NELSON.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 513, 3 July 1850, Page 3

NELSON.

It is much to be regretted that in the settlement of the claims of the land-purchasers upon the New Zealand Company which ha: lately been effected, some systematic and intelligible plan was not laid down and adhered to, which should have embraced every case, varying, as some of them might have done, in nature and extent. It is true that the Resolutions of July, 1847, was intended to have been such a scheme, but notwithstanding the cry raised against the infringement of these Resolutions in the smallest particular, they were in many important particulars virtually set aside. The result of this has been, that instead o( the systematic settlement contemplated, it has proved the most higgledy-pig-gledy affair conceivable, to the total disregard of the principles for the disposal of waste land laid down by Wakefield theories, Acts of Parliament, and Regulations of the New Zealand Company. But the irregularity, and in a strict sense the injustice, of the Company satisfying the clamours of the land-purchasers at the expense of the settlement, was bad enough when the claimants, being original purchasers of land in the settlement, bad contributed their quotas to the Trust Funds, which the Nelson scheme required, but what shall be said of those instances where the Company has given land in Nelson to individuals who never contributed a farthing to those Funds, but who have obtained land here in virtue of purchases made in the other island ? So long as these transactions; were confined to two or three individuals who had been driven here from Wanganui, no notice was taken, for it would have been an ungenerous act to have thrown any impediments in the way of those sufferers, after the losses which they had encountered. A few exchanges of land in the Wellington district for Nelson land, has been effected also by other parties, but the amount being small in each case, no regard has been paid to the circumstance.

A case, However, lias just arisen, of the same nature, which, by its magnitude, calls for some remark ; the Agents of the Company having suffered Mr. Duppa, who was a Wellington and not a Nelion land- purchaser, to exchange the whole of a large property in Wellington for land in Nelson. As the exact nature of this arrangement does not appear to be generally understood, and as much misapprehension exists upon it. it will be as well to make known the true circumstances : — Mr. Duppa was an original purchaser in Wellington of eight allotments of land, costing £800, and, like many others, was long kept out of possession of the land for which he had paid. In consequence of having become a Nelson resident at a very early stage of this settlement, and having engaged largely in agriculture and stockfarming, Mr. Duppa did not fall into the arrangement recently made between his brother land-purchasers in Wellington and the Company ; as, however satisfactory that arrangement might have been to those whose interest remained in Wellington, to him, who had become a Nelson settler, it offered little inducement, and his object was to get land, where it would be of real advantage to him. Now, we do not complain of the Company that it acceded to Mr. Duppa's wishes, provided that it is willing to insure the Funds, of the settlement against any loss by the transaction. The award made to Mr. Duppa in lieu of all his Wellington land, and as compensation for its non-delivery, and some other and special losses, has been £2000 of scrip, and four sections of suburban land at Ailington, which, valued at £3 an acre, will give together the sum of £2600. According to

the Nelion scheme, five-sixths of the cost < all the land goes to the Trust Funds, so tbs in this transaction the Company is clear! liable to the settlement in the sum < £2166 13s. sd. If the Company admit this claim, then vte shall consider the trans action as quite legitimate, but otherwise i will be one which cannot be suffered to pas without exciting the strongest disapprobatory — Nelson Examiner, June 8. We are glad to be able to announce th safe return of Captain Impey, E.1.C.E., fror an exploring trip to the southward, under t»ken for discovering a route from the Waira to the Port Cooper plains. Though Captaii Impey has failed in the chief object of hi journey from the advanced season of the yeai which rendered such an expedition highl dangerous, he has succeeded in making know: to us the existence of a very extensive plai of the very finest grass land, greatly exceed ing the Wairau in extent, and yet accessibl for stock from the latter district, and capabh of having a bullock-road made to it for a ver inconsiderable sura of money. As we hop to receive from Captain Impey full particu lars of his journey, we refrain at present fron saying more on the subject. Another party consisting of Captain Mitchell (also an Indiai officer), Mr. Dashwood, and one man startet from the Wairau previously to Captain Impey with a similar object, and as they have no returned, nor was any trace of them seen b] the latter party, it is to be hoped they havi arrived safely at Port Cooper. — Jb. June 15.