THE CLAIM FOR £500,000.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9478, 22 June 1909, Page 5

THE CLAIM FOR £500,000.

A ROMANTIC STORY,

Press Association

Auckland, Jnne 21

in connection with Jthe claim of half a million made by the American Government on behalf of one of its citizens against the New Zealand Government, it is admitted [that it concerns a large area of land in the Auckland province acquired for a mere song from the natives prior to 1840 by a man named Weoster, and the story is told as follows :—When the country was constituted there lived on the little s f np.of land inside the Coromandel harbour, and known as Herekino, a man who has been described as a big, stout, jolly individual, loud of voice and free of manner, and possessing in addition to a strong American accent a personality that forced its domination upon all and sundry with whom he came in contact. He had arrived some years before as a ship’s carpenter upon an American whaler, and seeing possibilities both pleasant and profitable in life ashore in New Zealand that an American whaler would never offer, he cast in his lot with the small band of pakehaa that were scattered here and there in the midst of the cannibal lords' of the land. William Webster was his name, and very soon from one of!the simple “makers of nations” in New Zealand, he became the dictator and arbitrator between Native and European over a wide area of country, including the Haurabi Gulf and all its neighbouring lands. In short, without the medium of William Webster, no pakeha could obtain so much land as would suffice to give resting room to his tent or whare, and he was the bosom friend of the great Coromandel chief Hooknose, whose daughter he was given in marriage. So Webster settled in the land and prospered. He had a busy mind, and was not content with the mere idle proprietorship of the vast areas of native demesnes he had either acquired, or of which he claimed possession, so he established trading stations all over the Gulf and the Firth of Thames, and through these he reaped a rich profit at the time of the influx of immigration to New South" Wales, by buying shiploads of maize, potatoes and other food from the natives and sending them across,to New South Wales. His headquarters were at this little spot of Herekino, where he kept a boardinghouse for the convenience of the numerous adventurous spirits who came and went, and with whom money was frequently plentiful. From the influence and power he exercised both over the Maori and the Pakeha, Webster obtained the sobriquet of “King of Waiou.” When the Commission was appointed by Governor Hobson in 1841 to inquire into and settle the question of these land claims and grants, Webster’s claim to landed property was found to fit with the enterprise of such a man, bis possessions, or claims of possessions, including big [areas in the choicest spots bordering the Golf of the Waitemata (having been an apparently favourite pegging out place of his long before the New Zealand Government thought of making it the provincial capital or even before any sign of European habitation manifested itself round its shores). He also, it is authentically stated, laid claim to the whole of the Great Barrier Island, while the Piako country met with considerable attention. When these various “landholders” were required to give an account of their proprietorship and its origin, Webster agreed to declare himself a claimant as an Englishman, and not as an American citizen, and when the allotments were made, large estates dwindled down to mere Jpaok sections by comparison, with the majority of the other dispossessed ones, he accepted the situation" as philosophically as might be, and Pctle or nothing was heard in protest from him, until in the early fifties when he left New Zealand for the Californian goldfields in search of further fortune. Some time after having left the colony, a claim was received by the New Zealand Government from Webster,, who was then in San Francisco,and either the original claimant or his heirs have Jat intervals been pressing tneir claims against the New Zealand Government for this dispossessed property. Some few years ago, however, Sir Robert Stout was commissioned to sift the whole matter and report upon it, and the result was that Webster as a claimant was ruled out of court. It is almost certain that Webster is the man referred to in the claim respecting which the SolicitorGeneral is going to England, but it also seems pretty clear that there is little likelihood of the claim being substantiated, for before the Crown settled the rights of claimants to the land, the native rights were invariably extinguished first by purchase, so that in the event of a claim being allowed, the land, by right of purchase, went to the Crown.