ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 82, 12 May 1843, Page 2

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the New Zealand Colonist% ' Sir —In your paper of the 18th iilt., you justly designate this as “a place which has been• shamefully neglected." The fact is too demonstrative to ,be questioned, and full exposition is hurrying on, and, now, not far distant. " . , . i We have received no favour hitherto from the Company, except, indeed, the partial formation of some of our streets, a labour accomplished by three; or four men in three or four weeks: and we had the promise of havinga drain cut across the town valley's,but the : working party has been long dismissed, and orders, of late have been issued from head quarters to remove our Assistant Surveyor: for the winter*, which, we suppose, means that his services are no longer required in this district, and that the drain must be cut by those who require it. lri j.Other respects no attention has been given to our wants, or representations, even the, public remonstrance of July, 1841, remains uUackribWledged; and of the 'number of labourers that .have comefrom England within the last three years, not one has been sent to Wanganui. The attempt to pqt us in possession of our lands,.given formally out to us, the only favour we really wanted,, haS never been eariihstly demonstrated; and, because we evinced anxiety for peacCfdl location, we have been called “grumblers” and disaffected; nay, it has been pretty directly hinted that we ought to force ourselves, nolens volens, into possession, and that nothing but our own spiritless indolence has been; the cause of retarding the agricultural prosperity of the district! . Mr. Editor, we are not fighting men, nor Were we ever bought to war under any colours biit those'of Victoria, or her royal predecessors. ' Why, therefore, shbuld we, on such occasions, buckle on our rusty pahoply, or

rouse up our dormant spirit to disturb the peace, and endanger the lives of her. Majesty’s Maori subjects,' seeing that we long ago established our claim, ; by payment of the good hard coin of the British realm ? ; The lawful weapons of the Company are those which we; ahd its other unsatisfied creditors pus into its fhands; viz., sovereigns; and we hesitate not-'to say, thatlhad acts corresponded with the following words, we had all been, and that twenty-six months ago, in ' quiet possession of what, as yet, we have only prospectively, and remotely a sight to call our property. The quotation is from Colonel Wakefield’s journal of September, 1839 :

“ I determined to act in the most liberal manner in the transaction. Moreover, I was most anxious to distinguish this bargain from all Others that have been made in New Zealand, that none of the haggling and petty trading which usually fake place between the Europeans and Natives of this country should enter into any operation between the latter and the Company’s agent, and that the value of this property should not be regulated by what has been hitherto considered the standard of exchange in similar transactions.” Now, what was this “ most liberal manner” of transacting business with the Natives ? I know not what it was at Port Nicholson, but the extent of land purchased' in this district included, it is calculated, several millions of acres, and the articles given in exchange could not have cost the Company, by the most liberal computation, the sum of 500/. Let any one, with this fact before them, ransack the list of anticedent claims published by the New Zealand Land Commission,' and he will fail to find a cheaper purchase ; and if there be more than one or two to run parallel with its parsimoniousness, then I will forego all further criticism on the mode of administering the Wanganui affairs of the Company. With this branch of that body’s economics, however, we have nothing to do, farther than that it forms, if not the first, certainly the second verse of our chapter of accidents ; andit brings us to examine in what manner the purchase of so extensive a territory was ratified, which shall be one of the subjects of my next communication. I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, CRISO.

To the Editor of the New. Zealand Colonist. Wellington, Bth May 1843. Sir,* —There is at this moment a subject of public interest, regarding which much ignorance prevails, but which you, as a public journalist, maybe able to dispel. I allude to the state of the claim and title of the New Zealand Company to the lands in the district of Port Nicholson, including, of course, the site of'the town of Wellington. E Tako, the chief of Pah Kumo Toto, asserts that sufficient utu has not been paid for that valuable part of the town, lying between the Clay Hill and Barrett’s Hotel, which (he says) belongs to him and his tribe: and the Maories of Pah Te Aro slate the same as to their possessions. It is known that Mr. Spain, the Commissioner on Land Claims, at a Jcorero lately held at Te Aro Pah, decided that sufficient value had not been given by the Company, and left it to the Natives to say what additional payment they will take for their lands, or (as I understood) whether they will sell them at all. Since that time, E Tako states, that Wideawake (Colonel Wakefield) has offered 600/. for his portion, but that he will only, give him one acre for that sum. This may be, and probably is, mere talk ; but it abundantly shews the state of uncertainty in which matters are, much, certainly, to the prejudice of all concerned. • »■ In a late number of the Government Gazette, published at Auckland, notice is given, that the claim of the Company to said district is shortly to be investigated before commissioners there. Can you inform your fellow Colonists and numerous readers, whether the Natives refused to .compromise matters ? or, whether the Company appealed against Mr. Spain’s decision ? and generally, how the whole facts stand ? I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, ALPHA.