NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. Saturday, October 9, 1852.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 750, 9 October 1852, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. Saturday, October 9, 1852.

We observe that the provision in Sir John Pakington's New Zealand Bill which secures to the New Zealand Company the payment of five shillings an acre on the sales of all waste lands of the Crown in the colony "until their debt is discharged," is calling forth in various quarters sundry indignant animadversions on its injustice and oppression. The New Zealander declares against it, the Taranaki Herald and Lyttelloji Times join in denouncing it. For the last mentioned journals, which have as it were only recently started into existence, no other • convenient opportunity has presented itself for recording their protest against this piece of flagrant injustice, hut we have always felt some surprise in observing how tamely, until very recently, the Auckland journals and the i settlers at the North have submitted to this imposition ; never indulging in their right — " the right of fre.e born Englishmen" — of grumbling, until it was too late. From the first, when Lord Grey with lavish prodigality, gave to the New Zealand Company a quarter of a million of the hard money of the British nation to renew its reckless existence for three years, and secured to it another quarter of a million in prospective at the expense of the unfortunate colonists, in the event (which every one saw to be not merely a probable contingency but an absolute certainty) of its dissolution, charging the payment of this sum on the whole colony, from the first, we say, we have always strongly protested against the unfairness and injustice of the arrangement, and its extreme hardship on the colonists. And what are we now to understand by "the debt of the Company ?-" No explanation is furnished, no balance sheet or state- , xnent of accounts is vouchsafed. An arbitrary amount fixed some five years ago when Lord Grey put the Company on their legs is assumed, and we are told to pay it and ask no questions. Only consider for a moment vrhat has happened since that period. Compensation to a liberal amount has been given to the resident land purchasers of the Company, compensation .has also been awarded to the absentees, Scott's claim and all the legal expenses connected therewith have been paid by the Government on behalf of the Insolvent Company ; add to these all the unnecessary .and lavish expenses incurred by the Company, the jobbing of its Agent," Mr. Fox, and the expenses consequent on his withholding the plans and other documents belonging to the Company,, which he ought to have surrendered to the Government when he quitted "his adopted country:" — all these serious and heavy items unless they be first deducted from the Company's claim will really have to be defrayed out of the

land fund— that is, will be paid by the colonists themselves. Now this would be little short of downright "robbery, and against such injustice the colonists should never cease protesting until an equitable adjustment of the account is made. The Nelson Trust funds furnish a most in* structive illustration of how difficult a matter it is to arrive at such a consummation as an equitable adjustment with the Company. But first before any payment is made or even asked for, let us have" a fair statement of accounts, the colonists will then be in a better position to ascertain how much is really owing to the New Zealand Company.

*We have received by the Overland Mail Auckland panels to Sept. 4, but we do not observe in them any news of interest ; a few items referring to English shipping laid on for New Zealand will be found in our shipping intelligence.