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£100,000 subscribed by the New Zealand Company consisted of shares allotted to the Companies of 1825 and 1838, in consideration of their land and other interests in New Zealand ? I have just said (and the note referred to in the last question put to me confirms my recollection), that the Company of 1825 received only £10,000 in stock. If lam right on that point, not sixty thousand pounds' worth, but only fifty thousand pounds' worth of the first nominal capital of the Company of 1839 was contributed by the Companies of 1825 and 1838, which latter Companies with their rights, interests, positions, and property, formed the basis of the Company of 1839 which had nothing of its own to rest upon, except an idea, and men capable of giving effect to it. Was the balance of the first .£IOO,OOO subscribed for in cash? The whole nominal capital was probably first subscribed by applications for shares, and then by signatures to a trust-deed, whereby a valid stock was created. When any money was paid up upon the stock, 1 cannot recollect; but I have an impression that the whole was paid up in a short time so as to place the new shareholders upon a par with those of the Companies of 1825 and 1838, who exchanged their property for stock standing as paid up. The whole transactions, however, took place so long ago (15 years), and they have been so little in my mind ever since, that I make any statement concerning them, with doubt and hesitation. By the Chairman—ln Appendix Cto the third Report of the Company there is an item of assets, viz., "Lands hitherto acquired in New Zealand," viz., at Kaipara, Hokianga, the Thames, Herd's Point, Waekeki, and the Port Nicholson Territoiy estimated at cost price only," £45,000, the value ofthe ship Tory aud her stores, adventure per " the Tory," adventure " the Cuba," Colonial stores, provisions, arms, surveying instruments and stores being separately credited £33.382 2s. 4d. Do you know how the £45,000 was made up 1 I imagine the sum to be made up of an estimated proportion ofthe sums paid to the Companies of 1825 and 1838 considered as purch ise-money of land ; but it may also include some payment to Mr. McDonnell, either directly by the Company of 1839, or through the Company of 1838. At any rate, this sum may be considered as the Company's estimate of what, at that time, and in one form or other, they hadpaid for the two millions of acres noticed in the foot-note of Appendix C to the third Report By Mr. Sewell—Am I right in understanding that a large or any proportion of a second subscribed capital of one hundred thousand pounds was not paid in actual cash, but in promissary notes of stockholders * Will you state whether you are aware of any such transactions, and, as far as you can from memory, furnish the particulars? I remember that, not a large, but a small proportion was originally paid up with something like promissary notes, or, at any rate, something short of cash. But I also think that these securities were also redeemed by cash payments before the Company broke up. I never knew the pariiculars exactly, never having been a member of the Company's finance committee, nor ever having paid attention to their accounts. It appears in the Company's accounts appended to their first Report that £101,555 10s. Od. was laid out by the Company in investments. Can you state of what character these investments were ? In 1842, that item of " Investments" appears to have risen to £212,990 18s. 2d. Can you inform us of the nature of those investments ? According to my best, but still imperfect, recollection, all such investments as those alluded to consisted of lending money to Messrs. Overrand and Gurney, of Lombard-street. Can you then explain an item appealing in the Company's Account of April 1842, to April 1843, of £67,568 ss. 2d. deducted from the investments of £212,990 18s. 2d., as for adjustment in the Compan's claims against the Government for further lands ? I cannot at all bring to mind what it means. In 1844, the shareholders of the Company had received £41,000 for dividends. Were not the payments for dividends made out of supposed profits, but really out of capital? >' 0. «r