THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY. [From the Times, June 24.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 769, 15 December 1852, Page 4

THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY. [From the Times, June 24.]

When the coming elections are over, when Parliament shall no longer occupy itself in squeezing into one day the business of two, and making up by midnight sittings for mornings wasted in filling our columns with harangues designed for the perusal of lukewarm electors, we trust that the feeling of justice which now so unaccountably slumbers will once more be roused into activity. We have erected a splendid palace for our Legislature — a temple to the genius of our free institutions — a national homage to the noble thoughts that were to animate the minds, and the noble words which ware to flow from the lips of our honourable and right honourable senators. We trust that this splendid fane is not always destined to see the cause of the weak and the unrepresented trampled under foot, but we have no difficulty in prognosticating that unless Parliament can be aroused to a juster sense and a more diligent exercise of its duties the new palace of Westminster must at last become the mausoleum instead of the shrine of representative Government. In the House of Lords on Tuesday night but one voice — that, of the Duke of Newcastle— rwas lifted to shield the colonists of New Zealand from the grievous wrong sought to be inflicted upon them by the anticipation of their land revenues, and on bebalf of the people of this country, nearly a quarter of a million of whose money has already been lavished on the New Zealand Company, and who are at present liable for a large contingent amount in satisfaction of the unknown liabilities which Parliament has fastened upon them. The interest of the debate, however, centered in the speech of Lord Grey. The Duke of Newcastle was necessarily confined to the same topics as those already urged by Sir William Moleswoith and Mr. Gladstone ; but Lord Grey had a task to perform which it might be supposed would tax his abilities to the utmost. He had to vindicate the Company from the charge of fraud by suppression of truth and suggestion of falsehood, or he had to disconnect himself from' knowledge of -and connivance at these transactions. His character had been publicly impeached, not merely in the pages of this journal but in the House of Commons ; an opportunity was afforded for defence, and the best defence he could make was expected. Let us first see bow he deals with the charge against the Company, and next how he meet's the heavy accusation against himself. To create a feeling in favour 6f the Company, Lord Grey asserts " that the Directors had continuously sacrificed large sums of their own money in developing the colony." Now the fact is directly the contrary. In 1841- the capital of the Company was £100,000. Lord John Russell, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, granted them a charter on condition that another £100,000 should be paid up within a limited time. The Directors were unable to raise all the sum required, and the deficiency was made up by lend-

ing to the Pirectors the capital of the Company to enable them to purchase shares. On these shares the calls were paid by the Company, dividends were received by the Directors, no interest was charged on the purchase money, and many thousand pounds of that purchase money remain due to the company to the present day. These facts are perfectly well known to Lord Grey, and have drawn down his official censure on the^Directors. Although perfectly aware that the charier was thus vitiated in its inception, as having been obtained by fraud, Lord Grey has kept back the letters relating to this matter from the sight of Parliament, and while gorging the Company with public money has never required the Directors to repay the loan, or availed' himself in any way of the fact that the charter of incorporation was void for non-performance of the conditions. Moreover, Lord Grey is perfectly aware that these disinterested Directors, whose only fault, according to him, is a want of worldly wisdom and prudence, had wisdom enough to divide among themselves £8,200 out of the money advanced to them from the Exchequer, and this at a time when some of these disinterested men were indebted to 1 the Company for the purchase money of shares which they held. Lord Grey tells us that in making an agreement with the Company to -indemnify them for the injuries which his predecessor. Lord Stanley, had done them (a statement which the chivalrous Lord Derby meekly allows to pass unanswered and uurefuted), he guarded himself on two points. First, that the pecuniary assistance should not exceed a certain sum ; and secondly, that the arrangement should be a conclusive measure, and the discharge in full of all possible claims on the part of the Company. How well he attained the first of these points is proved by the fact that we are at this moment liable to pay claims by the settlers against the Company of uncertain amount, but estimated by Sir William Molesworth at some £200,000 or so. Of the finality of the agreement we may form some idea when we find in the same speech that Lord Grey warmly advocates a change in its term 3, and one highly beneficial to the Company, and is further of opinion that upon the colony of New Zealand should be laid the burden of defraying those liabilities to the Nelson settlers which the Home Government was j defrauded into undertaking. Surely this does not look much like finality. Having disposed of these preliminary matters, we would now ask what answer Lord Grey gives to the very heavy charges which has been preferred against him ? That charge is briefly this — That the New Zealand Company having taken an opinion as to their liability to the settlers, which they had previously^bound themselves to communicate to them, fraudulently suppressed it, and palmed off upon them auother, obtained ffom a person of notoriously damaged character. That, by this suppression, the Company tricked the settlers into an arraugeraent of their claims, obtained under an impression that they had no legal remedy ; and at the same time, and by the same arts, prevailed on Lord Grey to undertake, on behalf of the public, these very liabilities. That in March, 1848, the commissioner appointed, as Lord Grey himself states, for the purpose, among other things, of seeing that larger or heavier liabilities than the act contemplated were not incurred by the British treasury, reported to him the whole matter. That the Company earnestly entreated Lord Grey to allow the unfavourable opinion to be still suppressed — in other words, the fraud still to continue ; and that Lord Grey, by a letter dated the 4th of April, 1848, acceded to this request, and sanctioned the continuance of the deceit. A heavy accusation, certainly ; a stain which should be wiped off while it is still wet. How does Lord Grey meet thi3 charge ? He says that he will not enter into a history of the transactions, that he is anxious for inquiry, that there is nothing whatever which in the slightest degree reflects on the honour and probity of the Directors, and that in certain papers laid before Parliament in 1849, somewhere or other the existence of an unfavourable opinion is mentioned. This is the only fact which Lord Grey urges in his exculpation. He does not deny the concealment of the opinion by the Directors ; he does not deny his own sanction of that concealment ; lie does not assert that the circumstances were ever made public ; but merely says that one fact out of the many which made up the fraud was published to the world a year after he sanctioned its concealment, and when that concealment had done its work upon the settlers, whom it was his duty to protect and not to ensnare. The issue is not, whether some vague allusion to a single fact was published in 1849, but did Lord Grey, or did he not, on the 4th of April, 1848, sign a letter sanctioning tlie continued concealment of an opinion which the Directors had solemnly bound themselves to disclose — did he, or did he not, stand by and suffer that concealment to do its work ? Did he or did he not decline to take a third opinion to clear up the doubt as to the law? Did he or did he not assist the Company to obtain advantages under a charter which he knew was procured by one fraud, and under an act of Parliament which he knew was obtained by another? These are the points on which the country requires explanation, and. there is yet time to give it during the passage of the bill through the House of Lords. We are loth to believe that this is really all which a nobleman and a late Minister of State can urge against accusations so clear and so pointed. In the name of public morality, of the high character of -British statesmen, of the taxpayers of this country, and the inhabitants of the colony, we ask Lord Grey for an answer.