act then recites that it might tend to restore the prosperity of the existing Settlements and promote the establishment of new Settlements, if certain lloyal Instructions, &c,, w ere suspended within the “Province of New Munster,” and enacts that such Instructions shall be suspended within the “Province of New Munster.” Thus it will be seen that the objects ofthe Act arc limited expressly to the “Province of New Munster.”

In furtherance of these objects, the 2nd clause of the Act vests “all the Demesne Lands <d the Crown in the Province of New Munster” in the New Zealand Company, in trust for the purposes and subject to the provisions thereinafter contained. Thus expressly again limiting the operation of the Act to the Province ot New Munster.

Again, by the following clauses, the Act gives to the Company the power of disposing of the Demesne Lauds of the Crown in the Province of New Munster on certain terms and conditions prescribed by the Act ; and the provisions of the Act, in the following clauses, are confined to Lands within the “Province of New MunThe K>th clause of the Act then provides that certain loans to the Company shall be secured upon the Lands, &c., then belonging to the Company. All the Lands of the Company being, as the Committee are aware, within the Province of New Munster. After reciting that it is expedient to provide for the contingency ef the Company finding themselves unable to continue their proceedings with profit to themselves and benefit to the said Company, the 19th section provides that all the lands of the Company shall revert to and become vested in her Majesty as part of the Demesne Lands of the Cr wu, subject to subsisting contracts and upon the condition of satisfying any liabilities ot which the Company might then be liable un ler existing engagements with vespcci to the Settlement of Nelson, or any liabilities which the Com-

panpshould have contracted with the consent of the Special Commissioners. The Lunds in question thus to revert to the Crown being, it is to bo observed, Linds situated in the Southern Settlements. And now for the first time the words “ New Zealand” occur, instead of the words the “ Province of New Munster.” And the 20th section provides that upon the reversion to Her Majesty of the Lauds belonging to the Company all claims upon the Company in respect of the loans which may have been advanced to the Company shall he remitted to them; and that there shall lie paid to the Company out of the proceeds of all future sales of the Demesne Lands of the Crown in “ New Zealand” the sum of 268,270/. 15s. The charge of any part of this sum upon the Pi ovinee of Auckland virtually rests upon the use of words -‘New Zealand” in the 20th section of the ‘•Act to promote Colonisation in New Zealand,” 10 and 11 Vic ,c. 112. Looking to the scope and object of the whole of the preceding provisions of the Act, it must, I think, be obvious that the words ‘‘ Province of New Munster” ought to have been used in the 23rd section instead of the words “ New Zea’anl that there is strong ground to believe that the words New Zealand” have been inserted inadvertently or otherwise, and that it is more probable either that the enactment as it stands was passed in the hurry of legislation, or that Parliament was doceired, rather than that the Legislature gave its deliberate assent to a conclusion palpably illogical and practically unjust.