Enclosure 1 in No. 12. Wellington, March 25,1847.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 283, 15 April 1848, Page 4

Enclosure 1 in No. 12. Wellington, March 25, 1847.

Sir, — 1 have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 23rd instant, enclosing the tracings of two blocks of land, including Wairau and Porirua, recently purchased by the Government, and acquainting me that Crown titles will ,be issued to the

I New Zealand Company for any lands I may, under the usual regulations, select in those districts. You, at the same time, acquaint me, that it must be understood that the New Zealand Company will repay such portion of the respective sums paid for the land so selected as may be required by the home Government. I have to request you to make my acknowledgments, on the part of the New Zealand Company, to his Excellency, for the cordial assistance afforded by him to the Company to secure the districts necessary to fulfil their engagements and pursue their colonizing operations, as evinced in his late proceedings. Nevertheless I feel it to be my duty, whilst bowing to his Excellency's decision, to respectfully express my regret that the Company should be rendered liable for the payment of large sums of money, under the circumstances of the recent acquirement of land. The land offered to the Company in the Porirua district, in exchange for 16 sections that have been surveyed, selected by purchasers from the Company, and been the subject of numerous contracts and engagements, and are now reserved for the natives, is not known to contain any merits, either of quality or position, to render the choice of it available for the purpose of effecting an exchange for that kept for the natives. And if the owners of the sections so retained should, as I cannot but consider probable, decline to accept such an exchange when proposed to them, the Company would be paying largely for but a partial settlement, at this day, of a question that has been for years in abeyance. And, contemplating this, I stated to his Excellency, in the conversation in which he verbally acquainted me with this arrangement, that I should feel it my duty to protest against the award of Mr. Spain, on which, I presume, the Government have proceeded, so as to relieve the Company from responsibility to the owners of the sections, which the Crown, by its own act, had thus taken out of their possession ; but the payment of £3,000 for the block on the other side of the Straits presents a graver point of objection than in the case of Porirua. It would not, perhaps, become me to question the propriety of that arrangement if his Excellency had been pleased to take upon himself the responsibility of it, or had only required the Company to reimburse the Government in respect of such land as they might select outside what may be called the Wairau district ; but when I find not only that district included as part, for which a very large sum of moaey is paid by the Crown, but the Company desired to repay the proportionate amount for it, I cannot but remind his Excellency that the Company's claim to the whole district has never even been investigated, as the late Commissioner of Claims, Mr. Spain, has publicly admitted in his official report, and respectfully, but earnestly, submit that the payment of this sum, not to resident natives in actual enjoyment of the land, but to the very men who savagely murdered our countrymen at Wairau now nearly four years ago, is tantamount to a declaration of the invalidity of that claim without investigating it, and, therefore, to a justification of the perpetrators of that dreadful tragedy. I cannot but contemplate that, after all the struggles of the Company have made to vindicate their claim to the Wairau, and the memory of those who fell in supporting it against unlawful violence, they will regard in the same light the arrangement which his Excellency has been pleased to make ; and as I had, unfortunately, not the opportunity of expressing that opinion directly to his Excellency before the conclusion of the arrangement, I feel bound not to receive the official communication of it without placing on record the view 1 believe they will take of it. Before concluding, I must take the liberty of remarking on a point of considerable importance not alluded to in your letter. In acquainting me, verbally, with the arrangements now detailed by you, I nnderstood his Excellency's statement to be, that the Company would be called upon to make repayments, in money or land, for the lands to be chosen by them out of the blocks purchased by the Crowu, and that, therefore, it would be left to the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Company to determine jointly which mode of repayment should be adopted. As no allusion whatever is made by you to this alternative, I should be obliged by your acquainting me whether his Excellency made any communication to you respecting it. I have, &c, (Signed) W. Wakefield, Principal Agent of the New Zealand Company . His Honour the Superintendent of the Southern Division.