EXTRACTS FROM THE BLUE BOOK.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 775, 5 January 1853, Page 4

EXTRACTS FROM THE BLUE BOOK.

Copy of a Despatch from Governor Sir George Grey to Earl Grey. Government House, Wellington, October 20, 1851. My Lord,— ln my despatch, No. 73, of the 23d May last, I called your Xordship's attention to the fact that in the three years during which the New Zealand Company's Colonization Act was in operation their Principal Agent had, by way of compenstion, given to various persons having claims against the Company all the most valuable portions of the estate of the Company, and considerable quantities of the demesne lands of the Crown ; and requesting, consequently, instructions as to whether, under the terms of the Act of Parliament, I was to admit that the sum of £268,370 15s. was the debt due from the Government to the New Zealand Company, or whether a valuation should be made of the property disposed of by Mr.' Fox during the continuance of the above-named Act of Parliament, and should transmit a copy of such valuation to the authorities in England before any farther proceedings were taken in the matter. 2, 1 have now to report that amongst the records in the New Zealand Company's offices handed over to the local Government is the copy of a despatch which was addressed by Mr. Fox to the Secretary of the- New Zealand Company upon the 24th December, 1850, at the end of which despatch is the following paragraph :—: — " Since the above was written I have received several additional awards, which, however, were not delivered at the Company's office till two o'clock in the afternoon of the 31st December, on which day at four that office closed for the transaction of business. It has been impossible for me, therefore, to examine into the particulars

of all these, bat I observe that many of them are in respect of claims which had been previously rejected, and the admission of which now appears to involve a material departure from the principles on which the committee acted in the earlier cases. The award of the committee seems, however, conclusive on me, and I have no course to pursue except to issue the scrip in these cases, | (some of the awards were so evidently wrong on the face of them that I have declined to sign scrip for tbera, — Mr. Lewis has a memorandum signed by me about it,) though I must confess that in many of them I am unable to discover any ground on which the Company can be held bound to compensate the claimants." 3. It thus appears that at so late a period as five months after the Company had surrendered its charter, and the lands previously administered by it had reverted to the Cr6wn, the agent of the Company was issuing scrip, giving so many acres of the demesne of the Crown to claimants who he himself admits were not entitled, on any grounds which he could discover, to the compensation from the Company which he was issuing to them. I beg, therefore, again to bring under your Lordship's notice, that by the Act of 1847 it was provided that a debt of £268,370 15s. payable to the Company with interest was to be entailed upon the land fund of this colony, being, as the Act of ParlUment states, at the rate of five shillings for each acre of the 1,073,483 acres, to the possession of which the New Zealand Company were entitled, including therein 24,491 acres, and half an acre purchased by the said Company within their own settlements, and held as tbeir private estate. 4s From the terms of the Act of Parliament I am alluding to, it appears to me very doubtful whether it was intended that, under its provisions, the Principal Agent of the New Zealand Company could (without receiving any consideration for the lands he might dispose of) give to claimants, in compeiisaiion for damages received from the Company, tracts of land, or a right to select such tracts, both from the estate of the Company and the demesne of the Crown, not only during the tbree years of the operation of the Act, but for several months after its operation had ceased ; and that after the estate of the Company, (as named in the Act of Parliament) and the demesne Itnds of the Crown had been diminished by such proceedings, the Company should still be able to claim payment from the land fond of the whole debt of £268,370 15s. 5. I think it must be evident, that if Mr. Fox was justified in issuing compensation to the claimants of the Company from an estate which the public was bonnd to purchase on a fixed date at a certain price, and that the same price was to be psid for tbis estate to the Company, in however reduced a state they might hand it over to the Crown ; that then he, as the Agent of tbe Company (in no way responsible to the Crown or Parliament), would necessarily, in administering sucb an estate, dispose of it in such a manner as would enable him out of it to satisfy all those persons who bad legal claims against the Company, the demands against whom would thus be liquidated from the estate of the public, not from their own resources. 6. If, under these circumstances, it should appear that, under the terms of the Act of Parliament, the value of the property thus disposed of by Mr. Fox should be in some manner ascertained, in order that it may be deducted from tbe sum which is to be paid to the New Zealand Company from the Land Fund, then I beg to bring under your Lordship's notice, that an easy mode of adjusting this matter would be, to send out from England some wholly disinterested person, by whose decision- tbe Government and Company should be equally bound ; and that it should be left to such person, after taking the necessary evidence on the subject, to ascertain tbe extent and value of tbe lands which have been disposed of in tbis manner by tbe Agent of the Company, and thus to fix the amount which should upon this account be deducted from tbe total payment which is to be made from the Land Fund to the New Zealand Company. 7. In order that your Lordship may have the fullest information upon the subject, I have transmitted a copy of the letter from Mr. Fox to the Directors of the Company to which I have alluded, as it was banded over to, the Government. I have, &c, (Signed) G. Grey. The Right Hou. Etrl Grey, &c, &c. f &c.