Correspondence between the Local Government and the Acting Principal Agent of the New Zealand Company. (Continued from our last.) Wellington, 16th February, 1849.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 398, 26 May 1849, Page 4

Correspondence between the Local Government and the Acting Principal Agent of the New Zealand Company. (Continued from our last.) Wellington, 16th February, 1849.

Sir, — I bave the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Excellency's letter of yesterday's date, transmitting to me certain accounts and vouchers relative to the purchase of the lands lately acquired from the jiatives in the Southern Island, and requesting me "in accordance with the instructions of the Right Honorable the Secretary of State for the Colonies, directing that the expenses incurred in acquiring lands from the" natives should be provided by the Company," to repay to the Local Government the advances made by your Excellency on that account, and which, I perceive, include the expenses of the Government Commissioner employed in completing the purchase, and paying over the instalment now due. In reply, \ have the horior to inform your Excellency that I am prepared ' at once to repay the amount of the instalment now in course of payment, viz., five hundred pounds. But on looking into the records of previous similar transactions, such as the Otago purchase, that at Wanganui, and the negotiations of the Port Cooper Plains purchase, iv the first instance conducted by Mr. Kemp, I perceive that the practice hitherto has been for the Government and the Company each to pay the expenses of •its own officers, which in some cases must have been very considerable, particularly at Otago and Wariganui. On looking at the correspondence which has passed between the Colonial Office and the New Zealand Company, I do not find it provided that the latter should do more than find the purchase money. And considering that the Government appears to have retained the power of conducting such negotiations in its own hands,. for the purpose of securing the interests of the natives, and may, therefore, to a certain extent, be regarded as the selling party,, the rule hitherto < adopted seems to me fair, and analogous to the practice of private parties in ordinary transactions of sale, where each pays his own agent. I regret, therefore, , that on these grounds I do not feel myself authorised in meeting the Commissioner's expenses, though, of course, prepared, to pay the proportion of Mr. Wills's passage in H.M.S. Fly, as he was employed' by, and acted on behalf of, the Company, the balance of his expenses having been already paid by me. .1 have, &c, (Signed) William Fox, Acting Principal Agent to the N. Z. Co. His Excellency Lieutenant Governor Eyre, &c, &c, &c. A true copy — J. D. Ormond.

Cop>. No. 8. ( , Government House, Wellington, 20th February, 1849. Sir,— , t I HA,yE the honor to acknowledge the receipt of ypur letter of jesterday's ( date, in reply to my communication or the 15th ul-

fimo, transmitting certain accounts and vouchers relative to the purchase of the lands lately acquired from the natives in the Southern Island. 2. In this reply you intimate that you do not consider yourself authorised to provide 'for any expenditure connected with the acquisition of lands, excepting the purchase money to be paid to the natives and the expenses of such officers as the New Zealand 'Company may themselves employ, and this decision you base upon the following , grounds :—: — Ist. That the Government have heretofore (as in the case of Olago, Wanganui, &c.) advanced the funds necessary to meet the expenditure incurred by their own officers in conducting land negotiations on behalf of 'the Company, and that you fi'id no express provision in the correspondence between the Colonial Office and the New Zealand Company, that the latter should do more than find the purchase money. 2ndly. That, considering that the Government appears to have retained the power of conducting such negotiations in its own hands, for the purpose of securing the interests of the natives, and may therefore to a certain degree be regarded as the selling party, the rule hitherto adopted seems to you fair, and analogous? to the practice of private individuals in ordinary transactions of sale, where each pays his own agent. 3. With regard to the first of these reasons it seems unnecessary to observe, that although in some instances (as Porirua, Wairau, &c, &c.) the Government may have found it desirable, from political considerations, to take upon themselves to advance the funds required for the acquisition of particular districts, it by no means follows- that they ought to do so in cases where the same reasons are not so pressing, and where tbe districts are required solely for the purposes of the New Zealand Company. 4. In Colonel Wakefield's letter to Sir George Grey, of the 31st August last, it is stated that advices from the Court of Directors of the New Zealand Company had announced to him that an arrangement had been " made between her Majesty's Government and the Company, thnt the whole of such price should be provided by the Local Government," and upon this supposed arrangement I was instructed by his Excellency the Governor-in- Chief to reply in the terms of my letter of the sth September, 1848. 5. Since these communications took place it appears that Colonel Wakefield had been misinformed, and that, in point of fact, no arrangement had been entered into, by which her Majesty's Government undertook to find the funds required for the acquisition of lands for the New Zealand Company; but on the contrary, Earl Grey expressly instructed the Governor-in- Chief that such funds must be provided by the Company itself, unless in the case of the district required for the Canterbury settlement, where his Lordship consented to sanction an advance being made from the local revenue for the purpose, if able to meet such a demand. 6. In both Colonel Wakefield's letter and my own reply to it (above referred to), there is also this further assumption, that the funds to be advanced by the Government were to be repaid out of the Parliamentary loan of £36,000, to be advanced to the New Zealand Company between the sth April, 1849, and sth April, 1850; but no portion of that sum seems to have been set apart for the purpose of such repayments, or any provision made against the whole amount being at once paid over to the New Zealand Company in England at the commencement of the year. 7. Another and not an unimportant consideration is, that although it is inferred in the communications I have referred to, that as the New Zealand Company will only choose out of the various blocks purchased such lands as they may wish to constitute portions of the 1,300,000 acres of land to which they are entitled, and as the rest will again devolve upon the Crown, they ought only to pay such share of the expenses of obtaining the several districts as their proportion of land in each may bear to the whole district, yet it is nowhere provided when the Company shall complete this exel cisc of selection, or at what stated period the Crown shall be able, by making beneficial application of the surplus lands, to reimburse itself for the outlay incurred, the Local Government are consequently, by meeting the expenses attendant upon the land purchases, in the position of advancing funds to enable the New Zealand Company to carry out their colonising operations, without the power of deriving any corresponding pecuniary returns, or the prospect of the debt thus accumulating being speedily r,epaid. 8. This in so young a community, where the local revenue is not sufficient to meet the current expenditure, is a matter of grave

consideration ; nor do I see how it is possible, under such circumstances, and in the absence of any Parliamentary provision to meet the expenditure referred to, for the Local Government to continue to employ special agents, and incur heavy expenses, in the acquisition of lands for the New Zealand Company. 9. For the reasons above stated it will be apparent, that the second ground urged in your letter of the 11th February, is not a valid- one, or the comparison fairly put ; becaube in reality the Government are called upon to incur in that capacity a heavy outlay, for the early reimbursemeut of which no provision is made. 10. In conclusion, I can only add, that I will lose no time in bringing under the notice of his Excellency the Governor -in-Chief the difficulty which has arisen, and in requesting special instructions from his Excellency on the subject. 11. I regret that, although ray letter was commenced on the 17th ultimo, it has not been in my power to complete it until to-day painful family intelligence from Europe having reached me, and prevented my giving that full consideration to the subject which I wished at an earlier date. I have, &c, (Signed) E. Eyre. W. Fox, Esq., Acting Principal Agent to N. Z. Company, &c, &c, &c. A true copy — J. D. Ormond. . o-

Copy. Wellington, 20th February, 1849. Sip, I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Excellency's letter of the 17th instant, and beg to express my sincere regret at the cause to which you allude as having prevented its earlier transmission. In my letter of the 16th instant, to which it is a reply, I confined myself chiefly to a consideration of the practice in previous cases of negotiation and purchase from the natives, one of which in particular (that of the Otago block) still appears to me exactly in point, as involving no more political considerations or urgency than the acquisition of the Port Cooper district. But your Excellency has adverted to the positions of ; the Government and Company m ■ eference to the existing arrangements and the objects, with a view to which the Parliamentary loan was made to the latter. The inferences which are drawn by you would have had much weight with me but for the following consideration, lo which, as you express an intention of referring the matter to the Govern r-in- Chief, I shall feel obliged by your directing his Excellency's attention : At the time when the existing arrangements alluded to were made, and the Parliamentary loan accepted by the Company, after an estimate ofits probable requirements during the three years over which it was to extend, her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies had, in his Despatch of the 23rd December, 1846, addressed to the Governor-in- Chief, and published in the colony, laid it down as an incontrovertible position, that the natives are only entitled to a proprietary right in such lands as they actually occupy, and that the Crown is entitled to take possession of all vacant territory without purchase from the natives. What was signified by " occupation" was defined by the 33rd clause cf the 13th chapter of the Royal Instructions, and confines the native ownership within very narrow limits. It is true, that a very large discretion was given to the Local Government in determining how far the principle there laid down was to be carried into operation ; but with a full knowledge that the population of the Middle Island was less than 3000 inhabitants to an area estimated at nearly fifty millions acres, and that these few natives had occupied, in Lord Grey's sense of the word, an almost inappreciable quantity of land, it was impossible that either the Home Government or the Company could, at the time of entering into the existing arrangements, have anticipated the necessity of laying out large suras of money in purchasing the waste lands of the Middle Island, and incurring considerable expenses in negotiating purchases from the natives. Believing also as I do, that the title of the Crown to the waste lands could have been asserted and maintained without difficulty in the Middle Island, in conformity with the design developed in the despatch and instructions already referred to, and considering that in such case the necessity of making the present payments would have been spared to the Co.upany, I cannot but feel that the course which the Local Government has pursued (no doubt for reasons perfectly satisfactory to itself) operates hardly upon' the New Zealand Company ; while, had the waste lands been acquired simply by an assertion of the Crown, and such registration as prescribed by the Royal In-

structions, the Company would not have been called upon to pay the expense of the machinery necessary for effecting such registration. The Government having in its discretion adopted another method of acquiring the waste lands and defining the limits of the Crown demesne, it seems to me scarcely just to impose upon the Company the cost of the proceeding . I have, &c, (Signed) W. Fox, Acting Principal Agent of the N. Z. Co. His Excellency, Lieutenant- Governor Eyre, &c, &c, &c. A true copy — J. D. Okmond.

No. 20. [Financial.] j Government House, I Wellington, 10th March, 1849. Siu, I have the honor to transmit, for your Excellency's information, copies of a correspondence which has taken place between the Local Government and the Principal Agent i of the New Zealand Company, on the subject of the instalments falling- due on the Ist j April next, for the Porirua and Wairau puri chases. | 2. Your Excellency having, in December last, supplied me with copies of some despatches from Earl Grey, on the subject of | land purchases to be made by the Crown for the New Zealand Company, and covering copies of a correspondence which had taken place between the Colonial office and the I Directors of that body in England, I gather from the general tenor of these documents, that Earl Grey intended that in all cases (with tbe single exception of the district required as a site for the Canterbury settlement) wheie funds we - e required to meet land purchases made for the New Zealand Company, those funds should be provided by that body. No other exception appears to have been made to this rule, although the liabilities which had been incurred with regard to the Wairau and Porirua were well known in England at the time. 3. Independently, however, of the reasons above mentioned, for this Government declining to meet the instalments due upon the Wairau and Porirua purchases on the Ist April next, it is, in the present state of the local finances, absolutely impossible to make such provision ; and as I have not received any instructions from your Excellency on the subject, nor have any arrangements been made to enable me to meet so heavy a demand, I can only assume that your Excellency contemplates the purchases in question as coming under the general instructions of Earl Grey, and more especially as for both the districts the New Zealand Company have accepted Grown Grants, and have therefore virtually adopted the arrangements entered into with the natives by the Crown. I have, &c, E. Eyre. His Excellency the Governor-in-Chief, &c, &c, &c.

[Enclosure to despatch No. 20.] Wellington, 6th March, 1849. Sib, — I have the honor to inform you, that on the Ist of April next ensuing, the following payments will become due to the natives on account of arrangements entered into with them by his Excellency the Governor-in-Chief for the acquisition of lands for the New Zealand Company, viz. : — Upon the Porirua purchase, the third and lsst instalment of £500. Upon the Wairau purchase, the third instalment of £600. In the payment of the two first instalments on account of these purchases, the money was advanced by the Local Government, but since the latter of these was made I have received from his Excellency the Go-vernor-in-Chief general instructions that all money required for effecting purchases of land for the New Zealand Company is to be provided for by that body ; and no special exception has been made with regard to Porirua and Wairau, neither has any provision whatever been made which would enable me in any way to meet these payments, due on the Ist April next. I have the honor, &c, (Signed) E. Etrb. W. Fox, Esq., Principal Agent to the N. Z. Company. (To be continued.)