WANGANUI.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 270, 1 March 1848, Page 4

WANGANUI.

OmiOINAL FUBCHASEBS WHO SIGNED THE LETTER. J. Nixon J. Allison, M.D. H. Churton W. G. Bell G. Resa, M.D. E. J. Deighton W. J. Holder

Original Purohasebs who did not sign. i Parks H. S. Harrison S. King, P.M. Duncanson J P. WUson Gaffllan | - M. Campbell Stent '

Mr. Cowell's Report continued. Directors to be an absolute bar for ever to all suck claims as the vendees i'ho have signed the letter now make. In treating of the first of the three great wrongs for which the signers of the letter demand compensation, I have passed judgment on the second in so far as this, which I am now about to submit to your Lordship, proceeds from, or is connected with any other cause than the " acts of the Company and Directors respectively, and the acts of those deriving title under, or in trust for those, respectively." In stating the second great wrong therefore, I shall be acting in the strictest conformity with justice in detaching from it, and in omitting to notice all that part of it which flows from any of these sources against which the Directors, at first and throughout, have refused to guarantee the purchasers of land orders. The signers then affirm, in pages 23 and 33 (adducing quotations from the Company's prospectus of the Ist of June and 30th of July, 1839) " that the Company offered to purchasers the most fertile, available and valuable land in their possessions ; that the power of selection over many districts, and the consequent certainty of obtaining the very best land in the Company's possession, were the peculiar inducements held out to buyers ; that, in spite of this, the purchasers of these land orders found on their arrival in New Zealand, that their right to seleGt over all the districts possessed, or nominally possessed, by the Company was openly repudiated and denied by the Company's Agent in the colony ; that they were then compelled to select land, a great portion of which was worthless, and that some of the best districts about Wellington were never thrown open for selection." Wherefore they say in page 32, we now claim — " not as a matter of favor, but of right — that we shall be permitted to throw up all the worthless land we have so unjustly been compelled to select, and that the Wairarapa, and the other blocks of land referred to by your Principal Agent, be purchased, purveyed, and thrown open for our selection." If the interpretation which the letter writers put upon the terms of the prospectus of June and July, 1 839, in page 24, be entertained for the purpose of investigating the claim which they thus aim at founding on it, how will the question stand ? It will be seen that as fast as each of the holders of these land orders arrived in the colony, he found that he had the right either of choosing at once among such lands as the Company had at the time of his arrival to offer, or of reserving his choice until additional land should be subsequently surveyed and offered for selection. But every holder of a land order must have known, and did undeniably know at the time of purchasing the order in London, that such would be his alternative upon disembarking in New Zealand, and he was of course perfectly prepared so to find it; for in the very nature of things he could have found nothing else. Now, there were peculiar advantages mixed with peculiar disadvantages attached to each part of the alternative : some chose immediately after disembarking, among such lands as were then prepared for selection ; some did not choose until they had waited a ceitain time ; and some have not chosen up to to this day. The rights of this third, or last class of ■purchasers, are not at present brought into question. The claim note advanced can only refer to the two first classes. And what is it that these claimants demand ? (0 Nothing less than that one should be interpreted to mean two. They maintain that the Company by selling for a certain sum to them the right of making one selection, did really sell to them for that same sum the right of making two selections ; and that it is under the absolute obligation (since a right in one party involves a corresponding obligation in the other, and the claim is here ostentatiously declared to be, not a matter of favor, but of right,) not merely of allowing them to make two selections, but also of purchasing and throwing open for their selection certain particular districts that they name, Such demands are so novel in transactions of business, that I think it quite unnecessary to canvass them. If a horse -dealer were to sell tickets entitling the holders to enter his stables at their pleasure, and take out any horses they might find in them, what would, be thought of these parties, if, several months after, having exercised their rights, they were to bring back the horses they had chosen, and not merely declare that the dealer had sold them the right of making a second choice from whatever his stock might at any future time prove to be, but that he was under the obligation of purjshasing the blood of Eclipse, Smolensko,

Resolutions of the Meeting continued. (h) Resolution VIII. That while Mr. E. J. Wakefield and Col. Wakefield have mentioned the very few instances in which high prices have been realized by the sale of land, they have omitted to bring under Mr. CowelTs notice the infinitely greater number of cases in which sections of land have been sold at a third or a fourth of their original cost, or even proved unsaleable at almost any price ; that the statement of a country section having been sold at £40 an acre is incorrect, inasmuch as the section in question (Wade's Town, adjoining the Town) did not in reality realise a fifth part of the sum named by Mr. E. J. .Wakefield. That with respect to the other statements made by Col.. Wakefield and Mr. E. J. Wakefield, as the land purchasers have not been furnished with the minutes of Mr. E. J. Wakefield's evidence, and as Col. Wakefield has refused to give them a copy of his Despatch (from which Mr. CoweU makes an extract) to the Directors (dated Dec. 18, 1846,) this meeting is compelled to confine itself to an expression of its conviction, that they will be found on investigation to be equally unfounded with those assertions to which it has had an opportunity of adverting. (i) Resolution IX. That as Mr. CoweU has denied the truth of the various statements made by the land purchasers upon the authority of Mr. Edw. Jerningham Wakefield and Col. Wakefield, and as he has distinctly avowed that it is a question of credibility between these two parties on the one side, and the fifty-five purchasers whose names are appended to the Letter on the other, he has compelled the land-purchasers most reluctantly to refer to the character of the two witnesses whose testimony he himself hesitates not to adopt as the most trustworthy ; with respect to Mr. Edward Jemingham Wakefield— to refer to his character as given and published in the local papers by the Rev. Mr. Turton, and R. D. Hanson, Esq., late Crown Solicitor — to his removal by Capt. Fitzroy from the Commission of the Peace on account of his gross immoralities ; — with regard to Col. Wakefield — to refer to his past history — to the public ordeal to which he was subjected in the matter of the abduction of Miss Turner in 1827, and the consequences to himself — to the evidence given by him befoie Mr. Commissioner Spain in March, 1843, with regard to the Company's title to Porirua, contrasted with the account given by Mr. E. J. Wakefield in his book of the transactions of the 18th November, 1839 — and then having made this reference, to appeal to Earl Grey whether Mr. Cowell was justified, on the unsupported statements of such parties, in casting doubts upon the veracity and good faith of the fifty-five signers of the Letter, whose characters have never been impeached ; — j whether, in short, in preferring the testimony of the former, he has not been guilty of a gross outrage upon common sense and common decency. (k) Resolution X. That Mr. Cowell has been singularly unfortunate in his selection of " the decisive 1 test of the weight due to the representations" of the parties whose signatures are attached to the letter, inasmuch as the estimate^ of the amount of capital brought out to this settlement was stated not on their own authority, but was taken from the Petition of the New Zealand colonists who were resident in England in 1845, which petition was presented to the House of Commons on the 7th July, 1845, by Earl Grey (then Viscount Howick), was sanctioned, idopted and. printed, (in the Appendix to ihe Report of the debate on New Zealand in June 1845,) by the New Zealand Company as part of their case, and to which this meefr? ing have reason to believe the name of Mr. Cowell's prompter, Mr. E. J. Wakefield, waftl be found attached; the paragraph of the Petition in which the statement occurs being as follows: — "The real colonists of New Zeal- «. and are those whom your petitioners virtually represent — the settlers on the shores of Cook's Strait, about the centre of New Zealand, who number at least 12,000 souls, including 2000 persons qualified to act as common jurors — uho have carritdjimtji them a capital which has been estimatedlfflmotjess than £2,ooo,ooo and on whose behalf the New Zealand Company has besides expended nearly £600,000 in the work of colonisation ,-" — but although the signers of the letter are thus relieved from the responsibility of a statement (which nevertheless they firmly believe to be perfectly correct) they feel themselves bound to protest against the, manner in which Mr. Cowell has attempted to pervert their meaning for the unprincipled purpose of throwing discredit upon their various statements; for they defy the most zealous partizan of „ the New Zealand

Mr. Cowell's Report continued. &c, &c, &c, for their more satisfactory second choice ? It appears to me that the purchasers of land orders were free to buy, and free to choose ; but that, having once chosen, they are not free to change ; and I will close this topic of claim by saying, 'that I learn from the letter itself, that when the writers inform your Lordship " that they were compelled" to select land of which a great portion "was quite worthless," they merely mean that at the time of their selections, respectively, they found themselves in the alternative in which they had all along expected to find themselves, and that they were "compelled" in no other sense. 0») They affirm indeed, that the power which they had purchased in London of selecting over many districts wa9 openly repudiated and denied by the Company's Agent in the colony. But they do not advance a particle of proof of this assertion ; and as well assertions of these gentlemen unsupported by proof must necessarily stand affected in my mind by the character of that assertion to which I have drawn your Lordship's attention regarding the average capital, which they or their whole body brought to New Zealand ; as I have seen in Colonel Wakefield's hand-writing a denial of this charge, as the Directors of the Company affirm that they never heard of the matter before, and as I suppose that an act of this nature would have been brought to public knowledge at the time of its occurrence, I feel justified for all these reasons in dwelling upon it no longer at present. <*> .... The third great wrong is the withholding from the purchasers in the first and principal settlement (p. 43) 256,330 acres, say two hundred and fifty-six thousand three hundred and thirty acres, (I write the amount in words in order that your Lordship may not for a moment suppose, as your eye shall fall upon the figures themselves, that there must be some clerical error in the statement,) being that proportion of the quantity of acres accruing to the Company under Mr. Pennington's award, which these gentlemen affirm there is every reason to believe that Lord John Russell intended should come to them, and which on other and more weighty grounds of "rights acpruing by trusteeship," they say are theirs. They advance this claim (addressing the Directors, p. 41) as follows: — "You have perverted your trust to your own personal profit — and, therefore, we are entitled to call upon you to account to us for the advantages thus obtained, and to claim that the lands so acquired (elsewhere stated by them jto be exactly 256,330 acres) be held in trust for us ; — and we are confident that a court of equity would compel you to disgorge those profits — would insist upon your giving them up for the benefit and use of those by means of whose funds you, acting as trustees, acquired them." A court of equity is certainly the only proper theatre for the investigation of a claim of this nature ; and I therefore presume I may properly abstain from stating the grounds of it, and discussing their validfy. Such, my Lord, are the three great wrongs alleged to have been inflicted on the writers of the Wellington Letter. Incidental to them a number of assertions are advanced, into every one of which I have made an adequate examination. Ido not think, however, that it would be profitable to adduce, or to canvass them, as the grounds of the whole case itself are entirely disposed of, and the assertions themselves invariably turn out to be either immaterial, unsupported by proofs, or in singular contrast with what I understand to be the facts. The Principal Agent . of the Company, writing to the Directors under date of the 18th December, one thousand eight hundred and forty-six, with reference to this letter, says. — " Many of those who profess not to be in possession of their lands (I presume they mean all their lands) are in the annual receipt of from twenty to thirty per cent on their original capital. Others have sold town acres at the price of £300 per acre, and have refused £1,000 for a country section. I notice with no small surprise the statement intended to convey to the public (although it is qualified in a subsequent sentence) that the parties to the letter have " never yet obtained possession of the Jands they selected," as if. they were all in that position, and that a price varying from £100 4o £1,000, .had not been repeatedly realized by the sale of a single town acre in this town by some of those who have now come forward to represent the hardships of never having been put in possession of land bojth in town and country, that was the subject of .constant cultivation, sale, or ex-

Resolutions of the Meeting continued. Company, after a perusal of the letter, to deny that the writers did not throughout advocate the claims, not merely of themselves, but also of the whole body of the land purchasers, whether residents or absentees — or that it is not perfectly clear, as well from the tenor and spirit as from the words of the context, of the whole statement, that in drawing a picture of the ruin brought upon this settlement by the Company's non-ful-filment of its contract, they alluded to the losses sustained by all classes of the community, and that in quoting from the petition the statement, (from which Mr. Cowell has so indiscreetly attempted to deduce conclusions unfavourable to their character) they referred to. it not as the amount of capital brought out by themselves, (the fiftyfive signers) but as the amount expended in the formation of this settlement founded by them the first Resident Land Purchasers. (t) Resolution XI. That in the opinion of this meeting Mr. Cowell's illustration of the horse dealer would have been fpund peculiarly applicable to the New Zealand Company and its transactions ; had Mr. Cowell for once deviated from his general rule, and fairly stated the facts of the case, which are these : — The horse dealer alluded to by Mr. Cowell, (that is, the New Zealand Company) not only sold tickets entitling the holders to enter all his stables at their pleasure and select any horses they might find in them, but also guaranteed that amongst them they should find and have the power of selecting the best blood — the blood of Eclipse, Smolensko, &c, (that is, the most fertile available and valuable lands in all the Company's possessions) ; and yet in spite of this bargain, the holders of the tickets found on their arrival at the stables, that the groom of the horse dealer openly repudiated their power of selecting out of all the stables, and compelled them either to go without any horses at all, or to select out of one or two stables, which contained with scarcely an exception, only a few broken down, spavined jades ; and even these they subsequently found had not honestly come into the possession of Mr. Cowell's horse dealer : and moreover, that during a period of eight years they have been able to obtain delivery from the groom of an exceedingly small number of these, and at present have very slender prosp^cts of ever obtaining delivery of the remainder. That such being the facts, this meeting will leave the public to judge whether the holders of the tickets in complaining of the dishonesty of the horse dealer, in calling upon him to complete his engagements, and in seeking compensation for the losses they have sustained from his breach of contract, have been guilty, as Mr. Cowell asserts, of " making mands so novel in transactions of business, that it is quite unnecessaiy to canvass them." (m) Resolution XII. That Mr. Cowell's assertion, that the land purchasers do not advance a particle of proof in support of their charge, — that the power conferred, upon them by the land order, of selecting in all the Company's possessions, was openly repudiated by the Company's Agent in the colony, is as bold as it is unfounded ; inasmuch as the date of the Principal Agent's letter, in which the repudiation was made — the words used by him — the letter written by Mr. Shortland, stating, in opposition to the Agent's repudiation, that the "Company were bound to fulfil the conditions entered into in the disposal of their lands" — are all quoted hv the letter; and further, that in spite of the denial which Mr. Cowell affirms he has seen in Colonel Wakefield's hand-writing, the charge is substantiated by the following letter :— Wellington, November 27, 1841. Sip, — In reply to your letter of the 25th instant, requesting further information respecting the Wanganui sections, I have to state, that I have been advised that the arrangements between her Majesty's Government and the New Zealand Company preclude the holders of secondary land orders from selecting according to the conditions of sale. I had hoped that the plan to ichich I acceded, although I was not present at the meeting you mention, as you state, would have been satisfactory to all parties ; but as such is not the case, and the question seems likely to be the subject of legal pro ceedings, I must request of you and the persons you state yourself to represent, without naming them, to be allowed'to refer you to Mr. Brandon in any further communication you may have to make on the subject. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, W. Wakbfield, Principal Agent N. Z. C. Mr. William Bannister. (n) Resolution XIII. That in reference to the claim advanced by the land purchasers to the lands awarded by the Government to the Company, in respect of the 75 per cent, of the monies of the land purchasers, expended in emigration, this meeting can only regard Mr.

Mr. CowelVs Report continued. (°) change by them." These representations are confirmed by those which I have received from Mr. E. J. Wakefield, Finally, I beg to report as my deliberate opinions : — That the charges which the signers of the Wellington Letter made against the Directors of the New Zealand Company are not warranted by any facts or evidence which they have adduced ; and specially, that the Directors have not inflicted upon the settlers any one of the wrongs of which the writers of the Wellington Letter accuse them. That the whole case of the letter writers entirely fails. That the manner in which the case is prepared and worked up, unequivpcally betrays in several instances the clearest signs qf general bad faith. Cp) And as there is no colourable grounds for supposing that the 55 signers of thjs letter utter the sentiments of other parties, but only their own, I conclude by submitting (?) that the very unfavourable impressions regarding them which this letter is calculated to produce on every impartial mind, should be carefully^ confined to those whose names are attached to it, and by no means intend(r) ed to affect the character of any of the other resident settlers at Wellington j*nd Wanganui. I have, &c v (Signed) John W. Cowell. (True copy.) (Signed) G. Elliott Elliott, Sec. Off.

Resolutions of the Meeting continued^ Cowell's recommendation, that "a court of equity is certainly the only proper theatre for its investigation," as a virtual admission that he, and all who may have assisted him in the preparation of his report, are unable . to controvert the arguments by which the claim is supported ; hut at the same I time it appears to this meeting that such a recommendation comes with a peculiarly bad grace from the advocate of that very Company, the Pireetors of which (see Mr. Somes' letter to Lord Stanley, dated Feb. 1 5, 1 843) denounced Lord Stanley for having referred them for redress to a judicial tribunal; and, further, that Mr. Cowell in stating to Earl Grey, that the 256,330 acres (bein* the number of acres awarded in respect o? the 75 per cent, expended in emigration, exclusive of 127,790 acres alloted by the Company to purchasers) were claimed by the 55 signers of the letter for themselves, ha,s not merely afforded additional evidence of his reckless disregard of the obligations imposed upon him by his office, but has stated that which,, in the opinion of this meeting, he must have known was utterly at variance with the truth; for the following extracts from that part of the letter having reference to this claim, will abundantly prove that the writers claimed these 256,330 acres not for themselves only, but for the whole body of land purchasers both residents and absentees; — in page 40 of the letter, the writers say — "but not content with laying before Mr. Pennington an account of the expenditure of their own money, the Company sent in statements o.f their expenditure of monies paid into their hands for certain specified objects (viz., of the 75 per cent, expended in emigration,) monies to which the Company never had the shadow of a claim — which they never considered their own — but which they again and again admitted they held in trust; and Mr. Pennington admitted and passed these accounts, and awarded in respect of their expenditure of this 75 per cent, land at the same rate, viz., of one acre for every ss. To this land we contend that the Company have not the slightest claim, but that it justly belongs to .the purchasers (they do not say of the fifty-five signers), seeing that it was awarded in respect of the expediture of their money." Again, in pages 41-42, tjfoey say, — "We will now state how the accounts stand between us. The total sum received by you from purchasers in the first and principal ■settlement is stated in your accounts to be £128,040, According to the terms of our contract, you were to retain of this sum 25 per cent., or £32,010 for your own profit and expenses, a sum which entitled you to 1^8,040 acres. In respect of the remaining £96,030 expended in emigration, the iGovernment awarded 384,120 acres, of which you have alloted to purchasers •only 127,790, and have appropriated the other 256,330 acres to your own use and benefit. These 256,330 acres we claim on ,the grounds already stated, viz., that they saere awarded by Government in respect of the •expenditure of our monies ; that is to say — *)f the 75 per cent, expended .in emigration* }and that, as trustees, you luwe no right to derive any profit from such expenditure. It may be that the whole of this £96,030 was not expended before the time, at which "land was awarded at the rate of an acre for ,-every 55,, expired ; if so, % some deduction -will have to be made from the amount we -claim; — bearing "in mind, however, that *your paid-up ■capital in November 1840 did not exceed £100,000, and that Mr. Pennington awarded you 997,036 acres, it is evident you must have proved, or claimed in virtue of, an expenditure of £249,259, a sum greater than the whole amuont of your .capital (£-1-00,000), and the sums (£128,040) received from purchasers." (o) Resolution XIV. That in .order to destroy any influence the Report of Mr. Commissioner Cowell may have temporarily acquired, it Would only be necessary to' call attention to the fact that Mr. Commissioner Cowell, entrusted with the conduct of a quasi judicial investigation, has confined his examination to the testimony of Mr. Jemingham Wakefield and Col. Wakefield, the persons whose conduct is impugned ; if the claims of the Letter writers are well founded, a process as reasonable as that of a judge would be who laying before a jury the evidence given in a criminal case should confine himself to the statement of the prisoners(p) Resolution X¥. That with respect to the conclusion of Mr. Cowell's letter this- meeting can only express their opinion that it is difficult to say whether it is more grossly and wantonly insulting to the fifty-five parties who-sighetl the' Letter, or to the Settlers whosetchar.acter Mr. Cowell exempts from his; atfsirrij. and impotent censure. . -

Resolutions of the Meeting continued. (q) Resoeution XVI. That the Chairman of this meeting be requested to forward, through his Excellency the Governor, the foregoing resolutions with a copy of the printed Letter to Earl Grey, with an earnest appeal to his Lordship to reconsider his approval of Mr. CowelTs Report, and to withdraw his sanction to the imputations cast by the Commissioner upon the character of the signers of the Letter. ir) Resolution XVII. That inasmuch as Lord Grey has already referred the matters in dispute between the Land Purchasers and the New Zealand Company to the sole decision of Mr. Cowell, whose appointment depended upon the sanction of the Directors, and whose salary is paid by the Company ; and inasmuch as the two Under-Secretaries of State for the Colonies (in whose honour and integrity this meeting has nevertheless the most perfect confidence) have been more or less connected with the New Zealand Company or Association ; Mr. Buller having been till his recent appointment, a Director of the Company, and Mr. Hawes having been chairman of the meeting of the Association held at No. 20 Adam Street, Adelphi, on Thursday, December 28th, 1837, at which the members pledged themselves to use their best exertions to secure the appointment of Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, as the first Governor of New Zealand: this meeting deem it inexpedient to make any other appeal (except that above mentioned to Earl Grey) to the Colonial-office, but that Petitions to Parliament, based upon the printed letter, be framed and transmitted at the earliest possible opportunity; and that Mr. Clifford who is about to return to England, be requested to take charge of the Petitions.

The first of the two following letters is from his Excellency the Lieutenant- Govern or to Mr. Swainson, accompanying Mr. Cowell's Report : The other is Mr. Swainson's letter to Earl Grey, inclosing a copy of the printed letter of the Land Purchasers :—: — Wellington, 24th January, 1848. Sir, In obedience to the instructions of the Right Honorable the Secretary of State for the Colonies, I have to acquaint you that his Lordship has received your letter of the 15th December, 1846, forwarding a printed letter addressed to the Directors of the New Zealand Company by various purchasers of land at Port Nicholson, on the subject of their claims on that body. Tn reply, his Lordship has given directions that you should be furnished with a copy of a report on the sub' ject of that letter from Mr. Cowell, the Commissioner appointed to watch the affairs of the New Zealand Company on behalf of the Government. This I have now the honor to inclose : and, in obedience to his Lordship's commands, 1 have further to inform you, that Earl Grey approves of the view Mr. Cowell has taken of the case; and that, although his Lordship has in this instance overlooked the irregularity of transmitting the representation direct to his department, without the intervention of the Governor, and has directed an inquiry into the case, his Lordship will not adopt that course on any future occasion, j I have the honor to be, Sir, Your most obedient, humble servant, Edw. John Eyre, Lieutenant-Govcrnor. W. Swainson, Esq., &c, &c, &c.

The Hutt Valley, near Wellington, New Zealand, 15th Dec, 1846. My Lord, I have been requested on the part of the resident Land Purchasers from the New Zealand Company, to lay before your Lordship the accompanying printed " Letter" to the Directors, which bears the signature of nearly all those now left in this Settlement. Uncertain, at so great a distance, whether this Company is still in being ; or whether, as we hope and trust, her Majesty's Government has taken into its own hands all questions relative to the unfortunate settlers, and to whom the Company owes its very existence, I will not presume to occupy your Lordship's time by a repetition of all the details of this printed document : the intimate knowledge which your Lordship possesses of the documentary evidence therein referred to would also render such a repetition altogether superfluous. I shall therefore merely recapitulate the principal charges we are obliged to make against the Company, which are as follow :—: — Ist, For having violated almost every one of the conditions upon which we purchased land of the Company in England seven years ago.

2d, For having offered land for selection which had not heen purchased from the natives; but which, from ignorance of that fact, we were induced to accept. 3d, For having refused us the right of selecting land except in particular districts. 4th, For refusing us all compensation for our ruinous losses, and withholding from us all participation in that which was awarded to us by the liberality of Lord John Russell in November 1840. To these charges we beg to solicit your Lordship's serious attention : we trust they have not lightly been made, since we have endeavoured to substantiate them by official documents, or by unimpeachable evidence. The only exception to this evidence relates to the construction we have put upon the instructions of Lord John Russell's compensation to the Company, in November 1840. The sincere interest however, and the generous sympathy in our sufferings which his Lordship has uniformly expressed, gives us confidence that our view of his intentions in this instance can scarcely be mistaken. If his Lordship's sympathy prompted hirr, in 1840, to make such a liberal compensation, how much more strongly will such feelings exist after a lapse of six years, during which our sufferings have been increased tenfold by the destruction of property, the loss of lives, and all the horrors of predatory warfare? We cannot therefore believe that his Lordship's award of compensation could have been intended for a Court of Directors securely seated in London ; but rather for that body of men who, deceived by the promises of these Directors, have actually endured these sufferings, — whose fortunes have been ruined by their mismanagement, and who now can only look for some alleviation, ! to the justice, the sympathy, and the good | faith, of her Majesty's Ministers. I trust your Lordship will excuse any informality in this address. The substance of the present letter was addressed to Lord John Russell by a recent conveyance to England : I now beg leave to rectify that error, and to bring the subject directly before your Lordship, as head of the Colonial Department. Had time allowed, I should have forwarded it in the first instance to I Governor Grey ; but his Excellency is now i at Auckland, and might not receive it for many weeks : in the meantime, we feel it important that her Majesty's Government should no longer be kept in ignorance of the real feelings of the influential settlers. Having lost all confidence in the Company, our greatest desire is to see the colony relieved, both directly and indirectly, entirely from its influence. I cannot conclude without expressing our sense of the promptitude with which her Majesty's Government has assisted us from England : but more specially are we indebted for the appointment of his Excellency Captain Grey, whose enlarged views, liberal j policy, and wise decisions, have hitherto been'a blessing to the country ; while the urbanity of his manners has endeared him to all ranks. I have, &c, (Signed) William Swainson, F.R.S. The Right Honorable Earl Grey, &c, &c, &c. P.S. — I believe the Letter to the Directors is signed by all the Land Purchasers now left in the Settlement, excepting such as are related to some one of that body, and two individuals holding official situations; the rest have left the colony, greatly impoverished, or completely ruined. (True copy.) G. Elliott Elliott, Sec. Off.