To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Straits Guardian.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume I, Issue 17, 1 February 1845, Page 4

To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Straits Guardian.

WAIRARAPA. >Ifc, —Upon hearing of the Wakefield prinipU oflahd sales, now many years since, the ood W4* so palpable, especially to one who *d long resided in the British colonies, that

I forthwith became" a convert. Experience has confirmed in me the conviction that it cannot be successfully assailed. This is speaking with great confidence after having recently heard Captain Fitzroy assure the deputation which waited upon him when he was last here, respecting the state of the land claims, that the Wakefield principle was a failure. I suspect that Captain Fitzroy has neglected to distinguish between the principle and the system by which it has been applied. All the charges against the principle, upon examination, have invariably been resolved into defective modes of application, or into proofs of the principle having been violated, but not one of them in the smallest degree invalidates the principle itself. This failing to distinguish between a principle and any, given attempt to apply it is of very common occurrence, and we are all now grievously suffering from a mistake of the kind. I feel I am warranted, in asserting, in the name of my fellow colonists, that all are and ever have been most anxious that the native population not only should be treated with strict justice, but that every effort should be made to give them every possible advantage which can result from the colonization of these islands. Captain Fitzroy desires the same end. We are mutually agreed in what is desirable. The question of the best mode of accomplishing a purpose common to us all arises, and here the difference ensues. We maintain that there may be many modes. Capt. Fitzroy maintains there is only one mode. Capt. Filzroy's mode the settlers maintain not only will never accomplish the purpose in view, but is a mode to attain the opposite purpose — the destruction of the native race, accompanied by much misery to the colonizing body. Captan Fitzroy commenced his sad career in defiance of the experience and warnings of the most competent men in New Zealand, and perseveres in defiance of the daily accumulating fac.s proving that evil attends every step of his visionary attempt. All this mischief is being brought about because Captain Fitzroy cannot steadily keep before his mind the end to be attained and the means which may : be applied from time to time under the belief that it will thereby be accomplished. When Captain Fitzroy took upon himself to assert that the Wakefield principle was a failure, I submitted a few questions to which I reques'ed replies. First I asked, " what the settlers were to do for labour or an immigration fund, now that the only source thro* which it could be obtained — the land sales — was destroyed. To this a reply was made to tne effect that labour was not needed, that it was already in excess. It was explained then to his Excellency, that had the land | question been settled at an early date, labour never would have been in excess, and that the surplus labour would even now be immediately absorbed upon the country being opened to the settler. Assuming that thp surplus labour was absorbed, I requested his Excellency to inform the deputation by what means more could be brought to the colony. His Excellency replied it would not be required, that the natives would work. I then asked Capt. Fitzroy whether he had contemplated the difference between services and servitude ; I called attention to the fact that the natives would furnish the settler with potatoes and fire-wood at- their own convenience, but that the man would be mad who would get the natives to plant a crop and rely with confidence that they would reap it for him. His Excellency then stated that we might look to the neighbouring colonies for labour ; when I took upon myself to call to Capt. Fitzroy's. mind the fact that the neighbouring colonies obtained their labour by submitting to a price upon land, and that even so he acknowledged the necessity of a fund from such a source. Feeling that I had fairly placed his Excellency in a dilemma from which he could not escape, without making an admission quite fatal to any justification he could offerthe Home Government for trifling with the Imperial Waste Lands' Act, the subject was abandoned. As I have already stated, experience bears out the soundness of the Wakefield priuciple, and I may add, equally establishes the fact that the lottery system is a most vicious and faulty mode of trying to apply it ; and especially the lottery system under which it has been applied in the first and principal settlement. In conformity with this system, the surveyor is compelled to lay out the land, as though he had a plain, without ever, a watercourse in it, while in fact lie has to deal with a country, unsurpassed by any other in irregularity of features, and which only could have been surveyed satisfactorily by paying the utmost attention to all the variously formed hills for which the district is quite remarkable. A ravine, which should have been a boundary line, now may be 3 few feet within the line of a section ; so that this awkward spot must be crossed to get at a fraction of the property. The fact is no surveys should be basedupon equal quantities of land, ar/d

had the Wakefield principle been applied by a right system, all it proposes to accomplish would have been secured, allowing the surv eyor and the settler whether from England, 1 or the colonies, whether a party to a London 1 land sale, or determined to make his purchase on the spot, the most perfect liberty. The features of the town demanded that it should have been so surveyed that hardly two pieces would have been of the same size — and of the country that the sections should have varied from five possibly to five hundred acres. My object in reverting to these facts is not for the purpose of finding fault or to evince that I am wiser than my neighbours, but to point out that experience must have convinced all that the system under which the Wakefield principle has been applied is not satisfactory, and to suggest that a different course should be pursued henceforward, and especially in relation to surveying the Wairarapa country. I have my doubts whether the Company should select any pastoral land, but certainly they should not if they are to pay £l per acre for it. Such a price is not required to accomplish the purpose for which a price is, under the Wakefield system put upon land. The labour fund so derived would be enormously beyond the wants of a pastoral district, nor would it be wise to check the purchase or settling of pastoral districts, by taxing them for the purpose of supplying population to the agricultural districts and to towns. Each description of country should be sold at a price sufficient to afford a fund with which to supply its own demand for labour. If the Company take pastoral lands, it should be upon the condition of having about eight acres for every acre. of agricultural lands. But a difficulty would arise in determining the precise character of the lands, and it would be well therefore that the Company should select none but the choicest agricultural lands, leaving the other lauds so to be dealt with, as will best back up the agricultural districts. That best mode, in my opinion, would be letting them he occupied by stock-holders, whose growing wealth would support constantly increasing colonial towns, to supply which with food would create a demand, always on the increase, for the best agricultural lands. Under this arrangement, the purely pastoral districts should be leased to stock-holders, to whom pre-emptive rights should be yielded.' The lease should be nominal, but an annual tax on stock, per head, should be imposed, and for such purposes that the stock-holders should feel they bed a positive interest in taking care that noue avoideil paying his full amount of taxes. The purposes to which this tax should be applied are two-fold ; the one roads, the other providing a labour fund annually augmenting and exactly in the same ratio of increase with the stock. A few pence per head on sheep, and a shilling per head per annum on cattle, would be found to afford an ample fund for the purposes in question. Matters of the utmost importance to the settlers in a pastoral district, will be the mode in which the lands are surveyed, and the extent of the runs. None but a practical and well instructed stockholder can do these important subjects justice. Such a person is the proper party to poiut out suitable boundaries, for he alone can state what are the various kinds of hill and dale which should be embraced in a proper station. To survey pastoral hills in sections of 100 acres, is a waste of survey expences. Sheep and cattle runs must be laid out in blocks of thousands of acres to be really useful, and I hope and trust that the Wairarapa will be placed at the disposal of the stockholders upon the terms of au annual license and annual tax upon stock to be employed for the local objects which I have already named. The judicious dealing with the pastoral country is now becoming of importance, and I would suggest the propriety of all taking interest in the important subject, meeting and agreeing to some plan to be put forward as that deemed best by all. S. R. Wellington, January 28, 1845.