EXTRACTS FROM THE BLUE BOOK. Copy of a Despatch from Governor Sir George Grey to Earl Grey, Government House, Wellington, September 25, 1851.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 785, 9 February 1853, Page 4

EXTRACTS FROM THE BLUE BOOK. Copy of a Despatch from Governor Sir George Grey to Earl Grey, Government House, Wellington, September 25, 1851.

My Lord, — Adverting to my despatch. No. 64, of the 21st of April 1851, transmitting the copy of a Bill I proposed to introduce into Legislative Council for the adjustment of the claims of the land purchasers of tbe New Zealand Company, I bare now the honour to enclose, in order that her Majesty's pleasure may be taken regarding it, the New Zealaud Company's Land Claimants Ordinance, in tbe form in which it passed tbe Council and received my assent. 2. In order that your Lordship may understand the objects I had in view in preparing the enclosed measure, and in submitting it to the Council, it will be requisite for me to state briefly a few of the difficulties which existed in the New Zealand Company's settlements m regard to the tenure of land. In doing so, I shall not attempt to trace the state of things which exists to any particular origin, or to attribute them to any particular cause, or to any persons : it will be sufficient for my purpose to show that a certain state of things did exist, and tbat until a full and complete remedy had been applied to them, this country could not prosper ; then I can only state that the measure now transmitted contains the only complete remedy for such a state of things that long experience and great consideration of the subject enabled me to devise, and that no better suggestions have yet been made to me or to the public. 3. It will also fortunately not be necessary for me to trouble your Lordship with a very lengthened report on tbeie subjects, because the Ordinance now enclosed for her Majesty's approval or disallowance has been drawn in such a manner tbat tbe several clauses themselves sufficiently indicate thevarious evils they are intended to remedy; and, moreover, a committee of the Legislative Council have in a report (a copy of which is enclosed) entered so fully into many of tbe details of this measure, that I could add but little in these respects to what they have stated ; 1 shall, therefore, confine rryself to a brief recapitulation of some of tbe difficulties for which I believe the enclosed measure provides a complete remedy. 4. Firstly, then, I should state, that although some of the New Zealand Company's settlements have been established for upwards of ten years, not a single one of their (ettlers has yet received a valid conveyance for the land be purchased from the Company. The only title posseased by their settlers was a land order, bearing a certain number, in virtue of which the holder was entitled to select bo many acres of land. But persons often obtained possession of land without any document being in existence to show that they selected that particular portion of land in virtue of a land order, bearing a particular number; hence, when individuals, who bad selected under several land orders, sold their sections and orders to other persons, it became almost impossible to tell which of the new purchasers had valid claims to specific portions of land. Again, either these derivative purchasers, or tbe original purchasers, often subdivided a section into aeveral allotments, and disposed of the subdivisions by auction, the only conveyance given being tbe auctioneers note. In the lapse of years — from deaths, from, persons having quitted the country, and from other causes — it has become impossible for purchasers to find the sellers in order to get their titles completed. It is, then, I think, manifest, that the mere signing a Crown Grant or conveyance, bearing the name of the original holder of a land-order, even if the land order could (which however is not tin case) be connected with the particular portion of land granted, and tbe depositing such grant in a public office until claimed by the grantee would, in the great majority of the cases of actual occupants of land, really rather' embarrass than facilitate the settlement of (he question of titles to land in this country.

5. Again, owing to obstruction on the part of the natures and other causes, the original surveys were rarely properly completed. lam informed, and believe, that in some instances the Company's j agents could do nothing more than trace sections on the map without their being laid out upon the ground ; it being intended subsequently to complete the survey. To issue a Crown Grant for such unascertained portions of land would confer no right whatever on the grantee, whilst it would give rise to very embarrassing questions. 6. From the same cause of incompleteness of survey, many individuals have-also occupied, and have for years remained in undisturbed occupation of portions of land, their claim to which is either doubtful, or to which particular portion of land they have no legal title, although they are entitled to the extent of land they occupy. 7. Another difficulty has arisen from the fact of the New Zealand Company having reserved a right of road through all sections ; which roads, in the case of a vast number of sections, have been taken since the first incomplete suivey was made, since the sections were chosen, and without ' the lines of road io taken having been so surveyed that they could be laid down upon the maps. In f«c&£tom the incomplete state of tie maps, the roads could only be laid i down upon them after a resurvey of the country. From the last mentioned causes, it is evident that if grants had been issued for the sections as they stood upon the maps, an undefined right of road must have been reserved in them, whilst, from the manner in which the country had been occupied previously to an accurate survey being made, almost innumerable cases in reference to town and country lands must have occurred in which individuals mutually contested their respective boundaries ; and questions of this nature could, after the issue of Crown Grants, only have Seen settled by lengthened and expensive law proceedings. 8. The whole of the difficulties above described, as well as many others of a similar nature, are, I think, entirely met by the first sixteen clauses of the enclosed Ordinance. | 9. Secondly. The difficulties attending the winding up of* the land transactions of the New Zealand Company, to which ! have above alluded, chiefly relate to the title of individuals to particular portions of land which they are in the occupation of, or to disputes regarding boundaries, &c, which are likely to arise between two or more claimants ; it is necessary, however, that I should also allude to other difficulties of an entirely different nature. 10. As I have before stated, purchasers were in many instances allowed to select from a map lands out of districts which either bad not been surveyed or bad been only very imperfectly surveyed, ; a subsequent examination of the tract of country which had been thus selected frequently proved it to be almost worthless in character, and of so mountainous a nature, and covered with such dense forest, that it could only be surveyed at a very considerable and unusual cost. 11. To have incurred laTge expenses in surveying such districts would have produced no advantage to the public, because the portions of land intervening between the selected pieces, and which must also have been surveyed, would, from their worthless character, never have been, purchased : nor could such surveys have produced any advantage to the purchasers, as, although I perhaps they might have been compelled to take their original selections, they could, from the nature of the soil, Dcver have made use of them For these reason's I thought it would be an unpardonable waste of public money to cause such surveys to be executed, and I thought the preferable course would be to provide, as has been done in the enclosed measure, that the- individuals who bad made such merely nominal selections, for whicb they had never received a grant, should be allowed to throw them op, and that they should receive respectively in lieu of them scrip, equalin value to the sum the New Zealand Company bad received for each such selection, which scrip should be taken by the Government as cash for the amount which' it represented, at any public s»le of Crown lands, 12. Again, I found that it was probable that at least forty thousand acres of land had been; with the consent of the Company's agents selected in districts not yet acquired from the natives, and which in many cases the natives would not sell. It was clearly, therefore,- out of the power of the Government to give possession of the lands so chosen to the Europeans who had selected them, or to their representatives. The only mode of solving this difficulty appeared to be to permit the individuals who bad made such selections to abandon them, taking sections of equal valu? from such lands as the Government might from time to time offer for sale. ' 13. There was another class of. cases which I found great difficulty In dealing with ; these wete the cases of those persons to whom the Company had promised to give certain lands in compensation for their losses, in particular districts to be named for the purpose; in which these individuals were to have the first right of selection. In many instances the company bad named do districts for these purposes, and bad executed no surveys ; the preferable course to be pursued in these cases. appeared to me also to be to give to tbe persons who held such rights under the Company the power of purchasing the quantity of land they were entitled to, from any lands that might from time to time be offered for sale by the Government. 14. It will be unnecessary for me to trouble your Lordship farther with a detail of the number of difficulties involved in the settlement of the affairs of the New Zealand Company, which could apparently only be fully met by allowing individuals to abandon any particular selections of land that they may have made, receiving in lieu thereof a right of purchasing an equal number of acres at any sale of Government lands ; this right being at tbe same time made transferable from individual to individual, so that it iormed a security which cpuld easily be disposed of in the market. 15. This mode of proceeding, whilst it presented great advantages to the land claimants, totalled no loss upon the public. On tbe contrary, as an individual who, for example, was entitled to 100 acres of land, received simply scrip which would entitle him to purchase 100 acres at tbe upiet price, and then had to compete at auction for auy particular portion of land ht might require, it was clear that whilst the Government could never give an individual entitled to 100 acres more than that quantity, it might, in many cases,

have to give Lino much less thin 100 acres; whilst, at the same time, the Government vu saved the cost of immediately surveying nselei* Und which v was of to difficult a nature that it conld have only been surveyed at a very heavy expense ; and it was saved also from the necessity of incurring a very large expenditure in bribing natives to dispose of districts which they required ' for their own wants, and which had been selected by Europeans. 16. In further explanation of the enclosed . measure, I beg to transmit a very comprehensive report drawn up by a Committee of the Legislative Council. I had intended to have entered into mucb'*inore lengthened explanations on this subject, but the enclosed report of the Committee of the Legislative Council is so comprehensive, and enters into the matter so much in detail, that I ' could, in fact, in many 1 instances, only repeat what they have said. 17. It is, however, necessary forme to ex- | plain the circumstances under which this report I was made. Upon the 29th of March last, I caused to be published in the Government Gazette, an outline of the measure I have now the honour to enclose, stating that I intended to introduce it into the Legislative Council ; and in April the Bill was published in its complete foim, antf gen- | erally circulated. The matter was thus before the public and the Legislative Council, and was fully discussed, the impression upju my mind being that almost the entire community agreed in the propriety and expediency of the measure, and were grateful to the Government for it. To my great sarprise||»owever, when the Bill came on for ita seconoVreading, the Lieutenant-Governor of New Munster, on the 20ih of June, moved that clause 15, No. 2, be struck out of the Bill, the effect of which would have been to defeat the measure. In making this motion, he stated no objection whatever against the Bill, but, as I understood, said he only made the motion in order to raise a discussion upon it. He subsequently withdrew the motion. As, however, the Lien-tenant-Governor had for a considerable time administered the government of this province, and the subject had been. for a long period tinder his consideration,' l found that the proceedings be adopted were, unless further explanations took place, likely to prejudice the minds cf the public against the measure, and to injure it in their estimation, as it appeared 'improbable that inch a line of proceedings could have , been adopted unless there were some serious objections. to the Bill. 18. I thought the best plan was that the measure should be' referred' for the consideration of a select Committee composed, of a considerable majority of the Council, of wbicK Committee the Lieutenant-Governor should himself be the President, in order that, the' question being thus fully discussed, the public might htvt the moat ample information regarding it. The result was that the Committee laid before Council upon the 23rd of July ihe enclosed Report upon the Ordinance which I have now the honour to transmit, the name of Lieutenant-Governor Eyre being the first appended to that report, which was also signed by every member of the Committee but one. Your Lordship will find that this report eipresses the Committee's full approval of tbe measure 1 -had laid before them, and, ia as far as I can judge, it has met with the general approbation of almost all persons in these islands. 19. 1 ought, perhaps, to direct your Lordship's attention to the circumstance that the 27ih clause of the Ordinance now transmitted was not embodied in the original Draft Bill which I transmitted to your Lordship in my despatch, No. 64, of tbe 21st of April last. 20. This uew clause provides for the adjustment of the claims of the absentee land purchasers in tbe Nelson district to compensation; * * * Your Lordship will find that the select Committee of the Legislative Council in their report specially recommended that an additional compensation should be given to tbe absentee proprietors at Nelaon, and even recommended the extent to wbicb, and the manner ia wbicb, such compensation should be given. 21. The special Committee having been composed, qf the Lieutenant-Goveraor of New Muu* ster slid eight members of the. Council, to whose opinion I attached much weight, and as they had taken evidence open this subject, and bad given it a long and careful consideration, and is the matter was one which concerned the private rights of subjects of her Majesty, I felt that this was a case in which the opinion of so large a majority ought to be carried into effect, and therefore assented to the introduction of the 27 ih clause into the enclosed measure. 22. In farther illustration of the state in which the questions connected with the claims of their land purchasers were left by the New Ze?laod Company, 1 enclose an approximate return of tbe quantity of land which they had sold, or undertaken to give as compensation to their, purchasers. 23. It only remains for me to add that the enclosed Ordinance provides the means of obviating every difficulty which is known to exist in relation to tbe tenure on which property is held in til the New Zealand Company's settlements; and that it will clear away every embarrassment which has arisen from the state in which the New Zealand Company left their affairs when they ceased their operations ; it also possesses this great advantage, that whilst its temporary effect is to- remove serions evils which weigh down all the energies of the settlers, it is at the sanra time a prospective measure, as it at once introduces and renders easy tbe permanent existence of a simple and uniform system for tbe sale of lands throughout the entire New Zealand Islands, with the exception of the Canterbury block. Indeed it may be said that not only will it be tht means o( curing existing evils, but it leaves the questions connected with the disposal of lands in New Zealand as perfectly free and unencumbered as if no difficulty of a serious kind had ever existed here in reference to them. Aud all this is accomplished from the loca} revenues, without there being tbe slightest probability of any farther application for aid on these accounts being, made to Great Britain, and without any new debt being entailed on the revenues of this country. I have, &c, (Signed) G. Gesr. The Right Hon. Earl Grey, &c, &c, Stt.