The Appointment of Mr. Shortland.
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1. The Appointment of Mr. Shortland.
On the 30th of January, 1840, the Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand, Captain Hobson, arrived in the Bay of Islands. On the 6th of February, the treaty of Waitangi, that most absurd and mischievous treaty, was signed by him, and a small number of the native chiefs of the Northern Island. To induce the settlers to assist him in getting the signatures of the other chiefs required for the treaty, Captain Hobson made us distinctly understand, that all the lands we had purchased from the natives should be held by us as our own property, in all cases in which the natives were satisfied with their sales. But as soon as ever the treaty was completed, we were informed that we possessed no title whatever to land in New Zealand; and that all we claimed belonged, of right, to the Queen of Great Britain. This act of deception was not calculated to give the settlers any very favourable opinion as to what we were to expect from the new government.
Captain Hobson had been only a few weeks in the Colony when he was seized with paralysis, which rendered him quite incapable of performing the duties of his office. It was now that Mr. Shortland, the protege of Captain Hobson, virtually assumed the conduct of the government, under the designation of "Acting Colonial Secretary;" and was, in fact, a few months afterwards, on Captain Hobson's recommen-
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dation, gazetted as Colonial Secretary. On what grounds Captain Hobson recommended such a person, or the Colonial-office made the appointment, it is the most difficult thing in the world to comprehend. Mr. Shortland had been bred to the Navy, and served under Captain Hobson as lieutenant, and had been at sea all his life. It was never pretended, either by Captain Hobson or himself, that he was in any way qualified, either by education or experience of business, for the duties he undertook.
His conduct in office was marked by ignorance, harshness, and obstinacy; he attempted to rule with a rod of iron. The situation in which this most incompetent person was placed required above every other to be filled by a man of ability and colonial experience, who could have put, and kept in motion, the whole machinery of the Colony. New Zealand has been ruined by the want of an able man in this department. It cannot be said that Mr. Shortland was the best man to be had; for there was Mr. Harrington, chief clerk in the Colonial Secretary's office at Sydney. Had he, in compliance with the wishes of all parties, been appointed, New Zealand would never have been in its present difficult situation. A man of experience in colonial business was required, and Mr. Harrington was the man.
To illustrate Mr. Shortland's way of "doing business," I will describe two transactions in which he played a conspicuous part.
Mr. Shortland had not been many weeks in New
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Zealand before he, together with Mr. G. Cooper, Mr. F. Mathew, and Dr. Johnson (all government officers), commenced jobbing in land. They purchased a large tract of country, in the Frith of the Thames, from Mr. Webster, for which they gave a bill of 1000l. Sir G. Gipps, Governor of New South Wales, heard of the transaction, and severely reprimanded them; they were nevertheless allowed to keep the land. Mr. Shortland next purchased an allotment of land at Auckland, in pretended compliance with the terms of Sir G. Gipps' circular of the 17th Sept. 1840, viz., "That all government officers requiring land to build upon immediately, and previous to the first land-sale, shall be allowed such land, provided such land was not purchased for the sake of land-jobbing; and that the officers above alluded to do not sell their land for the space of three years;" and that "if such land were sold by any of the said officers before the expiration of three years, it was to be immediately forfeited to the Crown." What was the consequence? Mr. Shortland found that he could get a good price (1200l.) for his land, and he immediately sold it to Mr. F. W. F. Porter, setting at defiance the provision of Sir G. Gipps' circular.
In a few days the affair became known to the public, and a great outcry was made by the settlers in Auckland. Mr. Dudley Sinclair wrote to Lord John Russell on the subject, and at the same time Governor Hobson sent a despatch, dated July 21st, 1841, in which, alluding to Mr. Sinclair's letter, he
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states, "that Mr. Shortland denies the sale of the said land, and states that it is only let to Mr. Porter, and that Mr. Sinclair's assertion, that the Colonial Secretary has sold his allotment, is incorrect; but having bought another at the sale, he has let it, having first paid for it, and he now occupies the other: and that he finds it very hard to attach criminality to these transactions." This was all very civil in Captain Hobson to screen, if possible, Mr. Shortland from the charge of land-jobbing; but I trust that Lord Stanley has seen long ago that the above allotment, which Mr. Shortland denied having sold, and which Captain Hobson stated to have been only let, was in reality sold by Mr. Shortland to Mr. Porter on the 12th of July, 1841, as may be seen from the copy of the title-deed entered into by Mr. Shortland and Mr. Porter, printed in the Report on New Zealand, July 29th, 1844, p. 455, which was signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of Mr. J. I. Freeman, head clerk in the Colonial Secretary's office, and Mr. Charles Brewer, Mr. Shortland's attorney; and which copy was sent home to Lord Stanley from New Zealand, on the 27th of May, 1843, by Mr. Porter. Lord Stanley and the Colonial-office had thus an opportunity afforded them of judging what dependence they ought to place in Mr. Shortland's representations regarding the Colony, and particularly the early settlers, who have been so infamously treated by him. If Mr. Shortland were capable of deceiving Captain Hobson and the
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Colonial-office in one instance, he might be guilty of the same in any number of others.
The next affair which I shall describe will afford an instance of the peculiar manner in which Mr. Shortland dealt with questions of finance. It is a transaction which he carried on with Mr. Boyd, of Sydney, and which must astonish every man of business, while it supplies an example of that tact which Governor Hobson praised so much, and which he only could discover. However, considering the little experience Mr. Shortland must necessarily have had in such matters, the colonists may, after all, give him some credit for the numerous shifts he had recourse to in this the most perplexing and intricate branch of civil government. For my own part, considering that he had every thing in the art of government to learn since he came amongst us, I am not at all surprised at the frequent dilemmas into which he fell. Indeed, I am persuaded that he never thought when he took office, that such a thing could happen as the revenue falling short of the enormous current expenditure, until, upon a certain day, the Colonial Treasurer informed him that all the money raised from the sale of Auckland allotments and other lands was spent,--that, in short, the treasury was empty. This was certainly an awkward predicament for a man to be placed in, and calculated to perplex a person knowing so little about such matters. Mr. Shortland's situation was any thing but pleasant, as he had informed the Colonial-office that upwards of
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25,000l. had been received on account of land-sales at Auckland for the past year, and that a much greater sum might be relied upon as the produce of the next. The former sum was all spent, and the latter was a false calculation. Fear and shame were, however, finally and fully overcome, and it was determined to draw upon England. The obvious plan of negotiating the drafts through the local bank at Auckland was deemed inexpedient; perhaps because it was thought better to give the benefit arising from such a transaction to one of the Sydney banks. At all events, the Government would neither condescend to sell the drafts themselves, in such sums as the public required (say from 100l. upwards), which might have been readily done upon the spot, nor would they permit the local bank to do so, but sent them to an agent at Sydney. From their unhappy ignorance of business, however, this plan entirely failed; because the agent was required by them to sell only at a certain premium, which, it might have easily been foreseen, he could not accomplish; and because the drafts themselves were drawn for sums so large, as to render them, even on this very account, unsaleable. In consequence of this, and a variety of other blunders, the credit of the Government was so completely destroyed in Sydney, that their drafts could not, eventually, be disposed of on any terms.
In this emergency, Mr. George Cowper, the collector of customs, the oldest and the most experienced of the officers of Government, was forthwith
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dispatched to Sydney, for the purpose of obtaining money in any possible manner.
This gentleman entered into preliminary arrangements with Mr. Boyd, the manager of the Royal Bank of Australasia; and the contract was ratified by Mr. Shortland, the officer administering the government. On the return of Mr. Cooper to the Colony, it appeared that the terms of this extraordinary contract were,--that Mr. Boyd should negotiate their drafts upon the Home Government, at the unheard-of discount of fifteen per cent., stipulating, at the same time, that, in addition to the payment of this discount, he should receive, for every sum paid by him, debentures upon the revenues of the Colony to an equal amount; so that the Government, in order to receive 15,000l. at fifteen per cent, interest, actually agreed to make over to Mr. Boyd a sum of 30,000l., for which amount the Colony became indebted to the Home Government.
The impolicy of anticipating the revenues of a colony by the issue of debentures is obvious, and has been reprehended in other cases by the Secretary for the Colonies. In this case, besides being highly impolitic, it was also illegal, inasmuch as it was never sanctioned, or approved of, by the Executive Council, who alone could be presumed to have the right of adopting such an extreme measure. So well did Mr. Shortland himself seem to be aware of the illegality of this contract, that, although the debentures had been executed, he nevertheless failed,
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when drawing for the first sum of 2000l., to forward them to Mr. Boyd as agreed upon; perhaps he was trying an experiment; and he so far succeeded, that Mr. Boyd paid the 2000l., but intimated, at the same time, that he had done so for the honour of the Local Government; though he gave Mr. Shortland unequivocally to understand, that in future not a shilling should be advanced without the stipulated debentures. The 2000l. being very soon expended, and necessity requiring that more money should be advanced, the Government now applied to the local Bank at Auckland, with the view of negotiating, through it, drafts to the amount of 3000l. upon Mr. Boyd. But the directors of the Bank, before entertaining such a proposal, required, as a preliminary step, to be put in possession of all the facts regarding the arrangements made with Mr. Boyd; and with this view, two of their number were deputed to wait upon Mr. Shortland, who satisfied them that the terms of the contract had been fully complied with, and, in particular, that debentures, equal to the amount to be drawn, had been duly executed, and would be forwarded to Sydney, along with the drafts. On the faith of this assurance, the Bank discounted Mr. Shortland's drafts on Mr. Boyd to the full amount of 3000l. To the great surprise of the Bank directors, however, the first communication from Sydney conveyed to them the astounding intelligence of the dishonour of Mr. Shortland's drafts, because of the extraordinary fact, that the deben-
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tures had not, according to the terms of the agreement, been forwarded by Mr. Shortland to Mr. Boyd. Mr. Shortland, indeed, forwarded the debentures to Sydney, according to the arrangement made with the Bank directors, but after so doing, he despatched the Government pinnace to the Bay of Islands, to forward by the same vessel a letter countermanding the order to deliver them to Mr. Boyd. It is, at all events, a fact, that the debentures were withheld, although the money was obtained from the Bank under the pretence that they would be transmitted along with the drafts.
Looking upon the above transaction in a mere business point of view, I must say that the arrangement with Mr. Boyd was not only the most injudicious, but the most injurious to the interest of the Colony that could be entered into. The Colony is first of all brought into debt to pay the expenses of Mr. Shortland's government to the amount of 15,000l.; then for this, fifteen per cent, is to be paid. But the most strangely unaccountable part of the transaction is, the handing over to Mr. Boyd, in addition to the drafts upon the Home Government for this 15,000l., an additional sum of 15,000l., in the shape of debentures on the revenues of the Colony. Did it never occur to the Government, that a man engaged in business in New South Wales might fail, even with all this assistance from Mr. Shortland? What would become of the 15,000l. in such a case? But supposing there was no risk,
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as far as Mr. Boyd was concerned, and I do not know that there was any, what a character does this transaction give to our Colony, and to our Government in particular! Obliged to sell bills upon the British treasury at a discount of fifteen per cent, giving debentures upon the Colonial revenue as security besides!!! Was the British Government ever before at such a discount, in any other part of the world? Mr. Shortland, at least, will deserve to be remembered as the person under whose administration such an extraordinary event occurred.
I admired Mr. Boyd's tact in the management of this business. It is to be kept in view, that while he received, and, no doubt, made use of, the Government drafts for 15,000l., together with fifteen per cent, for the same, that he still held the whole of the money in his hands; all he paid to Mr. Short-land was 2000l., for which, according to the agreement, he should have received debentures to the same amount on the Colony. The value of this money could not in reality have been less than ten per cent, to Mr. Boyd at such a time; so that the Government actually arranged to pay twenty-five per cent, for depositing their money with a private individual. They must have been dreadfully afraid of trusting themselves with the custody of this money, before they consented to get rid of it on such terms. Had they formed at the time any idea of their future necessities, they surely would have tried the experiment of keeping it themselves.
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Disgraceful as these and similar financial schemes undoubtedly are, yet any inquiry into the application of the revenues of the Colony affords quite as little satisfaction; for, besides the large sums consumed by the Government officers and their friends, a vast amount has also been absolutely sunk in the erection of temporary wooden buildings, as public offices, as well as in the improvement and decoration of a wooden building sent out from England, for a Government-house (New Zealand at the same time exporting the finest timber in the world to England, the Kauri pine). On this house, which originally cost 2000l., and which might have served every purpose required for the comfort and convenience of the governor of a new Colony, no less a sum than 15,000l. or 20,000l. has been thrown away; while not even 100l. have been, as yet, devoted to local purposes. In fact, so little has the comfort or convenience of the public been attended to, that even the streets of Auckland itself, where the people have expended nearly 40,000l. in the purchase of allotments, are in such a state as to be utterly impassable; although an outlay of 100l. or 200l. would have been sufficient for their improvement. The revenue of the Colony appears to have been made subservient to one purpose only,--that of being expended, directly or indirectly, upon the Government officials themselves, or upon their friends.
