ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume II, Issue 95, 27 June 1846, Page 3

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

Lady Hester Stanhope says that her father slept with twelve blankets on his bed, with no nightcap, and his window open ; that he used to get out of bed, put on a thin dressing gown, wiih a pair of silk breeches that he had worn over night, with slippers and no stockings ; and then he would sit in a part of the room which had no carpet, and take his tea with a bit of brown bread. According to the Whitehaven Herald the Earl of Lonsdale is about to enter upon an extensive project for the manufacture of patent fuel.

Anecdote op Sir Walter Scott. — Scott had tasted at our house the Yarmouth bloaters, then an article of less savoury notoriety than at present ; allowed their superiority to the " Finnan haddies," and inquired where they were to be got. My mother having undertaken the commission, applied to our fishmonger, Mr. B , of Billingsgate, a most worthy and matter-of-fact Triton, whom no one would have suspected of an addiction to poetry and romance. Hearing that the half hundred small fishes were to be sent as far as Sussex Place, he rather shook his head at the inconvenient distance. " Rather out of our beat, ma'am." " I am sorry for that, for I am afraid Sir Walter Scott will be disappointed, having learned that yours are the best — ." " Sir Walter Scott, ma'am ! Bless my soul, is Sir Walter Scott in town ? Tom, go and pick the very best half-hundred you can find in that fresh lot from Yarmouth. Well, ma'am, and how is he looking ? Why, if you had told me they were for him, I would have sent them to Jerusalem or Johnny Groat's house. Now, mind, Tom, that the boy starts directly ; remember, 24, Sussex Place, and no mistake about it." This circumstance being recounted to Scott, he cordially exclaimed, " Well, now, this is something like real tangible fame. I like this more than all the minauderies of the old French Countesses, who used to bother me at Paris with their extravagant compliments, and were only thinking, I'll be sworn, of their own vanity all the while." — New Monthly Maaazine.

Bishopric of Jerusalem. — It is stated that the Rev. Dr. M'Caul, prebendary of St. Paul's, will be the new Bishop of Jerusalem. In addition to holding a prebendal stall in St. Paul's Cathedral, the Bishop elect is professor of Hebrew literature in King's College, and rector of St. James' Duke's place, Minories. It may be mentioned, as a proof of tbe immense amount of business now being carried on by manufacturers of locomotives, that no firm engaged in the trade will contract to supply engines in less than three years. — Newcastle Journal* The monument erected to the memory of Louis XVIII., in the vaults of the Cathedral of St. Denis, is about being completed, and when finished, that of Charles X. his successor, will be proceeded with. When this is done, all the French Kings and Princes up to 1830, will be there represented either by a tomb, a monument, or a statue.

Youthfui. Heroes. — "Nay, said the stranger ; " for life in general there is hut one decree. Youth is a blunder ; Manhood a struggle ; old Age a regret. Do not suppose," he added smiling, " that I hold that youth is genius ; all that I say is, that genius, when young, is divine. Why the greatest captains of ancient and modern times both conquered Italy at five-and-twenty! Youth, extreme youth, overthrew the Persian Empire; Don J ohn of Austria won Lepanto at twenty-five — the greatest battle of modern time ; had it not been for the jealousy of Philip, the next year he would have been Emperor of Mauritania. Gaston de Foix was only twenty-two when he stood a victor on the plain of Ravenna. Every one remembers Conde and Rocroy at the same age. Gustavus Adolphus died at thirty-eight. Look at his captains; that wonderful Duke of Weimar, only thirty-six when he died. Banier himself, after all his miracles, died at forty-five. c Cortes was little more than thirty when he- gazed

upon the golden cupolas of Mexico. When Maurice of Saxony died at thirty-two, all Europe acknowledged the loss of the greatest captain and the profoundest statesman of the age. Then there is Nelson, Clive — but these aj e warriors, and perhaps you may think there are greater things than war. Ido not ; I worship the Lord of Hosts. But take the most illustrious achievements of civil prudence. Innocent 111. the greatest of the Popes, was the despot of Christendom at thirty-seven. John de Medici was a Cardinal at fifteen, and Guicciardini tells us baffled with his state craft Ferdinand of Arragon himself. He was Pope as Leo X. at thirty-seven. Luther robbed even him of his richest province at thirtyfive. Take Ignatius Loyola and John Wesley, they worked with young brains. Ignatius was only thirty when he made his pilgrimage and wrote the ' Spiritual Exercises.' Pascal wrote a great work at sixteen, the greatest of Frenchmen and died at thirty-seven ! "Ah ! that fatal thirty-seven, which reminds me of Byron, greater even as a may than a writer. Was it experience that guided the pencil of Raphael when he painted the palaces of Ro me ! He died too at thirty-seven. Richelieu was Secretary of State at thirtyone. Well then, there are Bolingbroke and Pitt, both ministers before other men leave off cricket. Grotius was in great practice at seventeen, and Attorney-General at twentyfour. And Acquaviva — Acquaviva was General of the Jesuits, ruled every cabinet in Europe, and colonised America before he was thirty-seven. What a career !" exclaimed the stranger, rising from his chair and walking up and down the room, " the secret sway of Europe ! That was indeed a position ! But it is needless to multiply instances. The history of Heroes is the history of Youth." — Coning sby.

(Copy.) Office of the Commissioner for investigating and determining titles and claims to land in New Zealand. No. 2. — Port Nicholson. Auckland, 31st March, 1845. Sir, — In laying before your Excellency my final Report upon the New Zealand Company's claims to laud in the Port Nicholson district, 1 shall take up the subject where 1 left it at the close of my first general Report, under date the 12th September, 1843. In that paper I went so fully into the question in almost all its bearings, the intention of the original agreement of ker Majesty's Government with the New Zealand Company, the application to the claims of that Body of the Commission which I have the honor to hold, the character and defects of the alleged purchases made by the Principal Agant of the Aborigines of this country » the conclusion forced upon me by the evidence adduced in their support, and the method proj osed, and in fact adopted for an arrangement by payment of compensation to the unsatisfied claimants, that I consider it scarcely necessary for me to say any more on these points on the present occasion, though I should wish that the Report in question should be regarded as an integral portion of the case now under consideration, and as a document at all times to be taken in conjunction with this my final Report. I concluded my first general Report with a recommendation that the Government should carry into effect the arbitration commenced by the Company's Agent, and pay the natives the amount of compensation that I might declare them entitled to receive, after which I could make my final Report, recommending that Crown Grants should issue to the New Zealand Company, when the amount advanced by Government to the natives should be refunded by that body. The necessity for the adoption by this Government of such a mode of putting the settlers in Cook's Strait in possession of the land purchased by them of the Company, and of doing justice to the natives interested in, but who had not consented to the alienation of the lands in dispute, was superseded by the consent of the Company's Principal Agent in tin beginning of 1844, to resume the arbitration on the compensation, and to advance, on behalf of his employers, the requisite funds for that purpose. I propose here briefly to state the terms and conditions of the resumed arbitration, which were definitively arranged at the conference between your Excellency and the Principal Agent,* holden at the house of Major Rich- j mond on the 29th January, 1 844* i The terms of the compensation were to be left to the arbitration of Mr. George Clarke, Jun., Protector of Aborigines, and the Principal Agent, with leave to refer to myself as umpire in the event of any difference of opinion arising between them. " The lands so to be estimated for compensation were to be all that had been surveyed or given out for selection in jhe Port Nicholson district, inde-

* No. 1. Minutes of Conference, 29th January, ,1844.

pendently of the pas, cultivations, and Reserves." For the purpose of this estimate, the limits of the pas were defined as " the ground fenced in around their native houses, including the ground in cultivation or occupation around the adjoining houses without the fence," and cultivations " as those tracts of country which, are now used by the natives for vegetable productions, or which have been so used by the Aboriginal natives of New Zealand since the establishment of the colony." The evidence in this case proved, that a partial purchase had been effected by the Company's Agent, to which many of the natives in the Port Nicholson district were consenting patties ; while it was equally clear that a great number of natives residing within the limits claimed under the purchase deed, and possessing an undoubted property in the land, or some parts of it, by reason of long possession and occupation, had not consented to the sale, nor signed the deed, nor received any portion of the goods given in payment for the land, but that many of them upon being applied to so to do, had previously refused to 'sell their "land 1 . ' ' Funher, the evidence went to prove that the nature of the transaction in which they were engaged was but very imperfectly explained to the native sellers, that the use, extent, and appropriation of the reserves, were never understood, and to this moment are not appreciated by the natives for who3e benefit they were designed. And lastly, that therehad been from one cause or another, great inequality it) the distribution among the various tribes and families of the goods given by the Company in exchange for the land its Agents endeavoured to acquire. Under these circumstances, and with an offer from the Company's Agent, made so early as A.ugust 1842, to leave to the decision of myself and Mr. Halswell the amount of compensation required to make good his purchases from the natives, the arbitration between Mr. Clarke and Colonel Wakefield on this subject was originally commenced, with the sanction of his Excellency the Officer then administering the Government, and on similar grounds on your Excellenty's first arrival at Wellington the suspended negociation between those gentlemen was re-opened. It now becomes necessary to refer to the several families of the natives in the Port Nicholson district, whom I considered entitled to rece've compesation under the arrangement in question. The way in which the purchase of this district was effected, had excluded from a participation in the various articles of barter offered by -the Company's Agent in exchange for the land, many portions of the tribes residing on the block described in the deed, whose consent to an act involving its alienation was as necessary to the validity of the sale, as that of any of the chiefs who signed the conveyance. Again, some of the parties themselves to the deed seemed equally entitled to receive some further payment, because they had in the first instance either misunderstood the nature and extent of the transaction into which they entered, or had not received a fair proportion of the consideration. In this category I should include many of the natives occupying the pas in what is now called Lambton Harbour, and for the following reasons : The preliminary conferences and consultations on the subject of the sale, as well between the chiefs and the Company's Agent as between the various parties of natives themselves, were principally carried on at Petoni. There Puni and his family then lived as they do now : while Warepori, also a party to the deed, was the nearest chief to his pa. The active and almost entire management of the transaction, with the description of the boundaries and the distribution of the consideration, was confided to these men, who were undoubtedly chiefs of much weight and influence amongst their own people, but who as I have laid down before, were not at liberty according to their own customs, to treat with others for the disposal of the land in possession of free members of their tribe, far less to convey away the rights of separate and independent families or branches in Lambton Harbour, and other parts of the land described in the deed. Such was the relative position of the Petoni or Hutt natives and those residing- in Lambton Harbour, on the arrival of the first settlers, who commenced laying out the (awn of " Britannia" at Petoni, and when owing to the inconvenience of that locality they afterwards removed to the present site of " Wellington," it is not to be wondered at thai*' the natives residing at the latter place should have offered resistance to the occupation of a' spot which they had never before considered asincluded in the sale to the New Zealand Company. But there is yet another class of native* whose claims to compensation rest upon stronger grounds than any of those to which I have hitherto alluded ; I speak of the natives of Te Aro or Taranaki, and Pipitea. The evidence

goes to deny their consent to the sale in any way, or their participation in the proffered payment : while Barrett has distinctly stated that he told Colonel Wakefield, that the na- ] tives of Te Aro and Pipitea were not so willing to sell their land as the natives were at Petoni : and he also states in his evidence, " I know that there were some part of the natives not inclined to sell their laud, namely, the natives helonging to Te Aro, and Pipitea," and when -he went to visit those living at Te Aro they told him " that they had not had any payment for the land, and that Warepori and the other natives had no business to sell their land." On a subsequent visit accompanied by Colonel Wakefield and Dr. Evans, -the natives of the same pa told him " that they had never received payment for their land, and that they had not sold their land," and afterwards when blankets were offered in payment for their land they declined to accept them. There existed ail ancient grudge between the natives residing in Lambton Harbour, and the tribes or families of Puni and Warepori residing at Petoni and Ngauranga, and their mutual animosity was heightened by. the exchange between the parties of the " kanga" or native curse, a species of excommuuication amongst these people by which the most deadly evils are imprecated on the object of their wrath, and which is regarded as an insult of the darkest character, is almost always praductive of immediate war, and is supposed to place an eternal feud between those who invoke it and the objects of their malediction. These form the several classes of native claimants, for whom I intended the compensation. The natives of the families of Puni and Warepori never disputed or denied the sale to Colonel Wakefield. These two chiefs, as I have already stated, were the parties principally consulted by the intending purchasers, and they pointed out the boundaries from the deck of the Tory on the day the deed" was signed. The objects and motives of these people in disposing of their land to Europeans appear to have been threefold, — the attainment of protection, consequent on the settling amongst them of a large body of emigrants, they were led to expect, from the predatory incursions of large parties of the Ngatikahuhunu tribe from the Wairarapa district, to which they were then constantly exposed. The benefits to be derived from the residence amongst them of Europeans who would consume their produce, and give them articles of clothing and luxury in exchange, may be supposed as another obvious inducement, while the immediate possession of the various commodities offered them as the actual consideration for the land, appealing at once to their natural cupidity, acted perhaps more strongly than either of the foregoing incentives in leading them to conclude the bargain which Colonel Wakefield was desirous of effecting. These men then being at once amply paid and placed in a position to enjoy to the utmost every advantage derivable from the settlement around aud amongst them of their European neighbours, undisturbed too in the retention and occupation of their pas and adjoining cultivations, it will readily be perceived, had no cause to complain of or regret the arrangements they had effected ; and as-a natural consequence never attempted, so far as their interests were concerned, to deny their share in a transaction from which, if they were not the sole parties to its conclusion, they had nevertheless derived a considerable .proportion of the consequent benefits and advantages. The chiefs of the Petoni neighbourhood, I am at once prepared to admit, were men of a higher rank amongst their own countrymen, and were regarded and looked up to as such by the several branches of thpir tribe who occupied other portions of the district. Their age and their superior descent may account for this, and it is scarcely surprising, when we remember how ready the natives have always shewn themselves to dispose of the lands in the occupation of others, so long as they can obtain any thing like a payment, that, holding as Puni did the position of the oldest and most superior chief of the Port Nicholson division of the Ngatiawa tribe, he should have taken advantage of his apparent ascendancy over the remainder of the chiefs, urged on as he doubtless was by the more impetuous suggestions of his friend and commander-in-chief Warepori, to assert a right to dispose by sale to Colonel Wakefield, of the land of which by every native custom the tribes or families in Lambton Harbour were the rightful and independent owners. It appeared in evidence that at one time Puni's people had occupied some cultivations in the neighbourhood of what is now known as Thorndon, but owing to its distance from their usual residence, or more probably the growing jealousies and disagreements with the natives of the pas Pipitea and Kumutoto, they had retired from and abandoned them altoge--jther. on this ground no doubt Pnni asserted -his right to the disposal of land in that neigh-

bourhood, which, though once occupied by his I family, had long since reverted to the followers of Moturoa, and whose consent was there- \ fore indispensable to its alienation. : When the settlement in Lamb ton Harbour had been established for some months, a dispute arose between the Europeans and the natives of Te Aro, on the former attempting to build a house near the pa. On this occasion these natives stoutly denied their participation in or consent to the original negociation and sale to Colonel Wakefield. The question was settled at the time by the intervention of Mr. Shortland, who was then at Port Nicholson in the capacity of Colonial Secretary and Police Magistrate. A sort of cession was made by the natives to the Crown of their interest in the disputed ground, on the understanding that they should retain possession of their pa,* and that their claim to some remuneration should be entertained whenever the whole question of title to land in that part of the colony should become the subject of judicial enquiry. i Before concluding the few general remarks that I have deemed it necessary to add to those contained in my first general Report, wherein I have so fully explained the reasons that induced me to form the opinion that I could not decide in favor of a grant to the Company of the land claimed under the purchase now under consideration, until compensation had been made to those tribes or families who had not assented to the sale, I wish to call your Excellency's attention to the state of the Wellington district with regard to the location of the aboriginal inhabitants upon it at the time of the arrival of the Tory, when the negociation for the purchase was commenced by Colonel Wakefield. At Te Aro our countrymen found a large pa thiokly inhabited by natives ; the spot being admirably selected from its immediate contiguity to the beach, where the natives haul up their canoes in safety ; proceeding round the beach towards the north, they also found the following pas — Kumutoto, Pipitea, Teakiwai, Kaiwarawara, Ngauranga, Petoni, and Waiwetu, all of them being situated near the water, with a beach to haul up their canoes, besides several smaller pas inland. Let us now consider the present state of the town of Wellington, shewing the spots that have been selected by the settlers up to this time for their houses, wharfs, stores, and other places of business. It commences at Te Aro, which is certainly the mercantile end of the town, where the principal wharfs and stores are erected ; wheitce there is an almost uninterrupted line of houses to Pipitea. At Te Aro then, close to the locality chosen by the merchants as the most eligible part of the harbour for mercantile purposes, we have the Te Aro pa, then about midway between Te Aro and Pipitea, Kumutoto pa. This pa was sometime since destroyed by fire, but its site is surrounded by European buildings, as is also the Pipitea. At Petoni, the site first selected for the town of Britannia, Puni and his tribe reside. It is well known that the New Zealanders consume large quantities of fish, and that it is in fact one of their principal articles of food, and that of late years, those residing upon the sea coast and in the different harbours, have carried on a considerable trade with Europeans who have visited them in coasting vessels, exchanging flax, pigs, and potatoes, for tobacco, arms, ammunition, clothing, and other articles, and that previously to the arrival of the Tory, Port Nicholson enjoyed its share of this trade. I doubt whether any other spot could have been found in New Zealand, where a portion \ of its aboriginal inhabitants had made a more i judicious selection of a location than at Port Nicholson, and they were in my opinion not only according to native custom, but also by the rules admitted amongst the nations of European the actual and legitimate possession of the district. The mode in which the aborigines manage their land in this country i 3 by clearing a spot, which, after cultivating for a few years, they abandon for another, which they treat in the same manner. They therefore require a much larger tract of land to satisfy their wants than if they cultivated according to the plan pursued by civilized nations, and in a place so thickly populated as I have before described this to be, the boundaries of the parts of the district belonging to each tribe or family are generally pretty well ascertained and admitted between them. As a proof of this, I may mention that in the case of native reserves, great difficulty has been found in getting natives belonging to one family to go on a reserve made within the boundary of the land belonging to another family, although it has been fully explained to them that the reserves are made for the benefit of the natives generally, aDd not for any particular tribe or family. They cannot understand this, and in , several instances that have fallen under my._uotice, they have positivelyrefused to cul-

J * No. 2. Agreement with Natives of Pa Taranaki.

tivate a native reserve so situated, although at the time in actual want of a spot to grow their potatoes upon. Assumingthen that the natives of PorlNicholson were in undisturbed possession of the district at the time Colonel Wakefield first treated for its purchase, it hecame my duty to enquire whether that gentleman had succeeded in making a valid purchase of any, and if any, of what portion of land from the natives. It is quite clear he fully admitted their claim by entering into a treaty with them through Barrett for the purchase, and as whatever title he could possibly claim on behalf of the Company could only be derived from the natives, it does appear to m« an anomaly that the Company should now attempt to deny the title of the natives, and to claim a Crown Grant under its agreement made with the Government in 1840, rather than under its own alleged purchases. The Company was first fully to recognize the natives' title to the land of their fathers, and their absolute right to sell and dispose of the same, and it would in my opinion be inconsistent with the rules of justice and the dictates of good policy to allow that body now to repudiate its own acts, and to leceive grants from the Crown, of land, where it has failed to prove the extinguishment of the native title. I have, however, in my first Report, gone so fully into the question of the jurisdiction of my Court in the Company's cases, that it is now unnecessary for me to do more than to state that further inquiry, consideration, and experience, have only tended to confirm my previously expressed opinion upon this point. Upon his first arrival, Colonel Wakefield was unacquainted with the native character and language. He therefore very prudently and discreetly availed himself of the services of Richard Barrett, whose knowledge of both, acquired during his long residence in this country, and whose connection by marriage with its inhabitants, combined to render him the person most likely to succeed in effecting the object sought to be obtained. Barrett appears to have conducted the negotiation for the purchase, and to have acted as interpreter, and hence it is that I have attached great weight to his testimony, which was given throughout in a very straightforward manner, and in a way calculated to produce the conviction that he was speaking the truth. I have already had occasion to quote his evidence as to the natives who did or did not consent to the sale : and I can now only look to his testimony to satisfy me how the deed was interpreted and explained to the natives : the deed being handed to Barrett, he was asked the following question. " Will you have the goodness to take the deed and explain to the Court in the Maori language in the same way you explained it to the natives?" The witness did so in Maori, which was translated literally into English as follows : " Listen natives all the people of Port Nicholson. This is a paper respecting the purchasing of land of yours. This paper has the names of the places of Port Nicholson. Understand this is a good book. Listen the whole of you natives, to write your names in this book, and the names of the places are Tararua, continuing on to the other side of * Port Nicholson ' to the name of Parangarahu. This is a book of the names of the channels and the woods and the whole of them to write in this book, people and caildren, the land to Wideawake, when people arrive from England it will shew you your part the whole of you." He is afterwards asked, " Did you tell the natives who signed the deed that one-tenth of the land described should be reserved for the use of themselves and their families, or simply that the Europeans should have one portion of the land, and the natives the other portion?" He answers as follows, " No, I did not tell them that they would get one-tenth : I said they were to get a certain portion of the land, without describing what that portion was." It appears to me that this interpretation in explanation was not calculated to convey to the natives who were parties to the purchase deed, a correct idea of what lands that instrument purported to convey, or of the nature or extent of the reserves that had been made for their benefit, and this will in a great measure account for the very determined manner in which the natives generally in the district opposed the occupation of the lands by the Europeans, and denied the sale to Colonel Wakefield from the very earliest period, to the arrival of the settlers. (To be continued.)