New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, February 11, 1852.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 681, 11 February 1852, Page 3

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, February 11, 1852.

In a previous number we endeavoured to direct the attention of the settlers to the injurious operation of the Act of Parliament recently passed to regulate the affairs of the Cook’s Strait settlements, which, far from settling anything, has added to our difficulties ; and the immediate effect of which has been to compel the Local Government to suspend all proceedings under the Company’s Land Claimants Ordinance for the issue of grant deeds to the Company’s purchasers, and of all depasturing and other licenses under the recent Pastoral Regulations. The first reflection naturally suggested by the circumstances is the inexpediency and futility of attempting to legislate at so great a distance on the local affairs of the colony, which it is obvious those on the spot, from their superior

information and experience, are better able to regulate and provide for than legislators in England, who must of necessity be but imperfectly acquainted with them. Of this we have had several notable proofs. Lord Grey’s Constitution was an acknowledged failure, and as such was repealed- The unwise and extravagant arrangement made by Lord Grey with the New Zealand Company, which prolonged their useless existence for a further period of three years, and gave them £336,000 of the public money, besides saddling the colony with a debt of £268,000, and the annual payment of between £9OOO and £lO,OOO in the shape of interest, was a still more notorious blunder, and has been the fruitful parent of many others. And yet, in the face of these facts, in spite of past experience which is said to make even fools wise, instead of leaving these purely local affairs—with all the complicated embarrassments which from a variety of circumstances have grown up during the period of twelve years that they have remained unsettled—to be dealt with by the local legislature, who with a full knowledge of all the circumstances would be able to provide a full and complete remedy, another Act of Parliament has been passed, another piece of legislative folly has been committed, which must be repealed to prevent the unnumbered mischiefs its operation vould inevitably occasion ; which, until it is repealed, paralyses the energies of the settlers at a most critical period of the colony; and the injury arising from which, however soon it may be repealed, must be calculated not by hundreds but by thousands of pounds. That we may give some idea of the needless difficulties that have been created, let us compare the effect of the Ordinance with the. Act of Parliament which supersedes it, let us contrast a Crown grant issued under the Land Claimants Ordinance with a conveyance such as is proposed to be issued under the Act of Parliament.

The Land Claimants Ordinance was passed by the Legislative Council after the fullest discussion, and the most mature and anxious consideration, and after carefully weighing all the evidence offered to the Committee on its various provisions, and has been generally accepted as a liberal and satisfactory remedy for the difficulties connected with the laud question. Under it Commissioners were appointed to hear and decide upon the claims to land of persons claiming title from, through, or under the New Zealand Company, and in hearing and deciding on these claims the Commissioners were to be guided by the real justice and good conscience of the case, and were to be directed by the best evidence to be procured, or to be laid before them. The expensive and tedious technicalities cf law were avoided or dispensed with, and every land purchaser, whether original or derivative, on proving to the satisfaction of the Commissioner that his claim was bond fide, was entitled to receive a deed of grant which was to be deemed both at law and in equity a full and complete performance by the Crown of the contract of the Company, and was to be deemed a good, valid, and effectual conveyance of the land to the purchaser as against her Majesty, her heirs and successors, and against all other persons whatsoever. Some such deed of grant had all along been contemplated, and under this expectation probably various arrangements have been 'made during this long period some of which perhaps, legally speaking, have been loose and irregular, and which required a deed so full and complete as this as a remedy. The grant in short offered to the bond fide purchaser is the most complete title that could he devised. What does the Act of Parliament offer him in its stead ? A conveyance which “ shall have the same force and effect in all respects as a conveyance by the New Zealand Company would have had.” It is hardly necessary to point out to the most superficial reader the difference between a deed which shall be valid and effectual against all persons whatsoever, and one so qualified in

its terms as unly to have “ the same form and effect as a conveyance from the Company.” It is sufficient, to shew the estimation in which they are respectively held by the settlers, to state the fact that the conveyances offered to their purchasers in Wellington and Nelson by the Company were so clogged with conditions and restrictions that they were not applied for in this settlement, and were altogether repudiate I in Nelson, the land purchasers iu which latter settlement have shewn a provident care in applying for and obtaining, in a majority of instances, a crown grant for their lands under the local ordinance at the earliest practicable opportunity, while at Wellington a great number of claims had been decided bv the Commissioner, and Crown Grants were on the | point of being issued to the claimants when ail further proceedings were put an end to by this Act of Parliament.

It is important also to remember, to a right appreciation of the difference between an unconditional Crown Grant and a conveyance from the Company and of the difficulties created by the recent act, that in everv conveyance, to give a valid and unquestion ■ able title, there must be a consideration expressed, and that the seller must himself have a legal title before he can convey a title to the purchaser. In the land orders issued by the Company to their purchasers the acknowledgement of any consideration is carefully avoided. The land order simply states that, “ in pursuance of stipulations of the New Zealand Land Company, A.B. hath—one section of land,” the words hath -c—” i„_ j / i// p* luicu m iuc xauu ut - der having been carefully erased. The transfers subsequently made to derivative purchasers stand in the Company’s books simply as Notices of Transfer, while it is notorious that when the land orders were issued to the original purchasers the Company had not a legal title to a single acre in New Zealand. In effect under the land Claims Ordinance the Crown does every thing for the claimant in perfecting his title, under a conveyance rrom tne Company the claimant is left to do everything himself. And if these difficul ties attend an original purchaser, the situation of the derivative purchasers,—the men who have bought their small town allotments, and their ten or twenty country acres and who form the large majority,—is infinitely worse, they have to make good their titles through all the different transfers that have taken place up to the Company, by the expensive forms of law instead of by the simple inexpensive process provided by the Land Claims Ordinance, and in many cases would be put to an enormous, an incalcuable expencc. To the holders of compensation scrip, a numerous class, it is very doubtful whether the Government can issue any title since, though their moral and equitable claim is admitted on all hands, she Company by the Act in 1847 was' reciprocally bound with the Government not to alienate any land in New Zealand for less than twenty shillings an acre, and the exceptional case of the compensation scrip holders has not been provided for by any Act of Parliament.

Such are some of the evils occasioned by the late Act of Parliament, we do not now allude to the further mischiefs caused by the substitution of the Company’s absurd and illiberal terms of pasturage for the favourable pastoral regulations issued by Sir George Grey, it is enough to observe that if theformer are to be maintained, it must be at the sacrifice of this important and growing interest, for no one would be so imprudent as to invest his capital in pastoral pursuits under such discouraging and unfavourable circumstances. But we refrain from entering upon this subject, we desire to place before the landowners, concisely but plainly, some of the difficulties of their present position, and to remind them that the remedy is in their own hands. If they wish to be relieved from these evils, let them for once lay aside all party differences, and let all classes unite in a temperate memorial to the Government praying for a repeal of this most obnoxious measure, and for the revival of the Land

Claimants Ordinance, or the enactment by the local Legislature of some equivalent measure which shall give them a valid and effectual title against all persons whatsoever.