New Zealand Spectator AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, January 21, 1852.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 675, 21 January 1852, Page 3

New Zealand Spectator AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, January 21, 1852.

If the Act of Parliament passed last session to regulate the affairs of the Company’s settlements in New Zealand be carefully perused in connection with Lord Grey’s despatch, and the Terms of Purchase and Pasturage issued by the New Zealand Company in August 1849, (published in a supplement to our present number,) and which are revived by the operation of this Act. there can be no doubt we must concur with his Lordship in thinking that it by no means determines in a satisfactory manner those questions relating to land which have remained so long unsettled to the serious detriment of this Province, and which were on the eve of a final and satisfactory adjustment under the New Zealand Company’s Land Claimants Ordinance passed in the last session of the Legislative Council of this Colony. On the contrary its effect will be found to be of the most mischievous character, in undoing all that has been done by the Local Government, during the last twelve months, towards a final settlement of the land question, and in completely putting a stop to the formation of stations for stock in the country. There can be little doubt that the bill was designed in the first instance to help the Company at the expense of the settlers by transferring their claim for £268,000 with interest, to the Geneial Revenue of the Colony. From the extensive grants of land issued by Captain Fitzroy in the Northern Province, and from the amount of land given in compensation by the Company to its purchasers in the Southern Province the Directors saw there was no reasonable prospect of realizing either principal or interest from the land fund for some years to come. But if tfyey believed the prospect of effecting any sales of land by Government to be so remote at the upset price of £1 per acre, while private individuals were selling at 55., what chance can possibly exist of a revival of the land fund at a minimum price of £2 per acre ? It is notorious that when these regulations were first circulated in the Cook’s Strait settlements, the terms were considered so preposterous that they excited but little attention. and they virtually became a dead letter, insomuch that while the Company kept up an expensive establishment in Wellington, with Mr. Fox as Principal Agent at £lOOO per annum, its sales of land in this settlement during the last three years amounted only to 2j acres! But if the previous operation of these regulations of the Company was injurious to this Province, their revival now, when so much land has been given away in compensation will be infinitely more so. The effect will be to establish a monopoly in favour of those large holders of land who have received compensation, and to raise the price on the working classes and future settlers. While the compensation land has been valued at ss. an acre, the minimum price of land has been doubled by this Act, it has been raised from £1 to £2 per acre; instead of one uniform system in the disposal of land, a different system will obtain in every settlement, while the consequences to the owner of stock are still more serious, for under these regulations it wouldbe impossible for him to invest money on so precarious a tenure as that offered him, since the licenses for runs are to be granted not for fourteen years but only for one year and may be determined at any time on six months notice being given, while no compensation or allowance whatever is to be made for improvements. These considerations alone ought to be sufficient to induce every settler who desires the prosperity of the Colony to unite in so unanimous an expression of

opinion as to leave no doubt of their desire that these regulations of the Company should not be carried into execution, and that the “Crown lands of the colony should be included in one common administration;” and by such an expression of their sentiments to enable the Governor to relieve them from the evil effect of these obnoxious regulations.