THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 645, 8 October 1851, Page 4

THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.

[From the Times, May 23, 1851.] The relations of Government to the New Zealand Company are especially worthy of attention at the present moment, not only on account of their own intrinsic importance, but of the warning they afford of the folly and impolicy of mixing up the duties of the Executive with the concerns of any trading company whatever. In spite of reason and experience, Ministers have determined to create, under the patronage and surveillance of the Executive, a vast company, to whose hands is to be intrusted the monoply of the water supply for the city of London. With the directors of such a company the Government must necessarily be either at peace or war. If a good understanding prevail between them, it will be because the interests of the public have been sacrificed by Government to their demands. If Government resists those demands, the company will naturally throw itself into the arms of the Opposition and that Opposition, as soon as it obtains power, will be pledged to concede to it its most unreasonable demands. Thus, sooner or later, the triumph of the company over the public, and the sacrifice of the interests of the many to the few, are secured. Every body knows that the New Zealand Company commenced colonizing operations about twelve years ago, not only without the consent, but against the will of the Home Government. They took possession of large tracts of land purchased from the Natives, and were soon involved in all the complexities, as to the rights of the vendorsand of the Crown, which such a title necessarily involves. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that war should break out between them and the then Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Stanley, and that the Parliamentary interest of the company should be brought to bear upon the re factory head of the Colonial Office. Upon the merits of this quarrel we do not propose to offer any opinion ; we have only to remark that the company being opposed to Lord Stanley, Lord Grey, then in opposition, found in it a useful ally, and warmly espoused its cause. When Lord Grey succeeded to office, he was bound, of course, to distribute a fair portion of the spoils to his allies, and he lost no time in making a most candid admission of the faults of his predecessor, and of the right of the company to be indemnified for the injuries which they had received at his hands ; the result was a loan to the company out of the consolidated fund of no less a sum than two hundred and thirty six thousand pounds of the money of the tax payers of this country, and an agreement as to further advantages contained in an Act (10 and 11 Victoria, cap. 112) entitled, with a modesty which by no means does justice to its contents, “An Act to promote Colonization in New Zealand, and to authorize a loan to the New Zealand Company.” By the 7th section of this act Lord Grey was empowered to nominate a commissioner, at a salary of £l5OO a-year, who was to be present at all meetings of the board, and to have a veto on all their proceedings. The 19th section of this act declares that if the company shall, within turee months after the sth of April, 1850, give notice to the Secretary of State for the Colonies that they are ready to surrender their charters, the lands held by the company shall revert to the Crown, the Crown undertaking to satisfy the liabilities of the company, with the consent of the Commissioner, releasing to the company the sum of two hundred and thirty six thousand pounds of our mcney, which they had borrowed, and giving to the company a mortgage with interest at three and a half per cent°., over the whole of the Islands of New Zealand for two hundred and sixty-eieffit thousand pounds more, making the grand total of money to be received by the New Zealand Company from the public purse five hundred and four thousand pounds—a sum enormously exceeding the value of the fee simple of the country which they were to colonize. The company had considerable trouble with their land Nelson between the period of the passing of this Act and their final dissolution in 1850. The Commissioner was speedily got rid of, and his place supplied, at a much lower salary, by a gentleman from ike Colonial office. The Government being bound, in case of the dissolution of the company, to satisfy tne outstanding claims of the settlers w ich were understood to amount to a very large sum, was, of course, no longer an impartial arbitrator between the company and its claimants, and found it expedient to take the office of Commissioner into’its own hands, low these claims are settled, whether they are settled at all, and if’ so, out of what fund and by what means, nobody knows. All we know is, that if they be not settled by the company, the British Exchequer is liable to

pay them without any them back from the ° f re %| the two hundred and thirVai “Si pounds which we have a i. ‘ , y ' s ‘ x tU I hard cash, and the two eight thousand pounds fo? give them a mortgage over of New Zealand mean time at the rate of cent. At length th 8 e ® ikul arrived, and The inevhable°rt B S, Ai, ! i 1.13 have been foreseen at the nJ! 1 in 1847, arrived with it. Th v Of M Company had a choice between most unprofitable colonizing ject t. . deb. of .wo thousand pounds due to th o n.? wl moo., ood.o s.dofytbo settlers, or it might by a rinm’. intention to surrender it B e h» . D ° ,lce, lj the debt of two hundred and thiri M sand pounds, transfer the liabilit;,’ son settlers from its n®„ • ,0 UtkJ of Sir Charles Wood" 3"*'. "*1 change for these eno.®.,, mortgage on New Zealand, w “”**l part embraced in its charter, but the northern and southern isl a J? hundred and sixty-eight tho Dj J more. The result was not not for a moment. The compaMi- '/M itself, bearing with it into thin of a million of our money, and tk of New Zealand for a generation leaving us nothing to console us fct ii! but the privilege of paying its debt, l( T Nelson settlers. Such are the result, alliance between the Government J trading company possessing a Wrong liamentary interest. We undertook J J rantee the New Zealand Company’? ing operations, jast as we are about to Z take to secure to the proprietors of the J monopoly a dividend of five p er cenj d first engagement has cost the country bill million, and the metropolitan cousumero/n! ter is not likely to escape so cheaply, I t cannot dismiss the case of the New Zedal

Company without expressing surprise uik extraordinary apathy with which the gui ans of the public purse have sanctioned is witnessed this comfortable transfer of ter of a million of money from the pocknl the nation to that of a trading Cow which it has thus bribed into suicide, j there no member of her Majesty’s Opposa who thinks it worth his while to inquirti the circumstances which attended, aofi transactions which have succeeded thisen ordinary compact, in which the ad vaotagess to have been wholly on one side? ffetla gladly know in what manner the cist of the Nelson settlers have been satisSi and to what amount we may sti Ibe B ble on that account. We should lilti know what were the circumstances iB led to the dismissal of the Parliamei® Commissioner, and what offence those p of the island of New Zealand have coma® which, without having been the scene operations of the company, have had fe land fund confiscated by Act of Parli® for its benefit. The company may haws ceeded in extricating itself from ruin, but has bequeathed a disastrous legacy to tbei lands of New Zealand, the proceeds of waste lands for many years to come are WR applied to their use, instead of being enjW ed m local improvement, or in payingibepi sage of emigrant?. The injury thus d** l the colony is incalculable, and ought, if UF be possible, to be averted. There is thing so suspicious in all these process they have so much more the appeal dictation by the company of its o»o to the Government than of a fair contract, that we cannot help believing if the correspondence of the Com® l5 ’' with the Government, and of the and Government after his dismissal, fore the public, they would think it that the company should pay it® A the settlers and the public, than we have taken upon ourselves mitted the other, we should be calle Pg mortgage the domain of the Crow®- • ( to persons thus benefited at our foi additional quarter of a million fro® of a distant and helpless colony. for the colonization of New Zes an , , loan to the I\ew Zealand Comp Bo ?’ $ have been entitled “An Act to Zealand ftom being colonized, to the New Zealand Comply-