New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, January 22, 1851.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 571, 22 January 1851, Page 2

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, January 22, 1851.

'When, a short time since, we mentioned Mr. Fox’s proposal to the Governor-in-Chief to be allowed to proceed with the conveyances from the Company to their land-purchasers, which, he suggested, were afterwards to be rendered legal by an Ordinance to be passed by a Nominee Council, it might possibly have been surmised bv some of our readers that this sudden anxiety on his part for the interests of those who had been so long neglected by the Company was prompted by some other feeling than a desire that the engagements of the Company should be completed, a suspicion might be generated that there was lurking in the mind of the Company’s Agent some arrilre penste which led him to consider it convenient io withdraw from the scrutiny of the Government many of those arrangements which, under the name of compensation, had been sanctioned by him. Whether such surmises were correctly founded, whether an investigation of some of these arrangements might not prove conducive to the best interests of the colony, and to the prevention of land-jobbing, our readers will

best be able to determine after considering some of the facts which we propose briefly to lay before them. Soon after Captain Fitzroy’s recall, when from the altered relations between the Government and the Company, it appeared probable that the claims of the latter to compensation would be favourably entertained, the land-purchasers in the different settlements considered, not without reason, that, if the Company was entitled to compensation from the Government, they were in a still higher degree entitled to compensation from the Company for the losses and injuries they had sustained. This claim, strenuously urged by the land purchasers in the different settlements, was at length admitted by the Company, and attempts were made in each settlement to adjust these questions according to the peculiar circumstances of the case. The principles admitted by the Company were, that each purchaser was entitled to the actual possession of his land with a legal title to it, and where this was not practicable, to a just equivalent in land elsewhere. At Wellington each resident holder of landorders (except in a few special cases which were assessed separately) was allowed to throw up such sections as he had previously chosen, and with which he had reason to be dissatisfied, and to exchange them, under certain conditions, fortown acres belonging to the private estate of the Company, or to re-select an equal quantity of land in other districts specified, so that each purchaser might have the opportunity of obtaining a hundred acres of available land or its equivalent for his landorder; and a compensation in most instances was granted of one hundred and fifty acres additional in respect of each landorder, and land scrip for that amount of land was accordingly issued bv the Company’s Agent to the resident landowners, the compensation lands being selected in the Wanganui and Rangitikei districts. At Nelson the peculiar circumstances of the settlement prescribed a somewhat different course. The original Nelson scheme embraced eleven hundred landor ders (including the tenth appropriated as Native Reserves) each landorder entitling the holder to one town acre, fifty acres of suburban land, and one hundred and fifty acres of rural land, so that eleven hundred acres of town land, and 220,000 acres of available rural land, fiftyfive thousand acres of which, as the name suburban implied, should be contiguous to the town, were required for carrying out the scheme. While the original price of land in Wellington was fixed at one pound per acre, at Nelson the original price of the land was fixed at thirty shillings per acre, and a certain proportion of the purchase money was to be set apart as Trust Funds, for founding a College and Educational purposes, for local steam communication, and for religious and other specified objects. It was soon found, however, that '* the physical characteristics of Blind Bay” to use Mr. Fox’s words, “were such as to render it impossible to carry into execution what was contemplated by the Prospectus of the Nelson Settlement,” that it was impossible to obtain the required extent of available land within the limits of the settlement to satisfy the claims of purchasers, a good deal even of the land laid out as suburban sections being at a distance of upwards of thirty miles from Nelson; and therefore some remodification of the scheme was absolutely necessary as an act of justice to the land purchasers, especially those who had had staked their lives and fortunes in the settlement, and with a view to the present and future prosperity of Nelson. To this end, after a good deal of protracted discussion, a series of resolutions was drawn up by the committee, and agreed to by the resident land-purchasers and Company’s Agent, and these resolutions, it was understood, were to form the basis of the adjustment of the differences between the Company and their land-purchasers at Nelson. These resolutions provide,among otherthings that (2)* any purchaser declining to avail himself of the proposed adjustment, or who

having availed himself of such adjustment, should still be dissatisfied, should be empowered to refer his claim to arbitration in the settlement or in England, without reference to such reselection, in order that it , might be determined by arbitration, to j what amount of additional compensation, if j any, he may be entitled ; that (6) a reselec- j tion of town and suburban land should take | place according to the original order of j choice, suppressing the unsold sections, which amounted to more than a moiety of the whole number ; that (7) a town should be laid out at Waitohi as a shipping port to the Wairqu district of 1,000 sections of quarter acres, and that the land-purchasers should be entitled to a quarter of an acre for each land-order, as compensation ; that (9) such resident original pur- 1 chasers, being cultivators, who had by the outlay made on the sections in their occupation debarred themselves of the advantages of the proposed distribution should , be allowed to take their rural sections in contiguity to their suburban land ; that (13) the Company should be at liberty to grant increased quantities of inferior land in exchange for rural land orders; and some other resolutions of minor importance. Acting on these resolutions, seventeen different land holders threw up their sections of rural land, comprising 2,550 acres, and received in exchange under what is called the Consolidation Award, agreeably to the 9th resolution, 3,045 acres of suburban land, a considerable portion of which was worth from £3 to £4 an acre, and all of it of greatlv superior value to the sections in the rural districts, besides being entitled to a quarter of an acre in the projected town of Waitohi, and retaining also their Nelson town acres. These claims, so adjusted, might have been fairlv considered settled, but in 1849 some of those landowners who had not availed themselves of the arrangement above mentioned, referred their claims to compensation to arbitration in the settlement, agreeably to the 2nd resolution, and ultimatelv those, whose claims had previously been disposed of under the consolidation scheme, preferred fresh claims to compensation, and the result has been that it was decided that the holders of 71 landorders (including all the resident . landowners) comprising 14,200 acres of land, were entitled to compensation to the amount of £12,735 in land scrip. We feel that the above sketch is necessarily very brief and imperfect, but the two points to which wp. are desirous of directing attention are, first—that those who had previously been compensated bv the exchange of their rural for suburban land, the latter being in all cases of greatly superior value, were allowed further compensation in land scrip; secondly that the compensation is not. as in Wellington, stated to be in so many acres, but in so many pounds worth of scrip. Thus A. throws up his rural land (150 acres) at Nelson and obtains instead 300 acres of suburban land with a section in the projected town at Waitohi, retaining also his Nelson town acre, and is declared entitled in addition to £l5O worth of land scrip. And while according to the original Nelson scheme the price of the land was fixed at thirty shillings an acre, in many instances the land has been parted with by the Company’s Agents, in exchange for Compensation Scrip, at the rate of five shillings an acre, being one-sixth the original price of land at Nelson, and one-fourth the lowest price for which, by Act of Parliament, land may be sold in New Zealand, so that the £12,735 worth of land scrip which, according to the original price of Nelson land, would represent 8490 acres, at the reduced price of ss. per acre would represent 50,940 acres. Itis true that, in some instances, suburban land in the vicinity of Nelson has been taken at £3 and £4 per acre in excnange for land scrip, but the above statement shows the working of the system if uniformly acted upon. But the most glaring case of compensation at Nelson, a case which has attracted the most general observation, is that of Mr. Duppa, who is understood to be in partnership with Mr. Fox

in his sheep and cattle stations ; it is moreover remarkable as having been decided du. ring Mr. Fox’s late visit to Nelson. Mr. Duppa was originally a land owner at Wei. lington, but afterwards settled at Nelson. This gentleman threw up, as we understand, eight sections of country land in the Weilington district, retaining the town acres, and,receiving one hundred acres of suburban land at the Waimea worth about £3 per acre, preferred a special claim to the Company for compensation for the remainder of his land. According to the arrangement made with the Wellington land-owners (suppos. ing the land at the Waimea equal to the average of two country sections in this settle, ment, for which £2OO had been paid) Mr. Duppa would have been entitled to reselect six hundred acres of available country land, or their equivalent in value in town acres belonging to the private estate of the Company (the country section being taken at one hundred pounds, the town land at its current market value) according to his order of choice, and to have received in addition, as compensation, nine hundred acres of land, and if, for his own convenience, he was allowed to take his land in another settlement, then the principle established at Wellington should have decided the case, and Mr. Duppa would have received fifteen hundred acres (including compensation), or according to the price of land at Nelson, 1,000 acres, for the six sections thrown up. The Company’s Agent seems, however, to have thought otherwise, and although the case was referred to arbitration, it is reported that the arbitrators were not allowed to go into the merits of the case, but were simnlv called upon to decide whether the sum of £2,500 claimed by Mr. Duppa, or of £2,000 which the Comoanv’s Acent was willing to allow should be awarded. The decision of the arbitrators is stated to have been in favor of the lesser amount, and £2OOO of land scrip was granted bv the Company’s Agent to Mr. Duppa in satisfaction of his claim and it is said was, with the consent of that Officer, forthwith exchanged bv him for one compact block of eight thousand acres of land at Wairau, including, as we are informed, twenty one surveyed sections which had been offered for selection at thirty-shillings

an acre, and irom its position commanding a back run of equal extent. This is the current version which we have received of this compensation affair. WZn Ipovo tlw C’nmr\'inT’ , L.’ A rvnnf vuv, t /uu ; m vv — plain by what alchemy six hundred acres of unavailable land (or we presume they would not have been abandoned) have been transmuted into £2,000 worth of land scrip, still more how this amount of worthless land in the Principal district has been transformed into one of the largest and most valuable sheep stations in .the Wairau, and in contiguity with surveyed rural land, for we confess it is fairly beyond our powers of comprehension ; the process may be worked out according to Fox, but not according to Cocker. Of course it is not to be supposed that Mr. Fox, as Company's Agent, was biassed by any feeling in favour of his partner, when he allowed a claim for £6OO to swell to £2OOO, but nevertheless there is the fact, and any one who chooses to ascend a moderate eminence which commands an extended view of the Wairau plain, may enjoy the prospect on the one hand of a valuable run in one compact block of 8000 acres of land, commanding a back run of equal extent, for which only six hundred pounds was paid in the first instance, and on the other, of sections to the amount of 8000 acres belonging to absentees, for which twelve thousand pounds were originally paid, but which, being divided by their selection according to order of choice, are comparatively of little value, and which, being hemmed in on every side by stock stations, are virtually confiscated, since no man. would be mad enough to attempt to cultivate them under such circumstances, and it would be useless to try and let them for pasturage, as 15® acres, though a large extent for cultivation! forms a perfectly insignificant fraction of 3 run, which generally contains an area. 0

some thousand acres. It remains to be seen whether, in Sir George Grey’s opinion, such an arrangement can be fairly classed among the “ bond fide dealings which may have taken place with the Company’s lands under the management of the Company’s Agents, but which arc at variance with the Instructions of 184 G respecting the Crown lands,” which, by the dissolution of the Company, are now in force in this province, or whether it is to be considered as one of those Jobs which in the opinion of the Company’s Agent it is expedient to get quietly settled and afterwise legalized by a Nominee Ordinance; whether in short this is not the |act of an unjust Steward who, in his desire to make to himself friends of the mamwon of unrighteousness, has been guilty of and spoiling his master’s goods. i Our object in making these remarks is to ‘direct attention to the extravagant manner in which, if we are correctly informed, compensation appears, in some instances, to have been granted to the prejudice of the colonj, and in Mr. Duppa’s case to what we believe to be an unjustifiable extent; and we think we are entitled to ask, if Mr. Duppa’s claim is to be made a precedent, what is to prevent |the claims of other original land purchasers from swelling in a similar ratio.

* The numbers refer to the resolutions of the Committee.