A.—3a,

112

hitherto attended the trial of the experiment; that fourteen ships have arrived in this port in the course of nine months, in which, owing to the careful provisions made by the Association, the sickness and deaths which have occurred during their voyages have been small beyond all former precedent; that a population of about 3,000 souls has thus collected in a country which a few months ago was an unoccupied waste ; that an excellent survey has been made of a large district, by means of which all those who have purchased land are enabled to select their sections immediately upon their arriving, and are placed in possession of their properties with the least possible delay and expense; that a considerable quantity of land is enclosed, that above five hundred acres will be in cultivation before the first harvest, and that the quantity of land brought into cultivation is daily and rapidly increasing; that two towns have arisen in which temporary churches have been erected, and that we have never been deprived for a single day of the means of worshipping God after the manner of our fathers ; that there are good schools in both of the towns, and that a college upon, the plan of the English universities has already been commenced. Such having been the progress of this settlement in the course of a few months, under the sanction and favour of your Majesty's Government, we have been greatly alarmed and are deeply aggrieved by learning, from sources which are to be relied on, that your Majesty's representative in this colony has, upon several recent occasions while presiding over the General Legislative Council of New Zealand, expressed very strong disapprobation of the principles and proceedings of the Association, notwithstanding that those principles and proceedings have been repeatedly sanctioned by your Majesty's Government and have been attended with such remarkable success. In addition to these strong expressions of opinion condemning this settlement, His Excellency has been pleased to forward for presentation to your Majesty two memorials from the General Legislative Council professing to convey to your Majesty the sentiments of the inhabitants of these Islands in accordance with those put forward by His Excellency in the chair of the Council, and hostile to the proceedings of this settlement; and especially praying that your Majesty will be pleased to cause all the lands within these Islands to be sold at the same uniform price. We deeply grieve to be called upon to represent to your Most Gracious Majesty that the memorials thus transmitted contain many statements wrhich are wholly without foundation. It is not true that " under the regulations of the Canterbury Association land cannot be sold under £3 an acre, of which £2 are to be voted to religious and educational purposes," only £1 per acre being devoted to those purposes, It is not true that all your Majesty's subjects who are not members of the Church of England are deprived of the right of using one of the finest and most extensive districts in the country as a field for their enterprise, many persons having arrived and having acquired property who are not members of that church. It is not true that above 200 souls are resident at Akaroa who profess the Roman Catholic religion. The whole population at Akaroa at the time when we arrived in the colony amounted to no more than 150 souls, of whom only 65 were Eoman Catholics. It is true that if any of the landowners in Akaroa desired to increase their properties they would have to pay £3 for every acre ; but we desire to represent to your Majesty that the lands which they would purchase would be worth the sum charged without entering into any consideration as to what might be done with the money. The formation of the Canterbury Settlement, instead of being an injury, has been a great advantage to the settlers at Akaroa by affording them a market for their produce; and should any of the old settlers desire now to increase their properties they will probably have been enabled to do so solely by the establishment of the Canterbury settlement in this neighbourhood, without which it would probably not have been worth their while or within their means to have acquired additional land. It is not true, so far as we are informed, that the Canterbury Association has ever contemplated acquiring an extension of the territory committed to their trust. The only cause for alarm which has been expressed to your Majesty upon this matter consists in a request made, not by the Canterbury Association, but by your Majesty's memorialists in this settlement, that the Canterbury Association should, if possible, obtain an enlargement of the block over which they possess rights of sale and pasturage so as to include the whole of the great plain in which the block is situated, and which is entirely cut off from the other settlements of New Zealand by impassable mountains and rivers. We desire to disclaim in the strongest terms any wish to encroach upon the limits of the other settlements in New Zealand. Within the district which your Majesty and the Imperial Parliament have been graciously pleased to assign to us there are still vast tracts of land admirably adapted for all kinds of agricultural and pastoral purposes, and which are still open for purchase and occupation. Until those are taken up we have no immediate interest in or desire for the enlargement of the district assigned to us, nor even then if such an enlargement should be found inconsistent with the interests of the neighbouring settlements. But we made the proposal above referred to because we foresaw the inconvenience likely to arise from having different parts of the same natural district, the whole produce of which will pass through the same ports, under different and perhaps conflicting pasturage regulations. The district which we thus proposed should be added to this settlement is not, as has been represented to your Majesty, one containing a population who would be deprived of the privilege of enlarging their properties by the restricted regulations of this settlement, there being, with the exception of three or four unlicensed squatters, no inhabitants whatever in its whole extent. We deeply grieve to be compelled thus to point out the inaccuracies and misstatements which have been conveyed to } rour Majesty, the more so that these misstatements have received the sanction of the highest authority in this colony ; but we cannot do this without most respectfully representing to your Majesty that the General Legislative Council of New Zealand, in which these attacks have been made, not being elected by the inhabitants, but being nominated by the Governor-in-Chief, do not possess the confidence and do not speak the sentiments of the inhabitants of this colony ; that thev are not authorised to represent the inhabitants of New Zealand in any manner whatsoever; and that their representation of the feelings of the settlers is one upon which no reliance can be placed. At the same time we cannot conceal from ourselves that there is cause for great alarm lest the attacks which have been made upon our settlement by the highest authority of your Majesty's Government in this colony may inflict the deepest injury upon us. We fear lest the public and our friends in England