1859 - Swainson, William. New Zealand and its Colonization - CHAPTER IV: JOINT-STOCK COLONIZATION.

       
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  1859 - Swainson, William. New Zealand and its Colonization - CHAPTER IV: JOINT-STOCK COLONIZATION.
 
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CHAPTER IV: JOINT-STOCK COLONIZATION.

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CHAPTER IV.

JOINT-STOCK COLONIZATION.

HAVING, in the first instance, been taught to regard the natives and the Colonial Government as the cause of their misfortunes, the Wellington settlers for some time made common cause with the New Zealand Company: but the proceedings in the Court of the Commissioners of Land Claims soon brought to light the fact that the Company had received from their settlers money for land which the Company had never purchased, and of which the native title had never been extinguished; and the southern settlers now directed their complaints against the Company themselves. "It is distressing," said the late Mr. Charles Buller, a leading member of the Directors of the Company, writing to the Secretary of State, "to hear the tales of individual disappointments and woe which reach us every day. All emigration to New Zealand is stopped: the first Colonists are quitting it as fast as they can," and "these returned Colonists," say the Directors themselves, addressing their shareholders, "come straight to us, and afflict us with their complaints of disappointments and ruin."

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"We tell you," they add, "that it is our deliberate conviction, that unless a great change takes place immediately, your settlements will not be worth preserving. We come here to fritter away borrowed money, to consider claims we have no means of satisfying, and to hear the most distressing complaints without being able to assist the sufferers." Such was the account given by the Company themselves of the result of their colonizing operations, as regards their first and principal settlement.

Having discovered the real authors of their misfortunes, the whole body of resident landholders in the settlement of Wellington and Wanganui now claimed compensation from the Company who had sent them out from England. "We address you," said they, "not as supplicants for your bounty--not as men suing for favour at your hands--but as parties deeply and grievously injured: as men protesting against great wrongs inflicted by you, and, as such, demanding redress. And to what causes are the disasters which have befallen us attributable? You cannot and dare not deny that the immediate and proximate cause of our ruin has been the non-fulfilment by you of the contract formed with us seven years ago." No great length of time elapsed before the unhappy situation of the New Zealand Company's settlers became known in England; and with what result may be readily imagined. "The accounts which have reached home," wrote their chairman, addressing the Secretary of State, "have produced a like cessation of income from land sales here;

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for the Commissioners' Court has rendered them unmarketable,... and the Company has altogether ceased to obtain any return from its lands. These difficulties must, we think, be ascribed to one cause: namely, the dispute respecting the Company's titles to land. This is the one thing which appears to have led to all the bad blood between the natives and the settlers. It was the direct cause of the unhappy business at Cloudy Bay, 1 and of the subsequent disastrous state of feeling."

Although the attempt was made by the Company to impute the misfortunes of themselves and their settlers to the bad faith of the natives, the Report of the Land Claims Commissioner, soon afterwards made public, authoritatively showed that they had sent out settlers from England to occupy land which they had never purchased, and that they had actually sold to them land to which they never had a claim. "I am of opinion," reported the Commissioner of Land Claims, "that the greater portion of the land claimed by the Company in the Port Nicholson district, and also in the district between Port Nicholson and Wanganui, including the latter place, has not been alienated by the natives to the New Zealand Company; and that other portions of the same district have been only partially alienated by the natives to that body: and it appears to me, so far as the evidence has gone, that all the Company's purchases were made in a very loose and careless manner." To the precipitate proceedings of the

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New Zealand Company, in a second time sending out a body of emigrants before it was known that a suitable locality had been secured for their reception, is to be attributed that appalling catastrophe in the valley of the Wairau, which will be for ever memorable in the history of New Zealand.

However plausible it might have been in theory, their scheme of the Nelson Settlement failed also in bringing together the three necessary elements of land, capital, and labour, in the prescribed ratios. Formed in England, upon paper, the plan was attempted to be carried out in a locality unsuited to the purpose. A "sufficient price" had indeed been paid for the land by the intending settlers before leaving England; but on arriving on the site of the settlement, the "land" itself was not to be found; and in the attempt to obtain the greater portion of the quantity required, and that, too, at a distance of seventy miles, more than twenty valuable lives were unhappily thrown away. "Labour," it is true, was carried out; but no adequate amount of "capital" went out, or was sent out to employ it; and, failing to find employment amongst the settlers, a large number of labourers fell back upon the Company who had sent them out, and for a time about three hundred were employed by them upon public works. Disappointed in the expectations they had been led to entertain, finding themselves employed, almost out of charity, by the New Zealand Company, at what they believed to be an inadequate rate of wages, the labouring class broke out into open mutiny, and threatened to plunder the

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Company's stores. 2 Nor were the land-purchasers themselves better satisfied with their lot: the failure of the Company to put them into possession of land, naturally occasioned them much disappointment and loss; and, like the Wellington settlers, they also now claimed compensation from the Company for breach of their agreement. For some time, these claims were strenuously resisted by the Company: eventually, however, they announced to the Nelson land-purchasers that they had submitted to counsel a case for a legal opinion as to the respective rights and liabilities of themselves and their settlers; that they had authorized their agent at Nelson to act in behalf of the Company, taking the opinion which might be given on the case as the basis of the arrangement; and promising that the opinion itself should be sent out by the earliest opportunity after it should have been received by them. Shortly afterwards a legal opinion, to the effect that the New Zealand Company were not liable to their settlers, either for breach of contract, or for the losses sustained by them, was sent out by the Company, and made known to its Nelson settlers by their Nelson agent: and, believing this to be the legal opinion referred to, having no knowledge of any second or different "opinion," and finding that they had no legal rights against the

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Company, the Nelson land-purchasers agreed to a compromise on the most favourable terms they could procure.

But for the proceedings by which the character of English public companies has recently been disgraced, it would be too serious an accusation to be hazarded even against the Directors of a trading Joint-Stock Association, yet it has been publicly charged against the New Zealand Company that the "opinion" sent out by them for the guidance of their settlers at Nelson was a changeling: that the opinion of their own counsel (a member of their own body, and a man of character and standing,) was, that the New Zealand Company were not only liable to return to the Nelson land-purchasers their original purchase-money with interest, but to make compensation also for their losses; that suppressing this opinion, they submitted a case to another counsel, but little known in the profession, from whom they obtained an opinion that the land-purchasers had no claims against them; and that they sent out this second opinion as that to which they had originally referred as the basis of the proposed arrangement, thereby entrapping their settlers into making a compromise disadvantageous to themselves. And mortifying it must no doubt have been to many honourable men who joined the association with no other object than to aid and take part in what they believed to be a laudable undertaking, to find its governing body afterwards charged before Parliament with deceiving their own

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New Zealand Colonists by means of a deliberate suppression of the truth. 3

With reference to the settlement of Nelson itself, the Chairman of the Company, in his place in Parliament, made the candid admission that it did not fulfil the strict letter of the law: that the scheme of it was not well advised; and that it had not answered the expectations either of the Company or of the settlers: and "In so far as that field of settlement extended," says the recent Report of the Committee of the House of Representatives, "the Company was entirely unobstructed in its operations, and its failure there, and the misery of its settlers, are mainly

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chargeable upon its own mismanagement and the utter unfitness of the scheme of colonization attempted to be carried out, as applicable to the peculiar features of the Colony." "So long," they add, "as the Company attempted to carry out that scheme, and actively interfered in the affairs of the settlement, money was squandered; labour was misapplied; there was no production and no vitality; and the dawn of progress, healthfulness, and production dates from the day when the Company's works were suspended, the Company's system of colonization was abandoned, and working men placed upon allotments of land." Such was the judgment passed by the Representatives of the people on the Company's second settlement in New Zealand.

With respect to the class of labouring emigrants sent out by them, it would be unjust to the New Zealand Company not to acknowledge that eventually, and as a body, their emigrants have bettered their condition by going out to New Zealand. But in their case also, as well as in that of the land-purchasers, it would not be difficult to point to instances of promises unfulfilled, or sought to be evaded. The case of the labourers at Taranaki, on any other evidence than the admission of the parties implicated, would be incredible: but that case rests upon the written statement of the Company's own agent, published by the Company themselves in the Appendix to their 12th Report. "You are aware," writes their Taranaki agent, "that the emigrants in this settlement hold what they call 'embarkation orders,' being

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a sort of handbill, in which it is distinctly stated that the Company's agent will at all times give them employment in the service of the Company, if from any cause they should be unable to obtain it elsewhere. Being unable to give any other interpretation of this promise than the words quoted seemed to imply, and yet bearing in mind that the Court of Directors view their engagement in a different light, I endeavoured to evade it, by sending the applicants for employment a long distance from home; making no allowance for time spent in the journey, or for time lost in bad weather. The necessities of the men and their families were such as compelled them to submit for several weeks to these conditions: but many came home sick and claimed the promised medical aid; and others commenced the trade of pig and sheep stealing, not having yet had time to raise potatoes for themselves."

Nor were the New Zealand Company more successful in establishing for themselves a high character for straightforward honesty of purpose in the conduct of their proceedings in England. When New Zealand first became a British Colony, the Chatham Islands, lying about 500 miles to the eastward of the New Zealand group, were not included in the Governor's commission. The circumstances under which these islands were afterwards annexed to the colony of New Zealand, are not without their interest. In the year 1841, but little was known of the New Zealand Company beyond the fact that they were an influential association, comprising amongst

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their Directors men of name and reputation, and it was thought an inexplicable proceeding that the permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonial Department should have sought and obtained permission from Lord John Russell (then Colonial Minister) to be relieved from the duty of ever again receiving any of the Directors of that body at any interview relating to their affairs. But Sir James Stephen must have had good reasons for resorting to so significant a proceeding. The correspondence which soon afterwards took place between the Company and the Government on the subject of the Chatham Islands, makes it probable that his apprehensions of the danger of transacting business with them in the absence of documentary evidence were not without foundation. After entering into negotiations with a German Colonization Company for the sale of the Chatham, Islands, they commenced a correspondence with the Government on the subject; and the Governor of the New Zealand Company wrote to the Secretary of State (Lord Stanley) informing him "that the Directors of the New Zealand Company being in treaty for the sale of the Chatham Islands to a German Company, they consider it right to inform his Lordship of the circumstance. To give useful neighbours to the settlement which they have founded in New Zealand is the motive which has principally induced them to dispose of their property in the Chatham Islands. It is the intention of the Directors to make it a condition of the transfer, that British vessels should have the same privileges in the

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ports of the Chatham Islands, as the national flag of the Hanse Towns," &c, &c.

In reply, Mr. G. W. Hope is directed to state, that "Lord Stanley cannot discover on what grounds the Company can claim a right to enter into negotiations with the diplomatic agents of a foreign State for creating a foreign Colony in the neighbourhood of the British settlements, and the protection of the commerce and navigation of Great Britain with the proposed Colony; and that the opinions of the Attorney and Solicitor General will be taken as to the consequences, in point of law, of the assumption and exercise by the Company of such powers." To escape the dilemma, it was stated by Mr. Somes (the Governor of the Company), that "the Company had not entered into any contract in their capacity of Directors: that, in fact, the Chatham Islands are not claimed by them at all, but belong to the old Company; and they trust that the circumstance of their having, perhaps rather unguardedly, stated that they (the Directors) were in treaty, &c, will not prejudice them in his Lordship's judgment." Lord Stanley then informs them, that, "as it now appears from their own statement that they have no property in the Chatham Islands, he thinks it unnecessary to pursue any correspondence with them on the subject." Three weeks later, however, Mr. Hope is directed to inform the Directors, that "the Law Officers have reported their opinion that the purchase of the Chatham Islands, and the proposed sale of them by the Directors, were unauthorised by their Charter; and

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that their proceedings in the transaction were an interference with the Royal Prerogative, and therefore unlawful;" and that "an abuse of their powers may be the forfeiture of their Charter." The Company again, in reply, state, that "no act has been done between the Company and the parties, with reference to the projected arrangements." But three months later they are informed that Lord Stanley has received the copy of a despatch from Her Majesty's Charge d'Affaires at Hamburgh, enclosing the copy of an agreement for the sale of the Chatham Islands, purporting to be made between "Mr. Sieveking, of the one part, and John Ward, Esq., acting on behalf of the New Zealand Company of London, incorporated by Royal Charter, of the other part." What may be the legal consequences of this transaction, Lord Stanley does not think it necessary then to state; but the Company are informed that thenceforward the Chatham Islands will form part of the colony of New Zealand; and that no claimant will be allowed a greater quantity of land than 2,500 acres. Nothing now remained for the Directors but to disavow Mr. Ward's proceedings; and Lord Stanley is assured that "the steps taken by Mr. Ward, in his communication with Mr. Sieveking, were not taken in pursuance of instructions from the Company."

The proceedings of the Company as a colonizing body had now come to a dead lock. They had expended a considerable amount of capital in fitting out their preliminary expedition, in sending out emigrants, and in payments to natives for land. But they hardly

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suceeeded in a single instance in making a really valid purchase: on the contrary, the proceedings in the Land Commissioners' Court proved that, in almost every instance, their claims were either defective or wholly without foundation. This discovery led to a lengthened and angry discussion between themselves and the Government. The Company having represented themselves to be the purchasers of large tracts of land from the natives, the Government had agreed to grant to them, not the whole quantity claimed to have been purchased, but four times as many acres as they had expended pounds in the work of colonization. According to the terms of the agreement, they would have been entitled to a grant from the Crown of upwards of a million acres of land. The agreement, however, was based throughout upon the assertion of the Company that they really had made large purchases of land in New Zealand. Failing, however, to prove a valid purchase of the land claimed by them, the Company nevertheless maintained that it was immaterial to them whether or not they had in fact extinguished the native title to the land, as the Government were bound, under any circumstances, to put them in possession, if not of the particular land itself, at least of the stipulated quantity. As this extraordinary claim of the Company could only be satisfied by making a purchase of upwards of a million acres of land from, the native owners of the soil, out of the public funds, and at the expense of the British nation, it was strongly resisted, so long as Lord Stanley continued to administer the government of the colonies.

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The affairs of the Company were now in an utterly hopeless condition. They had not only sold land to their settlers to which they had no title, but they were unable to put them in possession. On all sides they were beset with claims for compensation and redress; their capital was expended, and the native owners of the soil, exasperated by their attempts to take possession of the land by force, were now unwilling to deal with them for the sale of it on reasonable terms. In bringing before the public their project for colonizing the New Zealand Islands, they, in the first instance, expressed the most considerate regard for the rights of the native race, and avowed their desire to promote their permanent interests; but their colonizing operations were now beset with difficulties, and there appeared to them to be but one mode of surmounting them, and that was by urging the British Government to set aside the Treaty with the natives by which the Sovereignty over New Zealand had been gained. "We have always had very serious doubts," urged the New Zealand Company, addressing the Queen's Minister, "whether the treaty of Waitangi, made with naked savages by a consul invested with no plenipotentiary powers, without ratification by the Crown, could be treated by lawyers as anything but a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment." Seeing that such an argument could be put forward in the name of a body of Englishmen, it may be feared, that if the aboriginal race of New Zealand had been less powerful, and less able to hold their own, and if the Queen's Minister had been a

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less high-minded and a less high-spirited gentleman, and less independent of political support, the honour of the Crown and the character of the nation would have been in danger of being impaired, and the rights of the native inhabitants of the country would have been sacrificed to the interests of an English Joint-Stock Association. Happily, however, the honour of the Crown and of the country was in honourable keeping, and the suggestion to set aside the treaty of Waitangi was met by a reply which deserves to be recorded in the annals of our history-- a reply which few Englishmen can read without a feeling of proud and pleasurable emotion, and which cannot be more fitly characterized than as being worthy of a Minister of the British Crown. "Lord Stanley is not prepared, as Her Majesty's Secretary of State, to join with the New Zealand Company in setting aside the treaty of Waitangi, after obtaining the advantages guaranteed by it; even though it might be made with 'naked savages,' or though 'it might be treated by lawyers as a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment.' Lord Stanley entertains a different view of the respect due to the obligations contracted by the Crown of England; and his final answer to the demands of the New Zealand Company must be, that so long as he has the honour of serving the Crown, he will not admit that any person, or any Government acting in the name of Her Majesty, can contract a legal, moral, or honorary obligation to despoil others of their lawful or equitable rights,"

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Failing in the attempt to induce the Government to break faith with the natives, the Company, as a last resource, claimed compensation from the Government, and a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to examine into the complaints made by the Company of losses sustained by them in consequence, as they alleged, of the proceedings of the Colonial Office, and of the local Government of New Zealand. Lord Howick, who had taken an active part in supporting the case of the Company before the House, was appointed Chairman, and the Committee, by a narrow majority, reported their opinion that the Company had sustained injury from the Government, and that they were entitled to redress. But the Committee appointed some years afterwards by the House of Representatives in New Zealand itself, to inquire into the subject of the Company's debt, arrived at a different conclusion. "Your Committee," 4 said their Report, "feel the greatest diffidence in giving utterance to any opinions which might conflict with the decisions of such a tribunal, the highest in point of honour and intelligence to which any question can be referred; but they nevertheless feel that this is a subject upon which the accident of their position gives them advantages which no other body of men enjoy, and necessarily confers upon their views in relation to this subject all the weight which must attach to a more complete knowledge of details, and to local and personal experience."... "After passing in review the conduct, the engagements, and the position

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generally of the New Zealand Company prior to the arrangement entered into between it and Lord Grey in the year 1847, they have felt themselves fully justified in concluding that the statement of their losses made at that time was exaggerated: and that the failure of their enterprise, with the consequences flowing out of that failure, are mainly to be charged to the acts and neglects of the Company itself;" and that "without seeking to justify in all points the conduct of the Government, your Committee consider themselves warranted in asserting that the Company's losses were mainly attributable to its own proceedings, characterized as these were, in many respects, by rashness and mal-administration."

When Lord Grey came into office as Colonial Minister, he was of course immediately appealed to by the Company for that assistance and redress which his predecessor, Lord Stanley, had steadily refused. Nor was the appeal in vain: Lord Grey not only reversed the policy of his predecessor, and admitted to be valid those claims which Lord Stanley had resisted as unjust, but, notwithstanding the antecedents of the New Zealand Company, passed a measure through Parliament, 5 vesting in that body the whole of the demesne lands of the Crown in the province of New Munster; granting to them, in addition to a previous loan of 100,000l., a further loan of 136,000l.; and finally, providing that if they should find themselves unable "to continue their proceedings with profit to themselves and benefit

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to the Colony, "they might wind up their affairs, freed from all liability to repay the loan of 236,000l., and with a charge in their own favour of the sum of 268,370l. 15s. 0d. on all future sales of the demesne lands of the Crown throughout New Zealand: the Government agreeing to accept as an equivalent the lands which the Company merely claimed to have "acquired or to have become entitled to."

Few persons probably have read the very characteristic, graphic, and instructive evidence given by Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield before a Committee of the House of Representatives in New Zealand, on the subject of the New Zealand Company's debt; but from the account then given of this transaction-- which can hardly, however, be received as the evidence of an impartial witness--it appears that Lord Grey was not prevailed upon without considerable difficulty to become a party to so extraordinary an arrangement. Referring to the Committee of the House of Commons, who had reported in favour of the claims of the New Zealand Company, Mr. Wakefield says, --"The inquiry was led and principally arranged by Lord Howick, who was Chairman of the Committee, and who, in the House itself, had taken a very prominent and active part in the discussion which led to its appointment.... The Report was written by the Chairman.... In 1846 Lord Howick, having succeeded his father as Lord Grey, became the Colonial Minister.... One of the most active champions of the Company in the House next to Lord Howick, namely Mr. Hawes, became Under-

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Secretary of State for the Colonies.... Amongst Lord Howick's coadjutors in the House of Commons as advocates of the Company's claim, had been Mr. Charles Buller--a Director of the Company, and their principal legal adviser and organ of communication with the Government. Under the new Administration Mr. Buller became Judge Advocate-General. Mr. Buller was, though unofficially, yet in a formal and official manner associated with Lord Grey and Mr. Hawes in the Colonial Office as a person to be consulted by the Colonial Minister on matters of importance.... It was then confidently supposed by everybody who knew and cared anything about the matter, as well those who had supported as those who had opposed the Company's claim for redress, that such redress would be obtained without delay. Within a very short time, however, of Lord Grey's accession to power, it became known, through private channels, that he was indisposed to maintain in office the view of which he had been so warm an advocate in opposition." But, Mr. Wakefield adds, "I was struck with apoplexy, and from that time until late in the autumn in the following year was entirely disabled from attending to any kind of business. My incapacity changed the whole character of the Direction, which then fell into the hands of a few persons in whose minds sound principles of colonization and colonial government was as nothing compared with pounds, shillings, and pence. They and Lord Grey soon came to an understanding. He wanted to get rid of the obligations imposed upon

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him by his previous career as a colonial reformer and an advocate of the redress by the Imperial Government of the wrongs which the Imperial Government had done to the Company. They wanted to save the shareholders--including themselves--from further calls; to raise the value of the New Zealand Company's shares in the market; and to go on with a pottering and make-believe of colonization with funds supplied by the Government, as a means of avoiding the disgrace which would have attended upon an avowed abandonment of all the objects for which the Company was formed. They made a bargain. The Directors sold the honour of the Company and the interests of the Colony for money, to come through a parliamentary obligation upon New Zealand to recompense the Company for its losses. 6... This was the second stage in the building up of what is now called the Company's debt." By those who care further to see behind the scenes, Mr. Wakefield's evidence on the occasion in question--and it is not a little amusing and suggestive--must be read in extenso.

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Of the terms of the agreement then entered into between the Government and the New Zealand Company there is but one opinion; and the private history of the transaction has only recently been explained. It it only just, however, to a man of Lord Grey's high character, to believe that in being a party to such an agreement he was himself mistaken and deceived; and that, notwithstanding their antecedents and the ill success which had attended the colonizing operations of the New Zealand Company, he still believed they might be turned to useful account, as instruments in promoting a great scheme of emigration for the benefit, not only of New Zealand, but of the kingdom at large. If such, however, were Lord Grey's expectations, no one could be more grievously disappointed than himself. Out of the large sums of public money now placed at their disposal for the purpose of restoring the prosperity of the existing settlements of the New Zealand Company, and to promote efficient colonization, less than 30,000l. was expended by them in emigration; and the New Zealand Committee report 7 that, instead of being applied to its legitimate objects "a considerable sum was lent by the Company to its own shareholders, and lost. That other large sums were laid out, ostensibly in the purchase of private estates, but really to buy up troublesome claims for compensation; and that further sums of considerable magnitude were appropriated by the Directors of the Company amongst themselves on account of past fees." And, notwithstanding the ample

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means which had been placed at their disposal by Earl Grey, they still found themselves unable "to continue their proceedings either with profit to themselves or with benefit to the colony;" and, taking-advantage of the "very favourable arrangement" obtained from Parliament on their behalf, they surrendered their charter, and, as a colonizing association, ended their career without having given a single legal title, to a single individual, of a single piece of land; leaving the whole of their engagements in respect of the disposal of land, during a period of twelve years, unfulfilled and uncompleted, and leaving the whole colony burdened with a debt of 268,000l.

The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives appointed to inquire into the origin, nature, and extent of the just claim, if any, of the New Zealand Company upon the Colony of New Zealand, may be taken fairly to represent the views of the New Zealand Colonists generally of the injustice and impolicy of the charge of 268,3701. 15s. in favour of that body, imposed on the waste lands of the Crown by the Colonization Act of 1847, and by the Act to grant a Representative Constitution to the Colony, 1852. "Your Committee feel assured that the House will disavow, with perfect truth and earnestness, any desire to repudiate a claim which the Company can fairly establish against the Colony in virtue of property surrendered to it. But, with equal justice and earnestness, they conceive that it becomes the Colony to protest against a debt fixed upon their own calculations, proved to be utterly fallacious under

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circumstances justifying more than a suspicion of disingenuous suppression of the truth; and by the operation of which they are burdened with the payment of a large debt, a very considerable proportion of which is certainly unrepresented by any assets."

Not content with having this debt charged upon the demesne lands of the Crown within the limits of their own colonizing operations of the south, the Company contrived to have the charge extended over the waste lands of the Crown in the Province of Auckland. Yet, "excepting as to jealousy, repugnance, and hostility, the Company never had any relations with the land or the people on the north side of the line, any more than if that portion of New Zealand had been a distant colony or a part of New South Wales;" 8 and it cannot, therefore, be a matter of surprise that the extension of this charge to the northern district of New Zealand, widely separated as it is from the field of the New Zealand Company's operations, and which has not at any time acknowledged any benefit from that body, or any advantage from any of their proceedings, should have been made the subject of urgent and repeated remonstrances by the Colonists of the north. The second Committee of the House of Representatives, to whom this particular branch of the subject was submitted for inquiry, reported their opinion that the Province of Auckland ought, in justice, to be immediately relieved from

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bearing any portion of the debt. And, with respect to the debt generally, Resolutions were agreed to by both Houses, to the effect that the charges on the land-fund of the Colony is an oppressive burden on its resources; that it appeared to have been created by Parliament in ignorance of the real facts, and to have been obtained by the New Zealand Company by means of the suppression of material circumstances; and that the Colony is entitled to obtain from Parliament a reconsideration of the case.

Despairing, however, of obtaining the active interference either of the Government or of Parliament, the Colonial Legislature ultimately authorised a compromise to be made; and it was agreed that the Colony should pay to the Company the sum of 200,000l. in full of all demands; and, in order to raise the amount, application was made to Parliament to guarantee a Loan to be raised by the Colony for the liquidation of the debt. "This proposed Loan," said Sir J. Trelawny, in the course of the debate, "is, in fact, nothing but hush-money, in order that all discussion about past transactions may be put an end to:" and the opinion appeared to prevail that as the Constitution Act of 1852 had confirmed the Act 10 & 11 Vict., c. 112, by which the debt was in the first instance admitted, Parliament was now precluded from again re-opening the case. "It has been my misfortune," said Sir James Graham, "to see the commencement of the proceedings connected with this subject, to watch them, and to resist them; but I do not think it expedient now to revive the discussion of

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those proceedings. Much light was thrown upon the transactions to which I refer, in 1852, when the late Sir William Molesworth called the attention of the House to the subject, at considerable length and with great ability. The House then obtained from the Colonial Office detailed information with respect to the occurrences that had taken place; and although I do not think they will bear very close investigation, I cannot but regard the Act of 1852 as a condonation of them": and, without re-opening the discussion, Parliament agreed to guarantee the Loan. The colonial creditor has been changed, the stipulated amount has been paid; and, so far as the New Zealand Company are concerned, the debt is now but a matter of curious history.

What system may ultimately be adopted by the New Zealand Legislature with reference to the disposal and management of the waste lands of the Colony can yet be hardly foreseen; but since they have been placed under the control of the Colonists themselves, it may safely be predicted that they will no longer be allowed to be made the field for the theoretical experiments of absentee proprietors. Taking a broad and general view of their proceedings, however, it must be accorded to the New Zealand Company that, but for their timely and zealous efforts, New Zealand might have been lost to the dominion of the British Crown; that they hastened the measures too tardily taken for its colonization; and that they colonized it at several points with some of the finest settlers who ever left the parent State. But allowing

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to that body all the credit which may be due to them for having founded three Settlements in these islands, at no inconsiderable cost of energy, enterprise, capital, and suffering on the part of their Colonists, yet, viewed more narrowly and in detail, their proceedings are deserving of a less favourable judgment; and a record of those proceedings ought to be faithfully preserved, if for no other purpose than to point this moral for the guidance of posterity, that to be an "heroic work," colonization cannot safely be entrusted to a body of private, irresponsible, absentee proprietors. The New Zealand Company, however, will not have existed in vain, if our experience of their proceedings shall teach our countrymen the lesson which they have hitherto been but slow to learn, --that, consistently with the honour of the Crown, the character of the nation, the rights of aborigines, the interests of settlers, and the welfare of the Colony itself, the work of colonization can hardly be intrusted to a body of private individuals, associated together for the purpose of buying, selling, and making a profit by the sale of the waste lands of the Crown.

1   The Wairau.
2   Sir Everard Home, who visited Nelson in her Majesty's ship "North Star" soon after the Wairau massacre, reported that "a force was wanted, not to repel the attacks of the natives, but to restrain and keep in subjection the English labourers brought over by the New Zealand Company; who have, I believe, been in open rebellion against their employers, more than once."
3   On hearing these charges, Lord Grey, who had obtained for the New Zealand Company a "very favourable arrangement," was naturally alarmed, and wrote to a leading member of the Company for an explanation. "It grieves me to say, but I cannot conceal from you, that these circumstances go far towards destroying the confidence I thought I might place in the Company; and as it was very much at your instance that I obtained for them 'the very favourable arrangement' which was made, I think I have a right to look to you to interfere, in such a manner as you may think most advisable, to induce them to pursue in future a more straightforward line of conduct."
Nor was the explanation Lord Grey received from Mr. John Abel Smith entirely satisfactory.
"I am glad to be able to say that the explanations given by Mr. Aglionby and Mr. Harington have been, in a great measure, satisfactory to me.... Still, I think it unfortunate that the fact of such an opinion existing was not known to Colonel Wakefield at the same time that Mr. Lloyd's was sent to him, since I fear this will have led to what may hereafter give rise to serious complaint on the part of the settlers. It appears, I think, clearly, from Colonel Wakefield's letter, that their conduct has, in some cases at least, been influenced by their having been led to believe that the legal advice obtained by the Company went clearly to show that the settlers had not any chance, in strict law, against them."--Lord Grey's Colonial Policy. Appendix to Second Edition.
4   Votes and proceedings, Sess. 1 & 2.
5   10 & 11 Vict, c. 112.
6   It appears that the agreement entered into with the New Zealand Company by the Government, and which has been the subject of so much grave comment, was "prepared by Mr. Buller; to whom, in concert with the New Zealand Company, it was entirely left to make what, in his judgment, was the best arrangement; subject to only two conditions, on which he (Earl Grey) specially guarded himself: namely, that the pecuniary assistance should not exceed a certain sum.... After much consideration, Mr. Charles Buller prepared the drafts of letters between the Colonial Office and the Directors of the Company, in which were embodied the terms of the arrangement he prepared. These terms were assented to by the Government and the Company: the letters on both sides were written from Mr. Buller's drafts."--Speech of Lord Grey on the second reading of the New Zealand Bill.
7   Report on New Zealand Company's debt paper. Sess. 1 & 2.
8   Report of the Committee of the House of Representatives on the New Zealand Company's debt (Auckland). Votes and proceedings, Sess. 1 & 2.

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